EDIT: next discussion in two weeks! Finish the book!
We've hit the halfway point. 6 out of 12 issues or whatever you call 'em.
Thoughts? I enjoyed this thing wholeheartedly, especially the intricacy of the flashback sequences, the way the art ties into the words, the quotability. Also, one of my favorite literary tropes is stuff set in the future but with changes to the past that you only gradually find out.
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Another thing that might not be apparent to younger readers - when Watchmen came out, it looked very old-school in its layout. At that time, comics were really starting to get flashy with their artwork (because personal computers I reckon). Watchmen is strict nine-panel and very old-fashioned in its layout of the comic sections. Not sure why they did that but visually it made Watchmen stand out, and look a bit dated even when it was first published.
After sealing the deal, the two artists spent a day at Gibbons' house sketching costumes, brainstorming details about their alternative U.S., and discussing influences, including comic-book creators Will Eisner (The Spirit) and Steve Ditko (Spider-Man). Their surprising touchstone: MAD magazine's famous 1953 skewering of Superman, ''Superduperman.'' ''We wanted to take Superduperman 180 degrees — dramatic, instead of comedic,'' says Moore, who declares Harvey Kurtzman's MAD the ''best comic ever!'' Many choices for Watchmen deviated from the comics norm, like using moodier, secondary colors and dividing the page into a claustrophobic nine-panel grid instead of a few panels of varying size.
NEIL GAIMAN
My very small part in Watchmen is that, every now and then, Alan would phone me: ''Neil, you're an educated man. Where does it say...?'' He would need a quote from the Bible, or an essay about owls. I was his occasional research assistant.
Neat.
I'm not a comic expert and didn't notice the layout, but I suspected the visual style was deliberately imitating the older superhero comics they were skewering. It was a nice touch. Everything about what you're holding suggests you're going to get a traditional superhero comic — the name, the style, the subject, the glimpses you might get of costumed adventurers, but of course that's before you start reading and figure it out.
I don't like Rorschach. There, I said it. I know he's the flagship character and everyone's favorite, and I'm not trying to be a purposeful contrarian, I just don't like the guy. The thing that bothers me most is that because he's so black and white (heh), he eventually has to create gaps in his analysis so that he doesn't break his philosophical views. The fact that he calls the Comedian's attempted rape of Silk Spectre a "moral lapse" is deplorable to me. We wouldn't get along, I guess is what I'm saying.
You're not supposed to. He's a psychopath. You're supposed to empathize with his perspective, but not like him. Bear in mind - Alan Moore hates superheroes. He was given a cadre of them to try and reinvigorate, and he ended up upending the entire genre. He's as much as said that superheroes are a projection of American fascism. Each and every superhero in Watchmen is deeply flawed - the more power, the greater the flaw.
He also did America's Best Comics, and his salvaging of some Rob Liefeld stuff before that, going out of his way to do a less cynical take on superheroes, because he didn't like the influence Watchmen had on the genre. I've never seen him say he hated superheros, though it wouldn't surprise me if he did, but he was probably overstating his opinion a bit. He also says things like this after all.
The Guardian, January 2014 The Guardian, December 2013 He's said other stuff for 30 years, but it's all been buried of late because of the gonzo shit he's said lately."To my mind, this embracing of what were unambiguously children's characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence," he wrote to Ó Méalóid. "It looks to me very much like a significant section of the public, having given up on attempting to understand the reality they are actually living in, have instead reasoned that they might at least be able to comprehend the sprawling, meaningless, but at-least-still-finite 'universes' presented by DC or Marvel Comics. I would also observe that it is, potentially, culturally catastrophic to have the ephemera of a previous century squatting possessively on the cultural stage and refusing to allow this surely unprecedented era to develop a culture of its own, relevant and sufficient to its times."
“I haven’t read any superhero comics since I finished with ‘Watchmen.’ I hate superheroes,” Moore told the Guardian in an interview published late last week. “I think they’re abominations. They don’t mean what they used to mean. They were originally in the hands of writers who would actively expand the imagination of their nine- to 13-year-old audience. That was completely what they were meant to do and they were doing it excellently. These days, superhero comics think the audience is certainly not nine to 13, it’s nothing to do with them. It’s an audience largely of 30-, 40-, 50-, 60-year old men, usually men.”
