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4.3 AVERAGE
4.3 AVERAGE
Moore easily stands as a creative genius with this work as proof.
finding a negative Watchmen review is surprisingly easy but finding a good one is impossible...so here goes...in the full context of Moore's early work and looking at it as a culmination of everything he did up to this point, i gotta say i think much, much less of it...gone is the benefit of the doubt i provided over and over and instead i feel like the lamp-shading of outdated comic tropes, endless attempts to evoke poetry through banal parallelisms, and ridiculously clunky prose is just enough cloaked in satire to appear profound...when really this is a piece that falls apart when evaluated beyond its pretensions toward mature ambiguity, i was actually right as a little dumbass teenager to claim Rorschach is the most identifiable character because Moore chooses to minimize his abhorrent beliefs as the book goes forward, to paint his outlook as a natural response to a world of unspeakable evil and cowardly neoliberals...he gets the hero's death and the book's final note of possibility...its obvious that despite his attempts at anonymity in voicing the characters Moore had the most fun with him, that he has a clear disdain toward all other characters, save one Edward Blake...
and that's where Moore's...questionable approach to rape in his art becomes entirely unsettling...he places the crux of the real heart of this world, the entire reason a god would regain faith in humanity in the...complicated nature of human relations after an unspeakable act of evil...
"rape is rape and there's no excuses for it, absolutely none, but......what if, just for a moment, maybe I really did want..."
the reality of Laurie as a bright spot of light out of an impossible situation is like, great on the surface...the idea that every person is a miracle of circumstance, etc...but like, her father is a rapist, a murderer, a black-hearted nihilist and it's not that asking us to find some empathy for such a person is an inherently bad artistic decision, this ask of the audience for impossible forgiveness characterizes some of the most challenging and rewarding art i've experienced...but i have to ask where Blake is posited as redeemable or even human, at what point his character invites empathy rather than condemnation...i begin to read the text as consistently apologetic toward his actions, bending over backwards to compare his individual action to a universal inaction, a passive evil...and find it not quite dismissable but certainly questionable enough to feel weightless
like, in the grander scheme of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? and Miracleman...this is nothing i haven't seen before, just wrapped in more structural respectability...novelistic signifiers of integrity...there's this sense that no matter where the book goes Moore deserves a hearing, he is a communist after all, this is all a takedown of the fascistic nature of superheroes, a coming-of-age moment for the medium...except like those predecessors, it's not, at this point in his career at least, the guy has one trick, one tone, one conclusion to make of 50 years of modern myths and it's hyperbolic to say its "superheroes fucking suck and rapists are worth consideration" but only barely! i'm willing to hear him out going into the 90s and beyond as this was apparently a "bad mood" period for his work but it's unfortunate this is still held up as like, the height of the medium and for many young people, myself included, their first proper experience with the medium...i can only imagine how different my life would be had i read All-Star Superman instead
and that's where Moore's...questionable approach to rape in his art becomes entirely unsettling...he places the crux of the real heart of this world, the entire reason a god would regain faith in humanity in the...complicated nature of human relations after an unspeakable act of evil...
"rape is rape and there's no excuses for it, absolutely none, but......what if, just for a moment, maybe I really did want..."
the reality of Laurie as a bright spot of light out of an impossible situation is like, great on the surface...the idea that every person is a miracle of circumstance, etc...but like, her father is a rapist, a murderer, a black-hearted nihilist and it's not that asking us to find some empathy for such a person is an inherently bad artistic decision, this ask of the audience for impossible forgiveness characterizes some of the most challenging and rewarding art i've experienced...but i have to ask where Blake is posited as redeemable or even human, at what point his character invites empathy rather than condemnation...i begin to read the text as consistently apologetic toward his actions, bending over backwards to compare his individual action to a universal inaction, a passive evil...and find it not quite dismissable but certainly questionable enough to feel weightless
like, in the grander scheme of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? and Miracleman...this is nothing i haven't seen before, just wrapped in more structural respectability...novelistic signifiers of integrity...there's this sense that no matter where the book goes Moore deserves a hearing, he is a communist after all, this is all a takedown of the fascistic nature of superheroes, a coming-of-age moment for the medium...except like those predecessors, it's not, at this point in his career at least, the guy has one trick, one tone, one conclusion to make of 50 years of modern myths and it's hyperbolic to say its "superheroes fucking suck and rapists are worth consideration" but only barely! i'm willing to hear him out going into the 90s and beyond as this was apparently a "bad mood" period for his work but it's unfortunate this is still held up as like, the height of the medium and for many young people, myself included, their first proper experience with the medium...i can only imagine how different my life would be had i read All-Star Superman instead
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This isn't really a story for me. A bit too cynical and hopeless.
