52 in 2011

[lumineaux]

8.   Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

I don't count my comics reading as "books" most of the time.  However, both Time magazine and the New York Times declared Watchmen to be not only a book but one of the most significant books of the late 20th century, so I feel justified in counting this particular one as a book.

Needless to say, this one is a re-read.  I read Watchmen in its original serialized release back in the 1980s.   For me, the 1980s was my personal Golden Age of Comics.  It seemed to be the moment when the comics industry realized that they did not have to limit their stories to the level of a mildly literate 8-year-old.  There were writers and arists doing this before Alan Moore and Frank Miller.   Chris Claremont and John Byrne gave us the Dark Phoenix saga.   George Perez and Marv Wolfman gave us their amazing run on the Teen Titans.  Levitz and Giffen gave us their run on the Legion of Superheroes, including the Great Darkness Saga.  George Perez rebooted Wonder Woman.

Watchmen is somewhat a thing unto itself comics.  It is a self-contained story, which allowed it to have a beginning, middle and proper end.   The characters were adapted from largely unknown old Charton comics characters, which meant there was no brand to protect, no status quo to maintain.  By being of, yet not completely of, the genre, Watchmen was able to transcend it, comment on it, and follow its ideas to their logical conclusions.

The plot of Watchmen is simple:  Starting in the late 1930s, people actually did put on costumes and fight crime.  A small group of people continued to do so until 1977 when costumed adventurers were outlawed.   There is one actual superhero with powers, Doctor Manhattan, who continues to work for the government.  It's 1985.  The Cold War is heating up.  Someone just murdered one of the old costumed adventurers.   From that simple comics template, Moore and Gibbons construct a believable world filled with flawed, difficult people.  Every piece of material, even the supplemental materials at the back of each issue that seemed like world-building filler, is relevant.   The secondary characters are as fully drawn as the heroes. 

Although the plot is by no mean original (the Outer Limits did it before Watchmen and Heroes stole it afterwards), how the story is told is utterly original.  Plus, the revelation of the villain's master scheme contains one of the best lines ever written in an action story:

"Dan, I'm not a Republic Serial villain.  Do you seriously think I'd explain my masterstroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome?  I did it thirty-five minutes ago."


If you've never read a comic book in your life, you will read Watchmen and give a dissatisfied shrug.  If you only read comic books after the mid 1980s, you won't understand what the big deal is.  Honestly, I don't know if anyone who was not a child of the 80s can appreciate this work fully.  The oppressive fear of the Cold War era is a prime mover of the plot -- if one has never felt that fear (which was different in kind and type than the modern fear of terrorism), can one grasp the lengths a person would go to combat it?

One of the unfortunate side effects of Watchmen and its kissing cousin, Frank Miller's Dark Knight, was to hurl comics into their ridiculous "dark age" where grim and gritty tropes substituted for story-telling and characterization.  But I forgive Watchmen for its progeny, because Watchmen itself is smart and self-aware.


I never did bother seeing the movie version of Watchmen.  There's no way that the same richness of detail and storytelling can be transferred from the page into a two-hour movie.  Plus, the two Silk Spectres are some of the most complicated, screwed-up characters and the movie cast a merely pretty face instead of an actual actress.

Comments

[katnboots.livejournal.com]

If you've never read a comic book in your life, you will read Watchmen and give a dissatisfied shrug.

I'm in this category and I quite enjoyed it. I've never seen anything like it. What a structure. I wish I'd thought of telling a story that way.

I saw the movie afterward, in the hotel for the Nawlins work trip. It had changes but stayed faithful overall. It even retained the bizarre book's effect on me of caring about the story, and about the characters as a group, but never much about any particular character.

[lumineaux.livejournal.com]

Hmmmmm . . . maybe the whole superhero concept has sufficiently penetrated American culture that you really don't need to have read comics to appreciate it. Although it's not like you're completely unfamiliar with the basic conceits of superhero comics, what with having played CoH.

Did you have a favorite character at all? Mine was the second Nite Owl, Dan Dreiberg.

[katnboots.livejournal.com]

Someone without a comics history may see different references or patterns, and he can still enjoy story and character. Everyone who reads comics now appreciated a first one somewhere.

I don't think superheroes are only understood by an insular culture. They're protagonists in tights. We recognize protagonists and remember mainstream movies like Superman. :-)

I best liked and understood Manhattan. The other strong character seemed to be the Watchmen as a group, instead of as individuals... that's not something I run into a lot, so it was kind of interesting.

[beckishadow.livejournal.com]

I think you'd be pleasantly surprised with the movie version. It was mostly faithful, and the casting choices were pretty good (Rorschach was pretty damn perfect). I preferred Veidt's manufactured catastrophe at the end better than the comic's, actually. It seemed more realistic in that world, and less silly.