Watchmen
Written by: Alan Moore
Art by: Dave Gibbons
Publisher: DC Comics (US), Titan Books (UK)
First published: 1987
Originally published as: Watchmen 1-12
Story:
Art:
Overall:
It may seem hard to imagine today, but back in 1985, nobody was particularly familiar with the idea of superheroes with human emotions, psychological problems, or anything other than square jaws and simple morals. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen helped change all that. It’s a story about ordinary people who, by design or accident, decide to wear costumes and fight crime. The resulting alternate future turns the superhero genre on its head, questioning the validity of caped crusaders in a realistic world spanning 50 years.
Watchmen is an extraordinary piece of work. It is designed to be read at least twice - there’s no way you could get the most out of this in one reading, as so much is built up before we have a chance of noticing it. On first read, you may find yourself smacked in the face by an awesome ending. Second time through, you’ll wonder how you could have missed all those clues.
Every cut in the action is linked to the next scene, often with overlapping dialogue and meaning. Symbols, from pyramids to the famously defaced smiley, pervade the artwork, providing visual references to the story’s themes. Images as simple and everyday as falling objects are laden with depths of meaning by a process of association and repetition, so that reading the book and piecing everything together is a blatant intellectual challenge to the reader. Pulling together the strands of the book as you read through is as satisfying as completing the last clue in a crossword or placing the final piece in a jigsaw puzzle.
The book is aimed at people who are familiar with the superhero genre, as there’s a lot of stuff in here that those with little knowledge of the medium will be forced to ignore. Because the book deconstructs the genre, a working knowledge of it is essential. This means it isn’t particularly accessible to the beginner and, despite its deserved classic status, it would not be an easy starter for someone unused to the form.
Other titles by Alan Moore:
- Watchmen
- League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The: Volume 1
- League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The: Volume 2
- DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore
- V for Vendetta
- Albion
- Alan Moore: Wild Worlds
- Alan Moore's Complete WildC.A.T.S
- Batman: The Killing Joke
- From Hell
- Smax
- Spawn: Dark Discoveries/Spawn: Evolution
- Across the Universe: The DC Universe Stories of Alan Moore
- Promethea Book 1
- Promethea Book 2
- Swamp Thing 1: Saga of the Swamp Thing
- Swamp Thing 2: Love and Death
- Swamp Thing 3: The Curse
- Swamp Thing 4: A Murder of Crows
- Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics, The
- Complete Alan Moore's Future Shocks, The
Tags: First published/1987 • Rating/Story/5 stars • Rating/Overall/5 stars • Rating/Art/5 stars • Buying • Classic • Publisher/DC Comics • Artist/Gibbons, Dave • Writer/Moore, Alan • Review • Genre/Science fiction • Genre/Superhero • Publisher/Titan Books
Links:
FEEDS
[...] What’s left is an elegant thriller, showing perfectly that superhero comics don’t have to be a series of epic battles in order to be any good. It’s not exactly up there with Watchmen but it’s a pleasant enough twist on the genre to make interesting reading. [...]
[...] Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons does a fair job of scripting the piece but it’s necessarily littered with references to planets, races and other people that can be difficult to keep up with. The action is fierce though, and as long as you’re prepared to keep solid mental notes of who’s fighting for who, the epic nature of the piece shouldn’t disappoint. [...]
[...] over the years, but Frank Miller’s work in the 80s, rivalled Alan Moore’s work on Watchmen. Miller took characters all too familiar to his readers and, while maintaining their key [...]
[...] and tell me to read some ‘proper literature’…….I tell them to go and read The Watchmen and come back and tell me that it is not one of the finest pieces of literate pop fiction ever [...]
[...] Austin Grossman’s debut novel aims to humanise the superhero, in the footsteps of Watchmen and its [...]
[...] Watchmen: Action and Inaction (Good and Evil) Movie? Annotation? [...]
[...] on some of these characters has been out of print because it clearly doesn’t rank alongside Watchmen, V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in the quality stakes, fans should still [...]
[...] 2000AD to his big break in American comics with Swamp Thing, which in turn lead on to greats like Watchmen, and these stories show the movement quite [...]
[...] comics - considering this was originally published in the late 80s, alongside serious series like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, this lighter, funnier, less po-faced League must have been something [...]
[...] Here’s another book that falls into our “it’s not a comic but it’s about comics” category. In fact, it’s about the comic that many people regard to be one of the outstanding examples of its kind, certainly of superhero comics: Watchmen. [...]
[...] of Alan Moore and you’ll probably think of Watchmen, V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But before these literary heavyweights [...]