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The movie is almost exactly the same. The movie cuts some of the stuff that doesn't add much, like a pirate comic book that doesn't add much, and it also changes the ending to make it less convoluted and believable. So, I guess I recommend the movie over this book.
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The art of Watchmen is gorgeous. The book's highlights are the parts when it is able to shine, when it is not drowning in the deluge of superfluous, semi-deep and faux-meditative text populating most of the pages. I couldn't warm up to its world even after spending seemingly years of my life reading about these characters.
The main issue is that reading Watchmen feels like reading a story penned by Shadow the Hedgehog himself; someone who sees himself and the entire world as being so dark and serious, and someone who has built their entire personality on nihilism and misanthropy.
By the end of the first chapter, I had already fully understood that every single character in these groups of "heroes" is an unredeemable sociopath with a tragic backstory. That's a cool idea: maybe we should not have heroes in real life. But then the author goes on for hundreds of pages expanding on the details of each of the character's "flaws" (if you want to call them that, although I'd in some cases prefer to call them "crimes") and traumas – one isa pedophile who was literally disintegrated in an accident , one is a serial killer who grew up with an abusive mom and being bullied for being the son of a sex worker , and so on and so forth. Every woman exists only so far as she can be sexualized for the plot. Almost every time a woman shows up, sex comes up not long after. Almost every time a man shows up, there's a murder, or at least an attempt. No one is safe and no one is worth saving.
I'm not against darker stories, not at all. I love, for example, Maus, another very dark graphic novel, or The Death of Ivan Ilych, another story focused on death. The difference is that these stories have something to say; their darkness is not the end-goal on itself. Watchmen, on the other hand, feels more similar to Disgrace, to me. Both are books that feel like they were written by people who were deeply frustrated – justifiably or not, it doesn't matter –, but who could not muster any thought beyond "the world itself, humanity, must be irredeemably flawed." There is no self-reflection, no goodness in anyone, nothing. There is no humanity.
Watchmen feels like it's saying "comic books can be dark too." But that doesn't shock me. It's 2025, I know that already. And unfortunately there is not much left.
The main issue is that reading Watchmen feels like reading a story penned by Shadow the Hedgehog himself; someone who sees himself and the entire world as being so dark and serious, and someone who has built their entire personality on nihilism and misanthropy.
By the end of the first chapter, I had already fully understood that every single character in these groups of "heroes" is an unredeemable sociopath with a tragic backstory. That's a cool idea: maybe we should not have heroes in real life. But then the author goes on for hundreds of pages expanding on the details of each of the character's "flaws" (if you want to call them that, although I'd in some cases prefer to call them "crimes") and traumas – one is
I'm not against darker stories, not at all. I love, for example, Maus, another very dark graphic novel, or The Death of Ivan Ilych, another story focused on death. The difference is that these stories have something to say; their darkness is not the end-goal on itself. Watchmen, on the other hand, feels more similar to Disgrace, to me. Both are books that feel like they were written by people who were deeply frustrated – justifiably or not, it doesn't matter –, but who could not muster any thought beyond "the world itself, humanity, must be irredeemably flawed." There is no self-reflection, no goodness in anyone, nothing. There is no humanity.
Watchmen feels like it's saying "comic books can be dark too." But that doesn't shock me. It's 2025, I know that already. And unfortunately there is not much left.
Depressing, violent, and nihilistic. Sections are punctuating by children being murdered. Excellent art and writing style