I am still reading Swamp Thing (onto book 3!) and what strikes me about it is that it is overwhelmingly sad more than anything else. Although I suppose you could argue ST is not a typical superhero perhaps? He is almost like Captain Planet - but a million times cooler. Do you relate to Alan Moore, kb?
Swamp Thing is now on my to-read list. Should I begin with "Saga of the Swamp Thing" ? Or do I need to go further back?
What kb said. I think you might eventually decide to read the earlier stuff if you really like Swamp Thing (and Moore's is quality) but the earlier stuff sounds a bit dicier in terms of story quality and the continuity, of course, gets all fucked up.
He does claim to have met John Constantine.
Friends who are producing a new theatrical version of Robert Anton Wilson's 'Cosmic Trigger' just conducted an interview with Moore where he talks art, magick and his decision to become a magician. I get to edit. I'll link the results when they can be made public.
Ah yes, it's been long enough for them to have revived the play this year in London. Will add a link to the video shortly.
I don't think you are supposed to even empathize with his perspective.
I think he's there to counter and contrast with our distaste at Dan's wishy-washiness. He's the vigilante that Dan didn't have the stomach to become. R is still a masked adventurer, and hasn't sold out, but he's had to become a monster to do it.
I think the point is that the only guy who we could possibly want to like is so totally unlikeable. I don't think "flagship character" means we should like him, and I don't know that he's everyone's favorite. We're not there just yet, but it becomes evident later that he's the only one we could possibly side with, and he's fucking mental. So what does that make us? Thick? Insane? Simplistic? Someone is definitely accusing us of being wrong in our thinking.
One of the trickiest things to learn in writing is Point of View. The more POVs you have, the more story you get to tell... but the fewer POVs you have, the more pure and relatable your tale. Watchmen has shit tons of POV. Without spoiling too much for the next couple weeks, it's worth noting who has POV and who doesn't. That said, each character is a protagonist of their own story, really. Some are more relatable than others. Nite Owl, if anything, is the story's access character - he was a little boy that loved superheroes so he became one and it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Laurie had no choice but to become a superhero and she hates it through and through. I'd say she has just as much POV as Dan does. More than Rorschach.
I would like to know if anyone noticed that at one point, Laurie wears the same earrings that Jon gave to Jenny Slater. Jenny is pictured wearing them several times; notably, she wears them on page 11 of Chapter II, "Absent Friends." Laurie is also pictured wearing these earrings. I believe also multiple times, but specifically I can point to page 21 of Chapter IV. ("Watchmaker.") - What do you think this say about Jon, Janey, and Laurie? - I don't like Jon. I know below eightbitsamurai and kleinbl00 talk about Rorsarch and characters they don't like but feel maybe they are supposed to like. I on the other hand feel I am supposed to be more positively inclined towards Jon and I am less. - On the other hand I love the character of the Comedian (although his actions are deplorable; there is something about him being unrepentantly himself, genuine, and "not sold out" to the end that I admire -YES I KNOW HE'S A TERRIBLE MAN) and I also am fond of Rorsarch. I am always sad when spoilers spoilers spoilers I am sad, though, that Jon's dad made him quit the watch-working way of business. I have been reading slowly to pick up on minute details. Also - I'll have to go out and take a picture in a bit - but I have some memorabilia to show you guys. It's just a small thing but I like it.
Oh, absolutely. They make it pretty obvious that Laurie is filling a slot, not actually mattering in John's life. "Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Pregnant woman. Gunned her down. BANG. And you know what? You watched me. You coulda changed the gun into steam or the bullets into mercury or the bottle into snowflakes! You coulda teleported either of us to goddamn Australia... but you didn't lift a finger! You really don't give a damn about human beings. I've watched you. You never cared about Whatsername, Janey Slater, even before you ditched her. Soon you won't be interested in Sally Jupiter's little gal, either." - Comedian, "Absent Friends (II)", pp. 15 That, right there, is Alan Moore grabbing the audience and shaking it by the lapels and saying SUPERMAN IS BAD, ASSHOLES. When your author puts the subtext in the text, he's so adamant that you get the message he's willing to suffer ridicule to get it. When The Comedian says this, he and Doc Manhattan have just finished napalming rice paddies. Doc Manhattan is the proximate cause for the United States prevailing in an unpopular, unjust war widely accepted at the time as a moral and geopolitical failure. Notably, Moore has the Soviets invade Afghanistan the very day that Doc Manhattan bails for Points Unknown - in the grand scheme of things, the geopolitical impact of Doc Manhattan is nil other than the stick. Doctor Manhattan isn't John Osterman - he's the ghost of John, a superhuman intelligence playing at being the memory of a man killed too soon through a needless nuclear accident (no metaphor there). He's amoral and aloof - but he still runs off with a teenager. Doctor Manhattan is a fickle god. Which is pretty much the majority opinion on Superman, by the way - the dude has far too many powers to actually be interesting. His morality is Manichean. Anyone with that power would end up essentially being an extension of foreign policy if he picked sides... or a malevolent God to whoever he wasn't favoring at the time. That's another allusion Moore is making: absolute power corrupts absolutely.I would like to know if anyone noticed that at one point, Laurie wears the same earrings that Jon gave to Jenny Slater. Jenny is pictured wearing them several times; notably, she wears them on page 11 of Chapter II, "Absent Friends."
