Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

Watchmen by Alan Moore

12 reviews

scoobygirl93's review against another edition

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Genocide, War, Confinement, Domestic abuse, Gore, Panic attacks/disorders, Abandonment, Addiction, Animal death, Cancer, Grief, Murder, Toxic friendship, Death, Gun violence, Police brutality, Rape, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Lesbophobia, Mental illness, Terminal illness, Alcohol, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Cursing, Child death, Homophobia, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Violence, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Xenophobia, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual violence, Blood, Classism, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, and Physical abuse

samdalefox's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

I'm lucky to have reached 29 year's old and not watched the film or TV show, or know pretty much anything about the plot of Watchmen. I'm glad, because it made my reading experience much more enjoyable not having any spoilers, I whizzed through it I was so eager to keep reading. I love Alan Moore's 'V for Vendetta', I've rated this the same because I couldn't pick a favourite, both graphic novels have their own strengths and weaknesses and cover important topics in unique ways. 

Pros

• The artwork was impeccable. Not only in style (classic superhero), but in it's design; how it illustrated and foreshadowed the story. The 'blood' stained smiley face appeared in at least three different scenarios throughout the novels as a motif, and I liked the way the artwork would alternate between two different views/colour pallettes on a page so you get a holistic snapshot of what's going on, (for example a concersation between two cops and spliced between are panels enaacting the crime they're describing) it felt much more natural to read though it does mean you're bombarded with a lot of information at once.  Once you reach the end of the series you notice that there are clues in the artwork to the political mood and
  the pyramid company
  throughout on posters, plaques, advertisements and graffiti.
• I enjoyed the inclusion of scrapbook and novel excerpts at the end of each comic to complement the main graphic novel panels.
• The subject matter itself is important and interesting e.g., dystopia/utopia, relative morality and phenomenological existence, authority and power.

Cons

• Female characters a bit thin in the ground and not developed beyond their relationships (direct and indirect) to men and male violence.
• Personally, I didn't enjoy and question whether the black freighter 'story within a story' sub-plot was necessary. It was very obvious storytelling. I've seen other people say it was excellent, and maybe maybe necessary to complement the more subtle grey-area of the main storyline (e.g., part of you gets attached to these despicable people so maybe you'd miss the point). Either way it took me out of the story and I sighed when I saw those panels. 
• Justice for Bubastis.
  
  

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. // Who watches the watchmen?

samgoodale's review:

"Our sense of awe [of super heroes] is no match for our selfishness and self-destructive tendencies. Especially when the watchmen are just as selfish and self-destructive as we are."

"Watchmen really explores the relativity of heroism. There isn’t a hero in this book. It’s both a love letter to the Golden Age of superheroes and a criticism of it. Nobody does the right thing, but most characters are sympathetic. Who you sympathize with most will probably say a lot about you, which is pretty cool.

To oversimplify the plot of Watchmen, it’s basically just the trolley problem: do you kill some people to save even more people and become mean, or just do nothing? It’s very interesting because heroism is usually predicated on actually doing something. But sometimes, doing nothing is the most heroic thing you can do.

It’s also very Camusian and Sartrean—the novel shows us how a bunch of characters deal with the lack of meaning within the world. Everything has already happened, but nothing is really real. Rorschach is nothing. Nite Owl is nothing. The word “nothing” is kinda crazy. It’s a compound word, really, but I’ve never thought about it that way. Regardless, everything the characters do is useless and futile, but they do it anyway. That’s pretty cool.

And in spite of this, we still try. We still try to do the right thing, even if it doesn’t make any difference at all. We still love other people despite our ending, or maybe because of it. So, I don’t think Watchmen is really about people doing anything. It’s about people trying. Trying to be good how they see it and trying to love other people. Maybe just trying to be a hero is the most heroic thing of all.,"

