"Watchmen" Talkback (Spoilers)

[James Harvey]

The Hugo Award-winning graphic novel chronicles the fall from grace of a group of super-heroes plagued by all-too-human failings. The concept of the super-hero is dissected as the heroes are stalked by an unknown assassin.

WATCHMEN



Written by: Alan Moore
Art by: Dave Gibbons

It all begins with the paranoid delusions of a half-insane hero called Rorschach. But is Rorschach really insane or has he in fact uncovered a plot to murder super-heroes and, even worse, millions of innocent civilians? On the run from the law, Rorschach reunites with his former teammates in a desperate attempt to save the world and their lives, but what they uncover will shock them to their very core and change the face of the planet! Following two generations of masked superheroes from the close of World War II to the icy shadow of the Cold War comes this groundbreaking comic story — the story of The Watchmen.

Comments? What are your thoughts?

[Calhoun07]

There was supposed to be a sequel called Twilight of the Gods, which obviously never transpired because of a falling out Alan Moore had with DC. The original synopsis of this story winds up online from time to time, but is quickly shut down by DC when it does get put up since it is copyrighted material (and no, I don't have it myself. I did find it on line once before it was taken down but did not save it) so good luck finding it!

[The Guard]

Watchmen is genius, pure and simple. It doesn't need a sequel. The original was so powerful.

Here's my Watchmen page.

http://www.angelfire.com/oh5/daveworld1/WATCHMEN.html

[pencilsharp]

Cal, are you serious? A sequel to the best graphic novel of all time? Urgh... Never have I been glad for DC's hard-headedness and habitual tendencies to tick off their talent, until now.

And SBWH, (I ain't typin' all that...) try to check out a copy of V for Vendetta as well. It's not quite as good as Watchmen, but it is chock full o' Alan Moore goodness!

[Karkull]

It was a great story, but I have to read it again at some point because it's so packed with information!

[SilentBobWooHoo]

Originally posted by Karkull
It was a great story, but I have to read it again at some point because it's so packed with information!

Yeah, I know what ya mean. I had to re-read some pages to absorb all of it because sometimes I was just like "huh?". But nonetheless, it's a great story.

[Calhoun07]

Originally posted by pencilsharp
Cal, are you serious? A sequel to the best graphic novel of all time? Urgh... Never have I been glad for DC's hard-headedness and habitual tendencies to tick off their talent, until now.

Yes, I am serious. It is often more referred to as Twilight of the Superheroes. Actually, click here for a pretty good site about the general synopsis. I don't think it's the copyrighted material, so I think we're safe with linking it!

[Thomas]

For sure one of the best literary reads of all time in comics. Whiteout is very cool too if you like crime comics, its published by Oni press.

[The Guard]

Read the "Twilight" proposal. It has nothing to do with Watchmen. In this proposal, Alan Moore cites the format of Watchmen as an example. But "Twilight" is clearly a DCU crossover of CRISIS-like proportions, involving all our favorite heroes, the JLA, Metron, time travel, and several older heroes: Uncle Sam, Black Hawk, Doll Man etc. It's clearly NOT a Watchmen sequel. There may well have been a suggested "Twilight of the Gods/Superheroes", but that wasn't it. Watchmen does not need a sequel. The first maxi-series was enough...just enough to make you wonder. Will Veidt get caught because of Rorschach's diary? Will Rorschach's diary get used?

I find the end chilling, because the possibility exists that "Half New York" died for NOTHING. This is a situation that WILL NOT, and CANNOT be present in David Hayter's Watchmen script if he does one. Not in this day in age. So...in the tradition of shameless plugs...I present what would be the greatest film ever if I had 60 million dollars...WATCHMEN.

http://www.angelfire.com/oh5/daveworld1/Movies.html

Mine is the one that ISN'T Sam Hamm's. Nothing against Hamm, but he ruined a classic story with his Watchmen script.

If for some reason that link doesn't work, or the script doesn't dl right (I used wordpad)...Email me if you want WATCHMEN. I focused on the newer generation of heroes, and it STILL times out at around 3 hours...

I'd love any feedback, comments etc. I'm really proud of it, and I want to get it out there. So if you like it, pass it on...

[Thomas]

I didnt even know they were thinking of a Watchmen movie. I will read both scripts ill tell you that. I read the first of the Hamm's and it starts out messed up, but the Comedian seems to be dead on as far as not caring about anything or anyone.

[The Guard]

Yeah. Hamm did write a KILLER opening scene explaining WHY costumed heroes were banned. And the Comedian doesn't give a care.

