Who Reads the 'Watchmen'

Think comics are just for kids?

I admit, rather ruefully now, that I was not “in” to comic books during my childhood.  Star Wars novels, yes.  Comics, no.  For a while my brother toyed with the whole comic, thing, and I remember the excitement around when our friend got the Superman Doomsday comic, but comics seemed to complex of a monster to tackle as child of the 80s and 90s, especially when the adventures of Batman and Superman were so readily available in a fully animated form. 

But with the recent deluge of comic-book related film-mania, I’ve felt a certain longing to be part of that “inner” circle that “gets” when a comic book movie is done right and "gets" when it's given the Spider Man 3 treatment.  So with the release of the big-screen adaptation of Alan Moore’s epic Watchmen looming in the future, I decided to quit remising a childhood lost and set out on my own pilgrimage to the inner sanctum of iconic geekdom.

First things first, Watchmen is not your father’s “Action Comics”.  It is in every sense of the term a “graphic novel” possessing all the elegance, poetry, subtext and symbolism of any other great written work.  The story takes a pseudo-realism approach to the typical masked-crusader fantasy, presenting it through classic comic book templates such as Noir detective stories and classic capes and cowels hero adventures. Moore also injects a strong dose of the metaphysical and philosophical nature of the emerging adult-oriented graphic novels of the 80s, to which Watchmen was a major contributor along side such notables as Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.

It’s easy to deconstruct and judge the technical merits of story telling, but often difficult to objectively judge the story itself.  I’ve found a good personal litmus test for a story is how easy it is to stop reading.  There is an intrinsic quality to good stories that compels you to continue reading even against your better judgment, as in the twilight’s last gleaming is now the dawn’s early light.  I had to wrench myself away from Watchmen only to find myself magnetically drawn back to it during my next period of free time.  The story’s focus is on masked-heroes, but it is not a masked-heroes story, so don’t let the spandex and gadgets stand in your way of enjoying the deeper, and often more adult themes of this novel.

Comics read much differently than pure text novels, and it did take some getting used to the replacement of exposition with illustration.  But I never truly appreciated the advantages of the graphic novel storytelling process until I read Watchmen.  Moore is able to interweave stories and narrative through the visual aspect in ways that not even film can accomplish.  It’s remarkable how flexible the medium is and how fulfilling the story telling is even in its scarce-dialogue segments.  The art-style, while simple in its use of color, is nevertheless fitting in its stark beauty and reminiscence of old funny-paper comic strips.

Where Watchmen truly shines is in its irrepressible nature of serving up themes far above typical comic fare, juxtaposing impotence and strength, desire and death, certainty and ambiguity, and being unafraid to curb-stomp your fragile emotions with an ending that manages to be mesmerizingly vile, hopeful, and heartbreaking at the same time.  I'd be understating the point to say the Watchmen does not have a clear cut message and will almost certainly have you questioning your sensibilities by its end.  One might say that it's relevance may have been more potent during the mid 80's arms race with the now defunct Soviet Union, but fortunatley Watchmen isn't about a time or place, it's ultimately about the best, worst, and most perplexing elements human nature and the undercurrents of all three that pervade us all, producing a sort of meta-nature to its costumed characters as the novel itself is a human story masked in comic book hero attire.

I feel like I could allow my ebullition to run on for days, but I’ll spare you and hope that you’ve gleaned so far that this is a phenomenal graphic novel, and a phenomenal piece of literature, well deserving of its Hugo award and being the only graphic novel on Time Magazine’s Top 100 English-language novels from 1923-Present.  If you have any interest in the upcoming film adaption by 300 director Zack Snyder, take this opportunity to join the ranks of the “it’s not as good as the book” movie-goers.  And trust me, if you aren’t excited about the movie now, you will be after reading the comic. 

So take the plunge, regain some of your lost childhood and maybe gain a little new perspective on the way.  Maybe you will finally be able to understand what Sam Jackson meant in Unbreakable.  This isn’t just a comic, “this is a piece of art.”  

Verdict: Excellent