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Violence, War, Misogyny, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual assault, Blood, Mental illness, Murder, Physical abuse, Suicide, and Toxic friendship

manjal's review

dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

THE GREATEST GRAPHIC NOVEL(COMIC BOOK) EVER, A 12 CHAPTER MASTERPIECE THAT REVOLUTIONIZED COMIC BOOKS AND LEFT AN INDELIBLE MARK ON LITERATURE AND MEDIA. ITS INTRICATE PLOT AND MORALLY COMPLEX CHARACTERS EXPLORE THEMES OF HEROISM, IDENTITY, AND MORALITY. ALAN MOORE'S CREATION ELEVATED THE GENRE, INSPIRING A NEW WAVE OF STORYTELLING THAT EMBRACES MATURITY AND MORAL AMBIGUITY. IT'S ABOUT AN ALTERNATE 1980S AMERICA, WHERE RETIRED SUPERHEROES CONFRONT A GLOBAL CONSPIRACY, FUSES GRITTY REALISM WITH FANTASY, PUSHING CREATIVE BOUNDARIES AND INFLUENCING GENERATIONS OF CREATORS. NOT RECOMMENDED TO NEW COMIC BOOK READERS

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Cursing, Deadnaming, Death, Self harm, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, War, Bullying, Racism, Rape, Genocide, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Murder, Physical abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Police brutality, Alcohol, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Abandonment, Addiction, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Death of parent, Homophobia, Pregnancy, Grief, Domestic abuse, and Hate crime

Minor: Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Police brutality, Sexism, Stalking, Drug use, Misogyny, Self harm, Fire/Fire injury, Suicide, and Toxic relationship

vlpfeiffer's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Physical abuse, Gore, Sexual assault, Infidelity, Animal death, Murder, War, and Blood

Minor: Torture, Sexual content, Xenophobia, Lesbophobia, and Homophobia

thehobbitbarbie's review

challenging dark reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Mental illness, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Violence, Cancer, Police brutality, Toxic relationship, Sexual harassment, Death, Gun violence, Infidelity, Terminal illness, War, Cursing, Misogyny, Murder, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Animal death, and Gore

Moderate: Addiction and Lesbophobia

mjscooke's review against another edition

challenging dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

There are many aspects worth noting that would have led to this being lauded as one of the beat graphic novels of all time. I did enjoy the social and psychological commentary on human nature and hero complexes. But what I realised from my enjoyment of the additional text pieces between chapters is simply that I don’t live the medium of graphic novels. I didn’t like the art style and as such found it difficult to get into. If I hadn’t borrowed it from a friend I probably would have DNF’d this. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cancer, Misogyny, Violence, Murder, Rape, War, Blood, Death, Physical abuse, Gore, Sexism, and Sexual assault

noahhare's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Violence, Rape, Physical abuse, Mental illness, Lesbophobia, Gun violence, Gore, Genocide, Emotional abuse, and Death

Moderate: Blood, Cursing, Death, Violence, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Grief, and Emotional abuse

Minor: Abortion, Body shaming, Cancer, Fire/Fire injury, Homophobia, and War

nojerama's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Try to read it in one sitting if possible, my experience was very scattered and therefore I lost a lot of the effect so don’t do what I did. Still an excellent book and a good example of how to write asshole characters who you can still (kinda) root for. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Bullying, Cancer, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Grief, Gun violence, Hate crime, Infidelity, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Vomit

This is 18+ for a reason. Do not give this to a kid. I can’t have that on my conscience

sulinde's review

dark reflective tense medium-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

This book is mostly interesting for its position within comics history. It's a bleak, brutal book set against a bleak and brutal development of superhero comics into an adult-focused celebration of reactionary fascism. To the author's dismay, it was more influential for encouraging this manner of comics writing than anything else but it was by no means an unimpeachable piece of criticism even without that distasteful legacy. It is an incredibly strange, incredibly violent, incredibly angry book and I don't feel that its merits as a piece of comics craft or as a bleak send-up of the contemporary momentum in superhero comics justify just how unpleasant it is. 

There's a place for grotesque, brutal, depressing stories--I don't feel like Watchmen makes it to that place.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, and Violence

Moderate: Rape and Sexual content

boy_topics's review

dark slow-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I did not enjoy this book. It has aged poorly in a disturbing way (as in it rings too true as something that could've been written by a strange section of humanity in our present moment). It is not a pleasant read and the ending is intensely dissatisfying. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Antisemitism, Body horror, Blood, Cursing, Death, Hate crime, Homophobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Violence, and Xenophobia