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105 reviews for:
Watchmen #1: At Midnight, All The Agents....
John Higgins, Alan Moore, Len Wein, Dave Gibbons
4.43 AVERAGE
105 reviews for:
Watchmen #1: At Midnight, All The Agents....
John Higgins, Alan Moore, Len Wein, Dave Gibbons
4.43 AVERAGE
This was a huge gap in my graphic novel knowledge and I had to remedy that. After reading [b:V for Vendetta|5805|V for Vendetta|Alan Moore|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1343668985s/5805.jpg|392838], I knew I was going to like [a:Alan Moore|3961|Alan Moore|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1304944713p2/3961.jpg]'s version of superheroes, although I wasn't exactly sure what I was getting myself into. I really loved this. Caveat: I think it will be best appreciated by readers who are familiar with the traditional superhero lore.
Watchmen starts with the murder of a famous superhero, which is an atypical, but great way of starting a superhero story. Indeed, the whole structure of the comic made me think of noir detective fiction of the really gritty kind. The mistery drives the pace of the whole novel - it is really entertaining. But there's much more to this graphic novel than just entertainment.
Once again, Moore has created an uncomfortable and ugly world which reflects the worst of ours. I found this alternate reality to be less relatable than that of V for Vendetta. In a way, this fictional world is a product of the 1980s social problems - nuclear war, Vietnam, the tension between the US and the USSR... The differences with our 80s are subtle, and they mostly reflect changes in technology and consumerism caused by the existence of this particular set of superheroes, the Watchmen. The cars are slightly different, the fashions are similar but not quite the same and sweets have different names. Superhero comics are not a thing, and pirates are all the rage. It's easy to overlook these little changes. Together, they help create a complex new society, different enough from ours that we can feel safe reading this from our privileged point of view.
The protagonists who give Watchmen its name are a bunch of atypical superheroes, fallible, flawed. More human than most comic book characters. Moore has used these characters to make us think about the problems of superhero comics, and his critique is superb. Traditional superheroes are constructed upon a set of problematic premises: superhuman heroes are individuals with extreme power and very rigid moral codes. In many cases, they have a tragic backstory to explain their motivations, which turns these so-called heroes in unstable people who express their grief through violence. Problematic, huh?
Also, they almost always have their way with the ladies, who don't get to be portrayed very accurately. Either they are the lady in distress, or the motherly figure, or a bitch. Even superheroines are constantly sexualized. So, if you put two and two together, you get a violent and volatile macho ideal as the protagonist of a power fantasy for the reader to identify with. Moore addresses rape openly, establishing that he respects female characters as much as male ones, and that the casual rejection of sexual assault in comics is not okay.
I enjoy reading and watching superhero stories (they are fun!), but wish that everyone would be aware of their problems. Unfortunately, some comic book readers have really interiorized this or have found their beliefs reinforced by superheroes, and you know how the saying goes: one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. Moore's deconstruction is particularly relevant, since this nasty comics reader clique can be very hostile to women and to minorities. My adolescent self suffered the consequences of daring to enter into a comic shop when there was an ongoing Warhammer game. Not nice.
I also appreciated the inclusion of homosexuality as a normal thing, with the casual feature of gay partners as secondary characters or as filler/background characters. I was over the moon glad to find that some of the Minutemen were also gay, although they aren't shown in the best of lights. I understand how this depiction is tied to the main point of presenting superheroes as human, but I couldn't help feeling a bit uncomfortable about this dire portrayal of homosexuals. It's not that every gay character in print has to be a saint, and it's not like good gay characters aren't present in Alan Moore's body of work (see Valerie Page in V for Vendetta, for example), so I am possibly being too sensitive.
Watchmen also questions the rigid morality that regulates superheroes, thus questioning traditional villains. In the superhero lore, good and evil tend to be quite black and white. This poses the problem of having to oversimplify reality to make it fit inside comics, and can lead to very absurd situations. I'm going to get spoiler-ish from here on, so stop reading if you haven't read this book yet! On the one hand, we have a driven character who supposedly discerns good from evil. I'm talking about Rorschach who, in Alan Moore's own words, is a parody of Batman. His motivation is commendable - he wants to save humanity one person at a time. However, he doesn't mind being extremely brutal to do so and, what's more, he's out to kill whoever doesn't make the cut of his extreme right-wing convictions. On the other hand, we have a very intelligent character who wants to avoid a nuclear war and establish his greatness. He also voluntarily kills half of the New York population to do so. He fits within the traditional villain role, except for the fact that he really avoids a nuclear war that would wipe the human race from the face of the earth. This moral conflict is never resolved, forcing the reader to form a judgement.
