I finished reading Watchmen by Alan Moore. Let me preface this by saying, WOW. Then I need to restate myself, WOW!!
I loved it. It was incredible. I can't believe how many interesting themes were contained in about 100 pages about super-heroes. The plot, simply speaking, is about the US in 1985 at the height of the Cold War, but in this alternate course of events, super heroes actually existed. They were regular people who wanted to imitate the comic books and fight for justice in the streets. They banded together in the 50's and did so again in the 70's, but a law was passed to ban them after the populace became sick of them. The book opens with the murder of one of the first heroes, the Comedian, and a subsequent trend of retired superheroes dying or disappearing which leads the only still-active hero, Rorschach to believe that someone out there is killing the "masks".
The main conflict in the book is the struggle between saving people and saving the world. The characters all react in interesting psychological ways to the desperate impossibility of saving the wretched hordes of people. Some, like Dan Dreiberg, the second man to take the superhero name of Nite Owl, give up and fall into a depressed middle age where they view their vigilanteism as youthful naivete. Then there is my personal favorite character Rorschach. He's horribly traumatized from a childhood with a prostitute mother who genuinely dislikes him, and then he's further damaged by an "adventure" in which he tries to rescue a kidnapped little girl only to discover that the criminal already slaughtered her and fed her to his dogs. Needless to say, retribution is delivered. Now he doesn't really have emotions nor does he care for the scum of the earth people who populate the streets, and yet he lives his life to fight desperately for what is undebatably right. He is not willing to lie or to do what he thinks is wrong, but he so cold and able to kill anybody he thinks deserves it. Also, his mask is just a Rorschach blot test which has to be the coolest thing in the world.
Every single intricate element of the plot comes together so perfectly in the end, and the overall moral of the story is so unmistakable, understandable, and thought-provoking. It is no doubt one of the best books that I've read recently, and the best graphic novel that I've ever read... It's also the only graphic novel that I've ever read...
I loved it. It was incredible. I can't believe how many interesting themes were contained in about 100 pages about super-heroes. The plot, simply speaking, is about the US in 1985 at the height of the Cold War, but in this alternate course of events, super heroes actually existed. They were regular people who wanted to imitate the comic books and fight for justice in the streets. They banded together in the 50's and did so again in the 70's, but a law was passed to ban them after the populace became sick of them. The book opens with the murder of one of the first heroes, the Comedian, and a subsequent trend of retired superheroes dying or disappearing which leads the only still-active hero, Rorschach to believe that someone out there is killing the "masks".
The main conflict in the book is the struggle between saving people and saving the world. The characters all react in interesting psychological ways to the desperate impossibility of saving the wretched hordes of people. Some, like Dan Dreiberg, the second man to take the superhero name of Nite Owl, give up and fall into a depressed middle age where they view their vigilanteism as youthful naivete. Then there is my personal favorite character Rorschach. He's horribly traumatized from a childhood with a prostitute mother who genuinely dislikes him, and then he's further damaged by an "adventure" in which he tries to rescue a kidnapped little girl only to discover that the criminal already slaughtered her and fed her to his dogs. Needless to say, retribution is delivered. Now he doesn't really have emotions nor does he care for the scum of the earth people who populate the streets, and yet he lives his life to fight desperately for what is undebatably right. He is not willing to lie or to do what he thinks is wrong, but he so cold and able to kill anybody he thinks deserves it. Also, his mask is just a Rorschach blot test which has to be the coolest thing in the world.
Every single intricate element of the plot comes together so perfectly in the end, and the overall moral of the story is so unmistakable, understandable, and thought-provoking. It is no doubt one of the best books that I've read recently, and the best graphic novel that I've ever read... It's also the only graphic novel that I've ever read...
1 comment:
I read this comic too! I couldn't predict anything!
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