I'd been meaning to read this graphic novel for years, but I wasn't smart enough to borrow it while it was in easy reach. Now that the movie is in the making though, I decided to stop stalling. Luckily the Baltimore County Library system has very good inter-branch loan service. (I'd never thought of libraries as a place to get graphic novels, but it turns out that half the books I'm checking out these days are comics)
Overview
In a world where masked vigilantes and avengers are fairly common, but neither super nor heroes, what happens when a true superhuman appears? That's the basic premise of the novel, following the careers of masked crusaders and the creation of a superhuman semi-deity whose very existence threatens to throw the world into chaos. There's also a lot of psychological analysis, because normal people who are willing to dress up in costumes and wander around getting into fights have got to be interesting psych cases of some kind. You spend half the novel trying to figure out what the heck has been going on for the past 50 years because it starts mid-story and offers bits and pieces as it goes along. And don't let the term 'graphic novel' lure you into thinking this is a quick read. The comic is extremely text-intensive, and there's full-text sections sandwiched in every now and then. There's good reason why it's the only graphic novel to appear on one of Time Magazine's lists of "the 100 best English-language novels".
(well, good reason for it to be credibly considered a novel and a work of literature, but I can't really agree with Time that it deserves to be considered in the top 100)
Recommended for: Comic book and superhero fans, or anyone impatient for the movie.
Parental Worries: Sex and violence, used in many unusually disturbing ways.
Ramblings (Spoiler Threat: Low)
My overriding association with the term 'watchmen' will always be the Discworld group, so I was assuming that the title Watchmen referred to the law and order, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes type of thing. Then I watched the movie trailer, and a couple of scenes had gears and other assorted machinery floating around. So I thought 'wait, maybe it's watch men, as in timekeeping'. In a fairly masterful sweep though, the story actually brings in almost every possible meaning of the word: the enforcers, the watchers, the watchmaker, and even the Watchmaker, in the origins-of-the-universe sense.
If you haven't noticed by now, I tend to favor happy endings, or at least endings where the heroes triumph and the world is saved, even if there's tragedy involved as well. But this ending is really weird: the heroes lose, the villian wins, and the world is . . .well, saved, but only for a given value of saved. This isn't as much of a spoiler as it sounds, 'cause it's sometimes hard to tell who's a villian and who's a hero.
Overall, I liked Watchmen, but nowhere near as much as I thought I would. It's one of those morally ambiguous, "we can't really change things because humans are just a rotten bunch" type of stories, but although I can recognize both good storytelling and a decent study in abnormal psychology, that doesn't mean I have to buy the worldview.
Overview
In a world where masked vigilantes and avengers are fairly common, but neither super nor heroes, what happens when a true superhuman appears? That's the basic premise of the novel, following the careers of masked crusaders and the creation of a superhuman semi-deity whose very existence threatens to throw the world into chaos. There's also a lot of psychological analysis, because normal people who are willing to dress up in costumes and wander around getting into fights have got to be interesting psych cases of some kind. You spend half the novel trying to figure out what the heck has been going on for the past 50 years because it starts mid-story and offers bits and pieces as it goes along. And don't let the term 'graphic novel' lure you into thinking this is a quick read. The comic is extremely text-intensive, and there's full-text sections sandwiched in every now and then. There's good reason why it's the only graphic novel to appear on one of Time Magazine's lists of "the 100 best English-language novels".
(well, good reason for it to be credibly considered a novel and a work of literature, but I can't really agree with Time that it deserves to be considered in the top 100)
Recommended for: Comic book and superhero fans, or anyone impatient for the movie.
Parental Worries: Sex and violence, used in many unusually disturbing ways.
Ramblings (Spoiler Threat: Low)
My overriding association with the term 'watchmen' will always be the Discworld group, so I was assuming that the title Watchmen referred to the law and order, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes type of thing. Then I watched the movie trailer, and a couple of scenes had gears and other assorted machinery floating around. So I thought 'wait, maybe it's watch men, as in timekeeping'. In a fairly masterful sweep though, the story actually brings in almost every possible meaning of the word: the enforcers, the watchers, the watchmaker, and even the Watchmaker, in the origins-of-the-universe sense.
If you haven't noticed by now, I tend to favor happy endings, or at least endings where the heroes triumph and the world is saved, even if there's tragedy involved as well. But this ending is really weird: the heroes lose, the villian wins, and the world is . . .well, saved, but only for a given value of saved. This isn't as much of a spoiler as it sounds, 'cause it's sometimes hard to tell who's a villian and who's a hero.
Overall, I liked Watchmen, but nowhere near as much as I thought I would. It's one of those morally ambiguous, "we can't really change things because humans are just a rotten bunch" type of stories, but although I can recognize both good storytelling and a decent study in abnormal psychology, that doesn't mean I have to buy the worldview.
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