This novel is also very intelligent narrative-wise. There is a number of metafiction devices involved, and we all know I love that. There are some footnotes, and little excerpts of fictional biographies and interviews which are mentioned during the overarching story. They add depth to the characters and don't feel gimmicky at all. I specially liked the comic within the comic. It worked as a separate substory (I was really interested in the ending of The Black Freight!) but it also tied in nicely with the tumultuous events happening in this alternate New York.
The artwork, by [a:Dave Gibbons|13285|Dave Gibbons|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1308663000p2/13285.jpg], is also a masterwork. It is very detailed and very subtle - many frames give more information than the dialogue itself. The complete edition states that Moore himself wrote in-depth descriptions of each frame, and then shows the actual text that was swiftly translated by Gibbons into the iconic first frames, zooming out from the bloody smiley face to the top of the building where the murder has been committed. While it's true that Moore is responsible for the overall layout of the frames, Gibbon's artistic vision is what really has transformed this graphic novel into the masterwork it is, deceptively simple and fast flowing.
Watchmen starts with the murder of a famous superhero, which is an atypical, but great way of starting a superhero story. Indeed, the whole structure of the comic made me think of noir detective fiction of the really gritty kind. The mistery drives the pace of the whole novel - it is really entertaining. But there's much more to this graphic novel than just entertainment.
Once again, Moore has created an uncomfortable and ugly world which reflects the worst of ours. I found this alternate reality to be less relatable than that of V for Vendetta. In a way, this fictional world is a product of the 1980s social problems - nuclear war, Vietnam, the tension between the US and the USSR... The differences with our 80s are subtle, and they mostly reflect changes in technology and consumerism caused by the existence of this particular set of superheroes, the Watchmen. The cars are slightly different, the fashions are similar but not quite the same and sweets have different names. Superhero comics are not a thing, and pirates are all the rage. It's easy to overlook these little changes. Together, they help create a complex new society, different enough from ours that we can feel safe reading this from our privileged point of view.
The protagonists who give Watchmen its name are a bunch of atypical superheroes, fallible, flawed. More human than most comic book characters. Moore has used these characters to make us think about the problems of superhero comics, and his critique is superb. Traditional superheroes are constructed upon a set of problematic premises: superhuman heroes are individuals with extreme power and very rigid moral codes. In many cases, they have a tragic backstory to explain their motivations, which turns these so-called heroes in unstable people who express their grief through violence. Problematic, huh?
Also, they almost always have their way with the ladies, who don't get to be portrayed very accurately. Either they are the lady in distress, or the motherly figure, or a bitch. Even superheroines are constantly sexualized. So, if you put two and two together, you get a violent and volatile macho ideal as the protagonist of a power fantasy for the reader to identify with. Moore addresses rape openly, establishing that he respects female characters as much as male ones, and that the casual rejection of sexual assault in comics is not okay.
I enjoy reading and watching superhero stories (they are fun!), but wish that everyone would be aware of their problems. Unfortunately, some comic book readers have really interiorized this or have found their beliefs reinforced by superheroes, and you know how the saying goes: one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. Moore's deconstruction is particularly relevant, since this nasty comics reader clique can be very hostile to women and to minorities. My adolescent self suffered the consequences of daring to enter into a comic shop when there was an ongoing Warhammer game. Not nice.
I also appreciated the inclusion of homosexuality as a normal thing, with the casual feature of gay partners as secondary characters or as filler/background characters. I was over the moon glad to find that some of the Minutemen were also gay, although they aren't shown in the best of lights. I understand how this depiction is tied to the main point of presenting superheroes as human, but I couldn't help feeling a bit uncomfortable about this dire portrayal of homosexuals. It's not that every gay character in print has to be a saint, and it's not like good gay characters aren't present in Alan Moore's body of work (see Valerie Page in V for Vendetta, for example), so I am possibly being too sensitive.
