You should definitely read it. But you’re probably going to be disappointed.
You have to remember that Watchmen came out twenty years ago. At the time, it was huge and made a major impact on comics. But the result of this is that anyone who’s been reading comic books in the last twenty years has already been reading the kind of themes that Moore introduced in Watchmen.
The other thing is that the background of the book is the Cold War. Nowadays, the Soviet Union is about as scary as Nazi Germany; sure they were bad back then but it’s just history now.
So read Watchmen but don’t expect anything more than a well-done comic book series.
I’m sorry, but I think this is sort of like saying “Go ahead and read Tolkien, but don’t expect anything more than a well-done fantasy epic.” Both were ground-breaking in their time, and both remain classics of their respective genres. To demote them to just another well-done example of their genre is to ignore their history. The fact that teenagers today read Jordan, Goodkind and Brooks first, then go on to read Tolkien and wonder why this guy is considered so great when he just does what everyone else has done doesn’t take away from Tolkien. It just plays up the ignorance of the reader.
But context does matter. I can’t watch a movie like Mrs Minever or 48th Parallel the same way a contemporary viewer could. They were still in the midst of WWII when they watched these movies and had no way of knowing if Britain was going to win the war. By the same token, a modern reader doesn’t experience cold war inspired works like Watchmen the same way they were experienced at the time.
Nor will the more directly comic book inspired themes be seen the same. Idea like the psychological problems that would inspire someone to dress up in spandex and fight crime were virtually virgin territory when Moore wrote about them. But any current comic book reader will have come across them numerous times.
A person reading Watchmen in 2004 is not going to have the same experience a reader in 2004 will have. The 2004 reader will not be able to think “I’ve never read anything like this before” or “this relates to my own world”. Subtract this and what you have left is, as I said, a well done comic book series. This is not to denigrate Watchmen but just to observe that nobody can step in the same river twice.
Anyway, I agree with Nemo. Watchmen is, IMO, the comic book version of CITIZEN KANE - it’s a great textbook on how to do things, but the emotional impact of the story is lost in its own cleverness and reflexivity. It also inexplicably chooses to end with a terribly hackneyed plot that leave a number of good-ideas-but-why-didn’t-the-editor-tell-him-no things hanging.
I think the formal experiments revisited in FROM HELL worked much better as a story.
That said, I felt Rorscach’s fate was exceedingly well done. Certainly, the various endings of book were also nicely handled.
I think you’re selling “Watchmen” a little bit short: there’s more to it than the “what motivates a superhero” theme that’s been aped so much since or the cold war tensions. There’s also a morality play at work, and that part, I think, is timeless. Several of the “freaky” characters have very specific philosophies on morality and the nature of good and evil which inform their actions and decisions throughout the story: the Comedian’s utterly selfish amorality or Rorschach’s uncompromising moral absolutism, for example. Watching those philosophies compete with one another, and watching them affect the “normal” characters who lack such a rigid philosophy (e.g. the psychiatrist) is fascinating.
It’s worth noting that, whn it came out, people were very disappointed with the ending. It’s grown on me, I realize it couldn’t have ended any other way, but it felt like Moore had written himself into a corner and didn’t know how to get out of it.
I agree with Little Nemo to an extent. I was born right around the time that Watchmen came out, so I definitely didn’t get the full impact of it the first time I read it back in high school. I had to learn some more about the Cold War era to fully appreciate it (and I’m sure I’m nowhere near a full appreciation of it even after having read it a zillion times).
That said, the book still has a ton going for it. Dave Gibbons’ artwork is absolutely brilliant.
IIRC, at the time, Moore claimed the title was inspired by the text of a speech JFK was supposed to give on November 23, 1963–something about the non-communist nations being the “Watchmen of Liberty” or somesuch.
Or maybe I’m misremembering this…
I would really like to know where these newer comics allegedly superior to Watchmen are! I would certainly like to check them out, provided it’s not pretty-good-but-not-all-that-great stuff like Sandman.
And it is very rare, in my opinion, that newer = better.
As for the last panels of Watchmen, what’s not to like? Sure, it’s a variation of the classic open ending a la “lady or the tiger”, but unless you demand full closure from every story, why would you find this unsatisfactory?
Well, I think Watchmen still reigns supreme in the complexity category (which is what it’s most often hailed for), but for pure entertainment, it’s hard to beat Preacher.
There’s a panel during the anti-superhero riots where a protestor is spraypainting “Who will watch the Watchmen?” on a wall. Either Rorschach or the Comedian then breaks his arm or beats him in some fashion. Clearly from the “Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes” quote.
BTW, I haven’t read it since about 1988, and I can still remember this panel. It’s that good and compelling. I think I’ll have to search the attic for it and read it again.
That jogged my memory some. I think it was in one of the chapter-ending appendices, the one with the interview with Ozymandias, who claims that the speech that JFK was going to give on the day he was killed had a part something like “We are the watchmen on the walls of world freedom.”
Great timing: a little after midnight last night, I finished reading Watchmen, which I’d purchased late Wednesday night. It’s a gripping story, and I loved it.
While I’m sure it would’ve had extra resonance had I read it before the fall of the Berlin Wall, I could appreciate the Cold War stuff for its historical value.
IIRC in Moore’s Top Ten there’s some background graffiti in one panel reading “Who watches the Simpsons?”
On the subject of other comics/graphic novels of old, am I the only one who remembers Bill Sienkiewicz’s Stray Toasters? I hear it’s coming to the big screen (although the same has been said for umpteen other comics, Watchmen included).
Holy chocolate starfish, Batman! Can someone box Bryan Ekers’ massive, three-paragraph spoiler? If I had read that before reading Watchmen, I know I would have been upset to learn so many of the key twists.
Moderator speaks: Jurph, I have done so, but not because of your post. I did it because someoen else hit the “Report this Post” button (the little exclamation point [ ! ] in the upper right corner.) Reporting a post will call the attention of the Moderators to it. Posting a call for a the attention of the Moderator, like you did, will only work IF a moderator happens to read the thread.
So, I don’t mean to pick on you, but I want to use your post as an instructive example for everyone of how to be INeffective. The two others who hit REPORT THIS POST are the ones who brought me here to block the spoilers and amend the title.
Critically acclaimed, yes. People who are not critics and thus know more than what is in front of their faces will at the very least remmeber that V For Vendetta and High Society preceded it, and some of them will also give nods to Squadron Supreme.
Don’t forget A Contract With God! Nobody who knows anything about comics considers Watchman the first serious, adult comic, but it was the first in widespread circulation, published by one of the Big Two. (Of course, it’s tough to pass off even the Silver Age Spider-Man as pablum – although clearly pitched to kids, it doesn’t exactly shy away from tragedy.)
What made Watchmen unique was the way it was continually coming back on itself.
Comics are the one medium where it is easy to go back and see what you may have missed before. Moore took advantage of that by having small details in early issues mean more in later ones. (It’s east to miss Rorschach pocketing sugar cubes in an early issue, but they keep coming back throughout the series).
Although I do think, reading it in one shot does diminish the experience a little. When I first read it, every month there was speculation, analysis and arguments over the issue. It was as much fun as actually reading it.
by the way
I was the first one in my circle of friends to figure out Ozymandias was behind it!