- I don't like Jon. I know below eightbitsamurai and kleinbl00 talk about Rorsarch and characters they don't like but feel maybe they are supposed to like. I on the other hand feel I am supposed to be more positively inclined towards Jon and I am less.
Worth saying here, that Vietnam scene was a bit more powerful, back when the wounds that war left on America were still fresh. The Comedian talks about it himself - "I mean, if we'd lost this war ... I dunno. I think it might have driven us a little crazy, y'know? As a country?". That's one of the lines that hit me like a hammer on the first read, years ago.
The irony is that it's driven him a little crazy, that we won (with Jon's help).
OH GENTLE READERS POSSIBLE SPOILERS; DARE NOT VENTURE HERE Laurie filling a slot - and/or Laurie & Janey just being interchangeable objects, which then opens up a nice presentation into probably how Jon feels about all humans all the time, right? Which would make sense for why he decided to save the earth - one human equals all humans, and so on (although to be honest it seems like it's on a whim and not really because of Laurie at all, just "oh you're so special i'm going to make this seem like it's about you"). Is this spoilers? Am I getting ahead of myself here? I don't know where we were supposed to stop. I could keep drawing Swamp Thing parallels here, except I think everyone else would get bored with me. The Swamp Thing isn't Alec Holland either and that's something he seems to grapple with pretty constantly - while on the meantime, it doesn't seem to bother Jon at all that Jon is no longer human/who he used to be. I mean, (Swamp Thing Spoilers) ST went and dug up the skeleton of his old body and gave it a burial, as opposed to Jon who didn't have a body left behind and just reconstructed one out of air and his powerfulpowerful consciousness. I have always thought Superman was just plain old boring because he is just so vanilla plain-jane good, but I have never read the comics on him himself, just seen the videos and live-action comics and suchlike.Doctor Manhattan isn't John Osterman
I've got jasmine on my deck. It was a gift to my wife. It's a pain in the ass to keep alive, but I do it because I'm fond of the jasmine. Does not mean I relate to the jasmine. Doctor Manhattan has a human habit. He's clearly not one of us, though. Given the choice between helping humans or hurting humans he'll help because he's not malevolent... but he's got no skin in the game. That's one of the allusions Moore and Gibbons are making about power - the more of it you have, the less the little people matter to you. It's something Moore didn't feel with Swamp Thing. Swamp Thing is very much not omnipotent. As super powers go, he's basically a more durable version of Bigfoot. He's also barely interested in protecting humans - he mostly cares about nature. Moore makes a point with Swamp Thing that if Swamp Thing weren't there, "bad things would happen" but bad things happen anyway. With Doctor Manhattan not there, the world teeters towards armageddon.
I think Doctor Manhattan, in some ways, represents nuclear weaponry. A new thing in the world, with more power than we really know what to do with.
I've always wondered why Jon chose to make his body so un-human - surely he could have done it differently if he wished? Maybe just a literary device.
In some ways, yes. In other ways, no. They definitely talk about having Dr. Manhattan the same way we talked about having "The Bomb" prior to 1949. However, there's no "balance of power" involved in Dr. Manhattan to shape history from 1949 until 1986, and most of the World's history was shaped by that. With only one Dr. Manhattan, he means a lot more than nuclear weaponry. I don't think Dr. Manhattan chose to make his body un-human - after all, he spent months painstakingly reassembling it from the aether. I think he got "close enough" and stopped. Dr. Manhattan, after all, drifts further and further away from humanity. "Brilliant blue skin and no pupils in his eyes" is only foreshadowing.