[Arkangel]

I know I'm new here and I certainly don't want my second post to be considered blasphemy or anything, but last night I finished reading Watchmen for the first time and I don't feel it lived up to the hype.

I've only recently started reading comics again, but don't buy single issues. I like to go on Amazon and browse through the TPB's and graphic novels. So far I've found some I've really enjoyed like the new Justice League TPB's (my brother and I collected the JL International comics from the mid 80's and frankly I thought they were subpar; I really need the JL to be the Big 7), Kingdom Come, The Brave and the Bold (Flash and Green Lantern), and Moore's wonderful What Ever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, one of the best superhero stories I've read, although admittedly not deep.

Anyway, I bought Watchmen because so many friends have told me how great it was. The reviews on Amazon were all raves. Of course I thought it was good. I liked the art, and I liked the characters too. But I had problems with the storyline. I know this book was written back in 1986, but for me today all of the Cold War apocalyptic stuff just rings so hollow (I know, I know, how quickly I forget). I loved the superhero nostalgia (which comprised a good portion of the beginning of the story), but really didn't care as much for the political stuff which drove the plot. And the ending just seemed way too easy. I felt so unsatisfied with it. I guess that's the problem with writing such an epic tome, the ending rarely lives up to the great build-up.

All in all I'm glad I read it, but I'm not personally ready to call it the greatest comic book I've ever read. Certainly I don't agree with the most glowing reviews over at Amazon which call it a transcendent piece of literature and the "best book I've ever read" (of course, that's the reviewer's opinion, but if that's a true statement I'd advise him to go down to the library and start reading. Moore's book is good, but I'm not ready to include it in the same breath as Moby Dick , Light in August , One Hundred years of Solitude, Camus' The Stranger and Flannery O'Connor's short fiction, to name just a few).

I'm sure some people might accuse me of not appreciating what Moore is trying to do with the genre, and that I'd rather have just stupid superhero action and trite plots. But I disagree. I'm quite willing to read, and do enjoy, the deconstruction of the superhero mythos, as Waid does in Kingdom Come. I really think it's mostly the political stuff (and the ending) that detracts from my enjoyment of Moore's book.

But I'm posting here tonight because I'd love to hear other opinions, especially from people whose main interest is in superhero comics (the reason I say this is because I have a friend here who majored in sequential art in college and is pretty much a comic book snob. She doesn't read superhero comics for the most part, although she loved Kingdom Come . Anyway, she raves about Watchmen and thinks it's one of the best comic books ever. I just think she's biased against mainstream superhero comics and automatically likes anything that works against those character types).

I look forward to the discussion.

[The Guard]

The reason I like WATCHMEN has little or nothing to do with the fact that it's a superhero comic. You can't look at it like that. Because, though it is a new look at the superhero genre, it's much more. It's has much, much larger themes running through it. The little things. The things that all come together to mean something. Read it again. And again. And you'll start to see things like foreshadowing, symbolism, ect, really be brought out. You'll notice little signs in the background of the panels. You'll notice recurring symbols, and new themes opening up. I've read it almost 50 times, and I'm still finding things. Things like the fact that Nixon is still President. There's a reason for that. You're given hints that The Comedian might have had something to do with his continued employment, and even the deaths of some of his predecessors.

I question if you really understand some of the finer points of WATCHMEN. It's not a simple superhero story, or even a story about a near-apocalypse. What makes WATCHMEN so great, IMO, is the utter bleakness, the hopelessness that Moore conveys. Reread Rorschach's speeches. Reread his diary entries. Look at some of the things Dr. Manhattan says to Adrian near the end. Study the lecture Dr. Manhattan gives Laurie on Mars, carefully.

Some things you need to understand to truly appreciate it:

1. Jon's evolution from man to hero to God.

2. "The end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."

3. The significance of Rorschach's journal at the end.

A lot of people do not understand why it ends like it does. I could explain it, but I like to see people discover it all for themselves. That's half the fun. Digging through the thing, becoming part of the world, noting the new look for the police, cars, ect...I'm rambling, aren't I?

I could talk about WATCHMEN for hours with someone who's read it and studied it like I did. There is so much social commentary, so much human truth to it. And so many just...fantastic moments. So many memorable lines. There's a reason it's required reading in a lot of college courses.

[Arkangel]

Originally posted by The Guard
The reason I like WATCHMEN has little or nothing to do with the fact that it's a superhero comic. You can't look at it like that. Because, though it is a new look at the superhero genre, it's much more. It's has much, much larger themes running through it. The little things. The things that all come together to mean something. Read it again. And again. And you'll start to see things like foreshadowing, symbolism, ect, really be brought out. You'll notice little signs in the background of the panels. You'll notice recurring symbols, and new themes opening up. I've read it almost 50 times, and I'm still finding things. Things like the fact that Nixon is still President. There's a reason for that. You're given hints that The Comedian might have had something to do with his continued employment, and even the deaths of some of his predecessors.

I question if you really understand some of the finer points of WATCHMEN. It's not a simple superhero story, or even a story about a near-apocalypse. What makes WATCHMEN so great, IMO, is the utter bleakness, the hopelessness that Moore conveys. Reread Rorschach's speeches. Reread his diary entries. Look at some of the things Dr. Manhattan says to Adrian near the end. Study the lecture Dr. Manhattan gives Laurie on Mars, carefully.

Some things you need to understand to truly appreciate it:

1. Jon's evolution from man to hero to God.

2. "The end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."

3. The significance of Rorschach's journal at the end.

A lot of people do not understand why it ends like it does. I could explain it, but I like to see people discover it all for themselves. That's half the fun. Digging through the thing, becoming part of the world, noting the new look for the police, cars, ect...I'm rambling, aren't I?

I could talk about WATCHMEN for hours with someone who's read it and studied it like I did. There is so much social commentary, so much human truth to it. And so many just...fantastic moments. So many memorable lines. There's a reason it's required reading in a lot of college courses.

Well I did say I'd only read it once. However, you seem to give your own reading and interpretation way too much authority. You speak as if you'd written it yourself. While I'm sure you've found things there that I haven't, it's a bit presumptious to say you know why it ends like it does. I'm sure there are doxens of readings which are as valid as yours. And I need more than just the evocation of hopelesness to proclaim it a great work of art. It's very good, and of course much better than most comic books. But the plot doesn't hold my interest all the way through.

In any case, it's also quite possible that I could read it ten times and make all of the connections and still not enjoy it. As I mentioned, the political stuff just doesn't interest me and the last few chapters of the book are not as interesting as the first few. Not that there aren't several gems in the book. My favorite is the "Black Freighter" story within a story. And the excerpts from Under the Hood after the first few chapters; that's really strong writing. And I loved the artwork by Gibbons. But the story as a whole is not, in my opinion, the greatest comic book story ever. Although, I must admit, I stil don't think I've run across that one yet, although right now I'd say Kingdom Come is right up there.

[Zoddman]

I too, have finished Watchmen lately, and it's not really the type of story that you like or dislike, but the themes and issues expressed in the work as a whole roll through your brain almost constantly after you read it. And really, isn't that what good literature is all about, to make you reixamine the rest of the world?

(P.S., Guard, I'd love to IM with you over Watchmen with you.)

[Don Markstein]

I may not put Watchmen in a category with Moby Dick etc., but I'd put it in a category with The Maltese Falcon and Shane (or is Hondo the western equivalent?). It's a story firmly and deliberately set within a despised genre, that nonetheless has undeniable literary merit, and clearly deserves critical attention. Maybe you like it and maybe you don't (I'm no fan of Moby Dick, myself), but you certainly see things in it that are worth thinking and talking about.

It's rife with conventions of the superhero genre (heroes forming clubs, heroes fighting the first time they meet, even a hero turning to the side of evil -- I'm not an ends-justify-means kinda guy, so I'm not impressed by Ozymandias's allegedly pure motives for what he did). And yet -- here we are, a decade and a half after its first publication, still talking about all the little things we've found in it.

And in some ways, I think Watchmen is a better ambassador of comics to the outside world than Maus, which is easy for the literatti to dismiss as a fluke -- the very fact that it has obvious merit removes it, in some critics' eyes, from being a mere comic book. Maus "passes" for literature, but Watchmen, being steeped in its comic book origins, can't. If they see merit (i.e., depth and thought, not necessarily whether or not they like it) in it, then they have to admit comics can have merit.

By the way, I didn't see the "political stuff" as prevalent enough to affect my judgment. Yes, it's a product of the Cold War era, just as everything else in the world is a product of its time. And it's a bit more realistic in its depiction of how politics is actually played, and how a world hegemony is created and maintained, than some we-must-trust-our-wise-leaders types might think desirable, but it represents a broad spectrum of points of view.

Quack, Don

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,

First off, everybody go click on the link in Don Markstein's post. I don't know how many of you folks know who he is, but suffice it to say it's a Big Deal that he's here. Welcome to the boards, Don!

Just to chime in with a different opinion on Watchmen. The short version is that I think it was and is a truly groundbreaking comic that pushed the boundaries of the genre at the time that hasn't dated terribly well because of its success. Don's comment about how it's a fine work of literature in a medium and a genre that get snubbed by the literary crowd is pretty spot on -- the problem is that many of the "innovations" that Moore used have since been pulled into mainstream comics.

