Watchmen

[nofuture]

After having just read Watchmen for the umpteenth time, I thought how I've realted more to each character as I've grown older -
As a kid I loved Rorschach the badass, anti-hero.
As a drugged-up teen, felt like Jon; introspective. self indulgent.
And in middle age feel like Daniel towards the end of the book; at ease but with a bit of a gut!
Rambbling loon or do you know what i mean?

[W. R. Logan]

Just start worrying when you feel like the Silk Spectre, Sally Jupiter.

[nofuture]

The only similarity there is we both have had to search high and low for a ciggy lighter on occassions!

[House of Usher]

Hmmm. Reading this aged 17, it was probably Dan Dreiberg I most identified with. Oh well.

Followed by Laurie Juspeczyk.
And then Adrian Veidt.

[Concrete Block 15]

No prizes for guessing going by my user name!

Seriously, I always identified more with the secondary 'everyman' characters - Bernie the newsvendor, Bernie the Tales of the Black Freighter comic reading kid, the two 'tecs working the Blake case, even the hustler hawking the hot Rolexes on the street corner...

These are the characters that were specifically designed for us as readers to primarily connect with, going about their everyday lives full of everyday personal hassles just like us, with no time to stop and worry about the implications of events on the world stage or the relative failures of their/our geopolitical leaders... failures that ultimately WILL affect us all and our families. It's just that in their case, they have to contend with the presence among them of a bunch of dysfunctional costumed vigilantes with 'issues' running about, a blue demi-god whose advent has shaped their entire world, and the impending reality of nuclear holocaust to boot.
It's the detailed death of these characters among the three million killed in NYC that drives home the sheer monstrous enormity of Veidt's plan and leaves us with the ultimate moral dilemma over his motives. It's the probable exclusion of these characters and their development, by and large, that will prove to be the single biggest failing of any movie adaptation of WATCHMEN when judged against the impact generated by the source material.

[Quirkafleeg]

"Great times. Whatever happened to them?"
"You quit."

[Jim_Campbell]

"It is not God that butchers the children, nor fate that feeds them to the dogs.

"It's us. Only us."[1]

Watchmen ... source of more quotable material than pretty much any comic book in the history of the medium.

"Do it? I'm not a Republic serial villian, Dan ... I did it twenty-five minutes ago."

Cheers!

Jim

[1] All from memory ... again: apologies for any errors, but I'm sure the sense is right!

[nick-is-at-home]

Must get that book,

its worth it, yeah?

[House of Usher]

It's worth it, but you have to remember it was written in 1986. A bit like watching All The President's Men (1976) and having to remind yourself that the Watergate scandal was A Big Deal.

The fact that Watchmen is a creature of its time (and in comics it was the defining event of its time) in no way detracts from its brilliant storytelling, mind-boggling detail and sheer entertainment value.

I wouldn't feel the Cold War paranoia and sense of impending doom upon reading it in 2006 the way I did in 1987, but I suppose if I was at all worried about North Korea's nuclear programme or Islamic terrorism I might get that sort of a frisson.

You'll never read a better comic book.

[W. R. Logan]

Or if you have a few spare quid get the Absolute edition.

Link: Absolute Watchmen

[Jim_Campbell]

"its worth it, yeah?"

I nearly failed my A-levels thanks to Watchmen. On a monthly schedule, it should have finished in April ... but it slipped badly on the last three issues, with the final issue coming out smack in the middle of my exams.

I was making a special trip into town every third day to see if #12 was out yet.

If I'm honest, I think that Dark Knight has aged better, but Miller was concerned with the mythic aspects of superheros with DK, where Moore was interested in social ones. That will always make Watchmen a product of its time.

Doesn't mean Watchmen isn't worth reading, though. It's one of those things -- if you've not read it before, you'll sit there and your jaw will drop at all the post-Watchmen comics you've read that have stolen from it or imitated it, but never with the power of the original.

Cheers!

Jim

[Concrete Block 15]

The Absolute edition IS the definitive publication of WATCHMEN to see print... but yes, it IS pricey and you DO need a bloody sturdy bookcase to keep it in!

Twenty years later, WATCHMEN remains THE singlemost greatest achievement in sequential art storytelling to date... the ULTIMATE comic book, fusing the written word and the illustrative composition together like nothing else before or since. Many have tried, some have even come close... but none have succeeded quite like WATCHMEN. It's the only comic to win the coveted Hugo Award, it made TIME magazine's 'Top 100 Novels Since 1923' list, they teach the damn thing on university courses... and that it's the brainchild of three of 2000AD's illustrious alumini makes it all the Moore satisfying. Makes yer proud to be British, so it does!

Reading it back in the day in its original 12 issue serialised form was an entirely different animal... but I would urge anyone to get hold of the TPB (for the authentic WATCHMEN experience, try reading a chapter a month - just leave a gap of two months a couple o' times since, due to delays in its original run, it took a full 14 months to wade through!)

Admittedly, some may find its Cold War setting a little dated now (are we really living in the same Climate of Fear as we did in the Eighties?), but ultimately WATCHMEN is about what it means to be human - I would hope that it has lost none of its power to make you think as a result.

Enjoy.

[JOE SOAP]

>It's worth it, but you have to remember it was written in 1986. A bit like watching All The President's Men (1976) and having to remind yourself that the Watergate scandal was A Big Deal.

I think we are more in danger of nuclear annihilation now than ever so Watchmen is still pretty relevant. A lot of the paranoia back then was hyped by the Reagan admin about the threat of the USSR.

There may be less false hype these days when the US are talking  about "limited/downsized nuclear weapons" being deployed in the Middle East.

[House of Usher]

Yeah, but let's face it, we've had a good innings. The arms race of the 1980s was the culmination of 40 years of east-west tension over who would start world war three first. After the fall of the Berlin Wall we all breathed a sigh of relief and an entire generation has grown up not having to worry about mushroom clouds, fallout, radiation poisoning and nuclear winter. Most of them probably haven't even seen Threads, When the Wind Blows, or the episode of Only Fools and Horses where Del buys a ton of scrap lead and it turns out to be a nuclear fallout shelter.

It's a different world we're living in now. If Armageddon happened tomorrow, most people would be surprised. In 1983, we were actually expecting it.

[GeorgeBernardShaw]

Possible Watchmen spoilers


























...I don't have a dilemma over Veidt's motives because his plan is an extremely foolish one. The possibility of nuclear annihilation didn't force nations to cooperate and be rational and it was naive of Veidt to expect that a well-faked alien invasion would make people more sensible than they usually are.  For me, Veidt's plan casts severe doubts on his alleged genius status, his ability to genetically engineer strange looking leopards and make money notwithstanding.

Still, it is a work of genius. I identified most closely with Dan Drieberg