You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
michaelpatrickhicks 's review for:
Watchmen
by Alan Moore
I recall seeing an awful lot of complaining and pearl clutching from conservative and right-leaning viewers that HBO's Watchmen series, which premiered at the tail end of 2019, was *gasp* *sob* too political. Clearly those TV viewers had never read Alan Moore's book!
I'll confess, too, that I hadn't read this book previously, either (but at least had the good sense to read it before diving into its televised sequel series, thank you very much, HBO Max). I tried reading this sucker when I was far too young for it, somewhere between the ages of 8-10 year. My then-young and impatient mind was too bored, frustrated, and stymied by this (I now realize accurately described) groundbreaking comic book series. Shamefully, it took me nearly 30 years to give this work another go, despite my best intentions to do so much earlier in my life. Whatever limited knowledge I had of Watchmen came from the 2009 Zack Snyder flick. It's clear upon reflection that the film's director had little understanding or willingness to faithfully adapt Moore's tone or unapologetically anti-conservative politics.
What's even more confusing, though, are those readers who came away from Watchmen hero-worshipping Rorschach. Moore clearly paints this masked man as a barely literate, psychotic, bigoted fascist. In fact, Moore aims a lot of ire at the supposed heroics of masked vigilantes, casting them as pawns for corrupt political officials or hollow, sadsack shells whose empty lives are given purpose through violence. The far-right wing, Jew-hating rag, New Frontiersman, of which Rorschach is a devoted reader, naturally, idolizes these masked "heroes" and compares them, positively, to the Ku Klux Klan, a group working "voluntarily to preserve American culture in areas where there were very real dangers of that culture being overrun and mongrelized."
The story itself - an investigation into the death of an ultra-fascist vigilante known as The Comedian, spear-headed by Rorschach - is set against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1985 and the threat of nuclear war breaking out between the US and USSR. After a win in Vietnam, thanks to the book's lone authentic superman, Dr. Manhattan, Richard Nixon has subverted democracy to maintain his authoritarian grasp on power.
Perhaps you can see why I find those 2019 complaints about HBO's Watchmen being "too political" utterly laughable given Moore's writing here. Right from page one, Moore, an anarchist, sets a highly political tone and then proceeds, for the next twelve issues, to chink away at modern conservative ideology and caped crusader hero worshipping. The former are bloodthirsty degenerates hellbent on war for profit, while the latter are psychotic bloodthirsty degenerates who rape with impunity and are hellbent on war for fun.
But yeah, sure, Watchmen is totally apolitical otherwise, completely devoid of any sort of viewpoint, meaning, or philosophy. Just totally sanitary and unchallenging... /sarcasm
Obviously Watchmen hit real hard when it landed in the mid-80s and shook up the comic book industry. It's no less potent in 2021, with many of its themes and plot points wholly relevant still, especially in light of Black Lives Matter protests and the white supremacist terror attack levied against the US Capitol in the January 6 insurrection. In one flashback sequence, vigilantes Nite Owl and The Comedian tear gas and shoot at pro-democracy protesters, with the former wondering, "What's happened to the American Dream?" The Comedian, a government-sanction vigilante, pure-bred Nixon acolyte, and war criminal, chomps on a cigar as he opens fire on the crowd and tells him, "It came true. You're looking at it." Just weeks after Trump's terror campaign against the American government, this scene is a particularly visceral gut-punch.
Watchmen is rightfully heralded as a classic, and it really is timeless. The plot is meaty and complex, and the characters are every bit as fascinating and complicated as they are disgusting. Moore's opus holds up incredibly well and is every bit as relevant today as it was in the Reagan and Thatcher era, if not more so given how much more insane right-wing politics have grown in the intervening years. Beyond that, Watchmen proves particularly evocative as a number of its scenes echo through the decades, capturing familiar strife and anxieties of the 21st Century as readily as it did in the mid-1980s. It's brilliant, plain and simple.
I'll confess, too, that I hadn't read this book previously, either (but at least had the good sense to read it before diving into its televised sequel series, thank you very much, HBO Max). I tried reading this sucker when I was far too young for it, somewhere between the ages of 8-10 year. My then-young and impatient mind was too bored, frustrated, and stymied by this (I now realize accurately described) groundbreaking comic book series. Shamefully, it took me nearly 30 years to give this work another go, despite my best intentions to do so much earlier in my life. Whatever limited knowledge I had of Watchmen came from the 2009 Zack Snyder flick. It's clear upon reflection that the film's director had little understanding or willingness to faithfully adapt Moore's tone or unapologetically anti-conservative politics.
What's even more confusing, though, are those readers who came away from Watchmen hero-worshipping Rorschach. Moore clearly paints this masked man as a barely literate, psychotic, bigoted fascist. In fact, Moore aims a lot of ire at the supposed heroics of masked vigilantes, casting them as pawns for corrupt political officials or hollow, sadsack shells whose empty lives are given purpose through violence. The far-right wing, Jew-hating rag, New Frontiersman, of which Rorschach is a devoted reader, naturally, idolizes these masked "heroes" and compares them, positively, to the Ku Klux Klan, a group working "voluntarily to preserve American culture in areas where there were very real dangers of that culture being overrun and mongrelized."
The story itself - an investigation into the death of an ultra-fascist vigilante known as The Comedian, spear-headed by Rorschach - is set against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1985 and the threat of nuclear war breaking out between the US and USSR. After a win in Vietnam, thanks to the book's lone authentic superman, Dr. Manhattan, Richard Nixon has subverted democracy to maintain his authoritarian grasp on power.
Perhaps you can see why I find those 2019 complaints about HBO's Watchmen being "too political" utterly laughable given Moore's writing here. Right from page one, Moore, an anarchist, sets a highly political tone and then proceeds, for the next twelve issues, to chink away at modern conservative ideology and caped crusader hero worshipping. The former are bloodthirsty degenerates hellbent on war for profit, while the latter are psychotic bloodthirsty degenerates who rape with impunity and are hellbent on war for fun.
But yeah, sure, Watchmen is totally apolitical otherwise, completely devoid of any sort of viewpoint, meaning, or philosophy. Just totally sanitary and unchallenging... /sarcasm
Obviously Watchmen hit real hard when it landed in the mid-80s and shook up the comic book industry. It's no less potent in 2021, with many of its themes and plot points wholly relevant still, especially in light of Black Lives Matter protests and the white supremacist terror attack levied against the US Capitol in the January 6 insurrection. In one flashback sequence, vigilantes Nite Owl and The Comedian tear gas and shoot at pro-democracy protesters, with the former wondering, "What's happened to the American Dream?" The Comedian, a government-sanction vigilante, pure-bred Nixon acolyte, and war criminal, chomps on a cigar as he opens fire on the crowd and tells him, "It came true. You're looking at it." Just weeks after Trump's terror campaign against the American government, this scene is a particularly visceral gut-punch.
Watchmen is rightfully heralded as a classic, and it really is timeless. The plot is meaty and complex, and the characters are every bit as fascinating and complicated as they are disgusting. Moore's opus holds up incredibly well and is every bit as relevant today as it was in the Reagan and Thatcher era, if not more so given how much more insane right-wing politics have grown in the intervening years. Beyond that, Watchmen proves particularly evocative as a number of its scenes echo through the decades, capturing familiar strife and anxieties of the 21st Century as readily as it did in the mid-1980s. It's brilliant, plain and simple.