Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
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Click to Buy Warning, this review will contain spoilers.
Trade Paperback: 978-0-930289-23-2, $19.99
Let’s get right to the point with this one; I just didn’t connect with this story. I found it slow, with more than half the book being world set up and a series of convoluted flashbacks. I found none of the characters sympathetic, save for Jon (and possibly Night Owl), and in fact greatly disliked many of them. I had to wonder why the whole book was spawned off the death of The Comedian, who was a rather atrocious person, and centered on Rorschach whom I strongly suspect is related to Jesse Custer.
Furthermore, I found all the stories within stories (newspaper clippings, book excerpts, the overlapping comic-within-a-comic etc.) quite distracting and mood breaking. And I admit I had a real problem with the constant reminder of the world’s prejudice and concern with Jon, spun from the fact that no other supernatural creatures existed at all and all the “masked adventurers” were merely human, when the entire climax of the story is dependent on psychics (who didn’t exist up until that point in the story.)
I also found a lot of little gripes, like Veidt’s superiority complex (specifically the idea that even though he was highly educated and raised quite privileged that by giving all his inheritance money away he somehow started his adult life on an even playing field as the rest of us), the original Silk Specter’s confusion about her near rape (okay, I’ll be honest, next to the Comedian I hated this character the most) and the second generation Silk Specter’s complete forgiveness of her mother’s constant manipulations and disapproval. While the tension of a nuclear war added to the over all world building and tension Veidt’s political and environmental psychobabble felt clichéd and, in the end, the story was not at all about politics, human evil or environmentalism, but instead was about what it means to be God and what it costs to play God.
So, all the bad stuff aside, I can see why people have been draw to this story. The sheer unlikeability and humanity of the characters is a draw (and if you’ve read my essay on Superhero Psychology you’ll know that I am draw to very flawed, very human heroes who fight to become something more). The world feel, which I would argue could have been sacrificed for more character building of the Watchmen, however I admit something would have been lost, is full and unique, stark and trying (but failing) to be beautiful. There are some striking images, but far less than in modern comics, and none as impacting as the smiley button with a drop of blood that graces the cover.
And finally I have to give the book props because it was revolutionary when it came out and it’s highly likely that part of my failure to connect was because I’ve read a lot of comics likely influenced by Watchmen and am unfairly used to many of the storytelling tools used to make Watchmen stick out.
In the end, Watchmen is a piece of classic comic culture. It’s a genre-specific equivalent to reading Shakespeare or To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Even if you don’t enjoy it, it does help build a wider view of where the genre came from and how it’s evolved.
I didn’t like it either. And for a lot of the same reasons. The comic within a comic really annoyed me. But the excerpts from the book by Night Owl 1, and some of the newspaper clippings at the ed of each issue I felt added some depth to it. I thought that Rorschach, of the characters, was the only one who kept his moral compass and continued to try to be a superhero. As utterly flawed as he was, he was the only one that stayed true to himself.
THe near rape of Silk Specter 1 was handled a bit better in the movie, but not by much. But even then I felt it was a forced plot line that really didn’t make sense but only to serve to convince Jon to help humanity. But there were other ways to handle that.
I really can see why everyone thinks it’s such a classic comic book, but as a story, it has too many fatal flaws to really make it great.
I’m having problems reconciling the fact that I liked the movie, but not the comic. Most of my complaints seemed smoothed out by what is essentially a derivative work. Is it the music and the pouty looks from the actors? Or is it the lack of comic-within-a-comic that took up so much space?
I guess i just felt at times like Moore got on his soapbox and forgot that he was supposed to be writing a story.
Myself, I feel that Watchmen, while flawed, was ahead of it’s time. The two things you touched on that really didn’t make sense to me were the psychics and the comic within a comic; everything else worked for me. The Comedian / SS1 rape thing to me was just Moore’s way of making the characters messed up. All the characters in Watchmen, except for Nite Owl II, really, were incredibly flawed (and what did Nite Owl get for his troubles? Erectile dysfunction!).
On Brian Keene’s board I got into a conversation about Women in horror and one of my main points was that why should women feel like horror is for them when women in horror books are usually just things to be raped, abused and killed?
I got that same feel from Watchmen that the three main women, one was a lesbian that no one liked (Silhouette), one was made out like she really did want to have sex with Comedian, so the rape wasn’t entirely rape because she said yes later, and Silk Specter 2 seemed to either be hysterical or angry (thus whining/crying or screaming at someone).
To try to put it as clearly as possible, I didn’t connect or sympathize with any of the characters, and the women were among those I most disliked. So maybe they too were just flawed people and that’s the core of my disconnect with Watchmen. But I felt like Moore spent so much time on a soapbox and trying to convince the reader that the politics and world view could/will happen, which means he’s trying to convince us that this is a legitimate world view, which means he’s telling us that all men are Nite Owl, Rorschach or The Comedian, and all women are lesbians (Silhouette), whores (Silk Specter 1) or completely imbalanced (Silk Specter 2).
Does that make any sense?