Watchmen also questions the rigid morality that regulates superheroes, thus questioning traditional villains. In the superhero lore, good and evil tend to be quite black and white. This poses the problem of having to oversimplify reality to make it fit inside comics, and can lead to very absurd situations. I'm going to get spoiler-ish from here on, so stop reading if you haven't read this book yet! On the one hand, we have a driven character who supposedly discerns good from evil. I'm talking about Rorschach who, in Alan Moore's own words, is a parody of Batman. His motivation is commendable - he wants to save humanity one person at a time. However, he doesn't mind being extremely brutal to do so and, what's more, he's out to kill whoever doesn't make the cut of his extreme right-wing convictions. On the other hand, we have a very intelligent character who wants to avoid a nuclear war and establish his greatness. He also voluntarily kills half of the New York population to do so. He fits within the traditional villain role, except for the fact that he really avoids a nuclear war that would wipe the human race from the face of the earth. This moral conflict is never resolved, forcing the reader to form a judgement.
This novel is also very intelligent narrative-wise. There is a number of metafiction devices involved, and we all know I love that. There are some footnotes, and little excerpts of fictional biographies and interviews which are mentioned during the overarching story. They add depth to the characters and don't feel gimmicky at all. I specially liked the comic within the comic. It worked as a separate substory (I was really interested in the ending of The Black Freight!) but it also tied in nicely with the tumultuous events happening in this alternate New York.
The artwork, by [a:Dave Gibbons|13285|Dave Gibbons|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1308663000p2/13285.jpg], is also a masterwork. It is very detailed and very subtle - many frames give more information than the dialogue itself. The complete edition states that Moore himself wrote in-depth descriptions of each frame, and then shows the actual text that was swiftly translated by Gibbons into the iconic first frames, zooming out from the bloody smiley face to the top of the building where the murder has been committed. While it's true that Moore is responsible for the overall layout of the frames, Gibbon's artistic vision is what really has transformed this graphic novel into the masterwork it is, deceptively simple and fast flowing.
I haven't read many graphic novels...but I really should. Not only was this story smart, original, and exciting, it was a piece of art.
Really Liked it.
Might almost have given it a 5. Not sure why I don't feel like.
I think I never read any full set Graphic Novels. ( Okay, not including One Piece Manga )
Left me confused in between, so went back and read through again a few times. That makes it more interesting. :)
The pirate story running in the background was mindblowing.
Well, the whole story was mindblowing in itself. :D
Might almost have given it a 5. Not sure why I don't feel like.
I think I never read any full set Graphic Novels. ( Okay, not including One Piece Manga )
Left me confused in between, so went back and read through again a few times. That makes it more interesting. :)
The pirate story running in the background was mindblowing.
Well, the whole story was mindblowing in itself. :D
This was so incredible - I can see why it defined comics and revolutionized the kind of stories that can be told with them. Each of the characters is beautiful and flawed in their own way, and there is no black-and-white good and evil. This is one of the few books where I've seen the movie first. The movie is remarkably faithful to the book, while still skipping over the least cinematic parts (without losing any of the story). It actually took me a while to read this one because I took time to savor each of the skillfully drawn panels. The art and writing go so well together and that's part of the draw for me. I highly recommend this one, even to people who don't typically like comics.
there is so much that is beautiful about the artwork! the individual panels, composition and framing, use of shadows and light (silhouettes!!!), repeated symbolism, transitions, etc. etc. I want to own this so I can look at it all the time and study the way that it's put together. I wish I read this in class so I could sit with a bunch of people and dissect each page.
According to so many I know this is a seminal work in the comic book verse. I see why, but for someone who is pretty new to the field I was a bit lost. I enjoyed some of the characters, especially Dr. Manhattan, but found the few female characters superficial. The ending felt a bit rushed after the lengthy lead-up. Thanks has to go to Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell for inspiring me to read this in the first place :)
Pretty sure I read this in High School or early college. very surprised it isn't already on my GR.
Wanted to like it more than I did. But the dated style of the art didn't keep my attention, and the cold war theme didn't age well.
I'm not a fan of graphic novels, in fact this may be the first one I managed to get all the way through. I only read it because I'd heard that it is a source of inspiration for the tv series Lost.
I liked it, up to a point. I sped through it, which I'm sure is a graphic novel no-no, but I couldn't be bothered to scrutinize every panel for clues to the overall story.
I wasn't crazy about the end, and I don't think this graphic novel, which I understand is a classic and won a bunch of awards, has converted me to a regular reader of the genre. Probably it's because I'm a girl and I'm too old.
I liked it, up to a point. I sped through it, which I'm sure is a graphic novel no-no, but I couldn't be bothered to scrutinize every panel for clues to the overall story.
I wasn't crazy about the end, and I don't think this graphic novel, which I understand is a classic and won a bunch of awards, has converted me to a regular reader of the genre. Probably it's because I'm a girl and I'm too old.