If you go back and read something like Bob Kane & Bill Finger's Batman or Siegel & Shuster's Superman, they will strike you as horribly simplistic and unsophisticated, as will many of the first works of Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and Jack Kirby. However, those comics almost fully defined the way the comics game was played, up to (and even beyond) Watchmen.

I think the major contribution of Watchmen (and most of the books by Moore and Frank Miller in the 80's) was to take the rules of the game, follow them to their logical conclusions, and not shy away from the end result, no matter where it went. It applied an intelligence to the superhero genre that was not seen before (and is rarely seen since) and granted it an adult sensibility that hadn't been seriously considered before then. That sensibility and intelligence fundamentally changed the rules of the game, and ensured you couldn't look at the same old superhero comics the same way again, just like Siegel & Shuster et al changed the pulps, and Lee/Ditko/Kirby humanized the superhero.

Over time, a lot of the innovations behind Watchmen have filtered through to the more mainstream comics, to the point where they're almost taken for granted. The net result is that lots of modern comic readers can go back and read Watchmen and really think it's nothing special. In a sense, the fact that Watchmen made itself obsolete or even cliche may be the most powerful evidence to show how much of an impact it truly had.

Despite that, I think the kind of intelligence that Alan Moore brings to comics is still terribly rare today. The nested stories-in-stories, all interlinked and tied together, along with details down to the panel level really reached their peak in Watchmen. There really aren't many comics (or ANY art medium, for that matter) that you can reread again and again over the span of ten years, and still re-discover things on every review.

On a lighter note, the other thing worth noting is that Watchmen isn't everybody's cup of tea, and that's a perfectly good position to have. There are lots of things that other people worship which leave me completely cold (Brian Michael Bendis and The Sims, for instance), even though I can understand the appeal on an intellectual level.

Personally, I tend prefer Moore's work on Swamp Thing far more than Watchmen. I think it set the groundwork for what was to come, but it's a far less nihilistic and far more humane work, even if it scares seven shades of poo out of you sometimes.

-- Ed/Ace

[Arkangel]

Originally posted by Don Markstein
I may not put Watchmen in a category with Moby Dick etc., but I'd put it in a category with The Maltese Falcon and Shane (or is Hondo the western equivalent?). It's a story firmly and deliberately set within a despised genre, that nonetheless has undeniable literary merit, and clearly deserves critical attention. Maybe you like it and maybe you don't (I'm no fan of Moby Dick, myself), but you certainly see things in it that are worth thinking and talking about.

It's rife with conventions of the superhero genre (heroes forming clubs, heroes fighting the first time they meet, even a hero turning to the side of evil -- I'm not an ends-justify-means kinda guy, so I'm not impressed by Ozymandias's allegedly pure motives for what he did). And yet -- here we are, a decade and a half after its first publication, still talking about all the little things we've found in it.

And in some ways, I think Watchmen is a better ambassador of comics to the outside world than Maus, which is easy for the literatti to dismiss as a fluke -- the very fact that it has obvious merit removes it, in some critics' eyes, from being a mere comic book. Maus "passes" for literature, but Watchmen, being steeped in its comic book origins, can't. If they see merit (i.e., depth and thought, not necessarily whether or not they like it) in it, then they have to admit comics can have merit.

By the way, I didn't see the "political stuff" as prevalent enough to affect my judgment. Yes, it's a product of the Cold War era, just as everything else in the world is a product of its time. And it's a bit more realistic in its depiction of how politics is actually played, and how a world hegemony is created and maintained, than some we-must-trust-our-wise-leaders types might think desirable, but it represents a broad spectrum of points of view.

Quack, Don

I just wanted to say I had spent a great deal of time at your site before I started posting here and must commend you on its scope and thank you for providing such an amazing resource on the Web for the rest of us.

[zano88]

wow!!
this was a great thread...ive read this book twice
now im going to go read it again!

[Don Markstein]

First off, everybody go click on the link in Don Markstein's post. I don't know how many of you folks know who he is, but suffice it to say it's a Big Deal that he's here. Welcome to the boards, Don!

Uh, do I have to live up to this now?

Anyway, thanks for the welcome, to both you and Arkangel, but I'm really not sure how much time I have for message boards right now. I was actually pointed here the other day by a friend, directing me to a discussion in the Termite Terrace section, where a fairly prominent error in the Toonopedia™ was pointed out, which is kinda, like, the opposite of what you guys are saying.

Quack, Don