In some ways quite explicitly! I think ... why would he make it human? He's not human anymore and doesn't attach any special significance to the word human. If anything I think the fact that his body is still recognizably that of man is a literary device that Moore needed to have him interacting with other people semi-normally.I've always wondered why Jon chose to make his body so un-human - surely he could have done it differently if he wished? Maybe just a literary device.
I've read it two weeks ago in one relentless reading rush. Intrigued, hooked, whatever you want to call it. I thought issue 4 did a tremendous job of showing the way Jon perceives time and space at the same time, followed by the amazing mirrored Issue 5. Only downside I have with the series is that I found the Pirate series a bit too verbose to properly follow and understand, but that might just be me.
The Black Freighter is an allegory that serves the dual purpose of putting you in a distracted state while the authors perform some sleight of hand while also parodying the verbose fashion in which epic tales boil down to "it was all a stupid mistake." You don't need to follow the Black Freighter. It's supposed to be over the top, empty, overly gory and vulgar and ultimately futile.
Phew. I quite liked it as a narrative device, both in creating a frame story that makes the main story seem more realistic and in its narrative parallels with the main arc. But they were always the parts I needed to read twice to understand what was actually happening. I wasn't sure if that was because it surpassed my English abilities or because it was meant to be that way.You don't need to follow the Black Freighter.
KB is right, you don't need to follow the Black Freighter - but I'll admit, it was only on this re-reading that I realised whose story the Black Freighter is meant to parallel (at least, I think I know). But further discussion of that realisation will have to wait for the full discussion. Or I could add a spoiler, to block it for those who haven't finished it yet. I think the Black Freighter parallels Adrian's story, especially the justifications of his monstrous actions; and the final futility in BF is much more obvious than in the primary narrative. Adrian only realises he is damned when Jon says "nothing ever ends".
I found that I wanted to read the black freighter separately. Like I wanted to close Watchmen and just read the morbid tales of pirates, especially after readig the fake description at the end of the issue.
I mainly just wanted to focus on that and read it and figure out what it was going/ trying to say.
I read Watchmen for the third time, a couple of weeks ago. I think it may be the first novel I've ever read thrice. First time was in the late 80's; must have been shortly after it came out. Someone loaned me "The Dark Knight Returns" and "Watchmen". Blown away, by both, but I haven't re-read DKR. Maybe I should. Re-read Watchmen just before the movie came out. The movie is worth seeing, but only after you've read it, if possible.
It was a joy to read, each time. Just a wonderful piece of work.
Theodore Sturgeon said something like "good science fiction is good fiction". A good graphic novel is a good novel.
DKR is excellent in comparison to superhero comics that came before; Watchmen is just excellent. DKR is kind of "Batman as Clint Eastwood" and it works on that level. Watchmen is kind of "Superheroes as extensions of the Id" and it works on many levels.
I've read it like, six times. I ain't gonna kick things off. I will say that it isn't set in the future, it's set in an alternative present. Alan Moore wanted to take a swipe at Reagan but didn't want that to drown out his message. So he reached back through history, supposed that the US Government would use Doctor Manhattan to execute foreign policy in Vietnam, and that Nixon would be power-hungry enough to push through an amendment that would have him never leaving office. Watchmen is set in an alternative 1986 present in which geopolitic has been asymmetrical since Kennedy. Considering Moore's fundamental distrust of the United States, it allowed him to play up the paranoia and pessimism to alarmist levels. Watchmen came out in September 1986. This came out in November. Keep it in mind.
Also remember, in 1986, there were still two superpowers; and Russia was still presented to the American public as a nearly-equal adversary. That notion was completely gone within a decade. Fears of mutually-assured-destruction were still very real and present in 1986, as in the book.
That video was masterful, and you couldn't pick a better example of contemporary art. Reading Watchmen actually brought back some things from the time to me. The thing I like most about the book is the chaos. We synthesize it differently now. IMO the treatment of the chaos in Watchmen makes it a period piece. My brother and I still quote: I, gotta, tell ya.
thenewgreen please observe; is the speed of hubski going up?
Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers: This is an interesting article about how Terry Gilliam would have handled the film ending: