Watchmen

Watchmen by Alan Moore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

With the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation, the Comedian is found dead and the super heroes that knew him go looking for the killer. They might not like what secrets they unearth...

I first read this when I was around 20 and was blown away. Now, untold decades later, I decided to finally give it a reread. It held up.

On the surface, Watchmen is a murder mystery and it works fine on that level. Rorschach, the view point character, enlists Nite Owl, his old partner, and they shake the tree and see what falls out, which happens to be something much more than a murder. Beneath the surface, it's an examination of super heroes: what makes them put on costumes and fight crime, why would they waste their time on petty crimes when they could do something greater, and would a godlike being really care about humanity's day to day affairs. On that level, I think it goes above and beyond.

Dave Gibbons' art is somewhat understated and the subdued color palette makes it more so but I think both lend to the story's mood. The super heroes in this world have gone to seed and the sun rarely shines anymore. Everyone is pretty much running out the clock until nuclear armageddon. All that being said, the man knows his way around a nine panel grid. His use of perspective is excellent and he knows what to focus on. The pacing in Watchmen is masterful. Twelve issues was the perfect length for the tale, no padding, no rushing.

The characters departed quite a bit from their Charlton roots. It was a blessing in disguise that Alan Moore couldn't use the Charlton characters and had to go with analogues. He was able to take them much farther. The story was believable and the dark tone served the story. It wasn't dark just to be dark like a lot of books that came later. Even though this wasn't my first trip through the meat grinder, I felt the suspense building as I went. The last three installments flew by and part of me hoped it would end differently this time. Once in a while, it's good to be reminded that before Alan Moore hated everything about comics, he was actually pretty good at writing them.

Now I'm not going to pretend I didn't have any problems with this. I actually think the threat in the end of the movie made more logical sense that how it went down here. I'm also not sure how necessary some of the metafictional extras were, though I did like the Black Freighter sequences more this time around.

Gene Wolfe once said “My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.” That definitely applies to Watchmen. While it gets a lot of grief for the dark turn comics took in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Watchmen stands the test of time and remains one of the best. Five out of five stars.


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