Watchmen-The graphic novel

[marillion]

While the writing is fantastic and yes, some of the best written (comic-wise), I find a lot of the artwork to be horribly dated and distracting to look at.

That's right.. I went THERE..

[A Clockwork Lim]

I always get tickled pink by things like this.

Put me solidly in the "sometimes a book is just a book" camp. I'm sorry, but if you're spending entire semesters of your life analyzing all the subtle (and apparently fully intended) nuances of something, especially a comic book, you're insane. Frank Miller and company did not put that much time and effort into the book, much like Shakespeare didn't put anywhere near the amount of effort into his works as all of those incredibly pretentious college professors seem to think he did.

I find it particularly amusing that these same people just gloss over the works of people who did put an extraordinary amount of time, thought and effort into their works.

Was Watchmen a good series? Yes, I enjoyed it immensely. Was it this nearly prophetic masterpiece of brilliance and insight that people apparently send large chunks of their lives contemplating? No. No it was not.

[Bak_and_Blue]

A Clockwork Lim wrote:

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I always get tickled pink by things like this.

Put me solidly in the "sometimes a book is just a book" camp. I'm sorry, but if you're spending entire semesters of your life analyzing all the subtle (and apparently fully intended) nuances of something, especially a comic book, you're insane. Frank Miller and company did not put that much time and effort into the book, much like Shakespeare didn't put anywhere near the amount of effort into his works as all of those incredibly pretentious college professors seem to think he did.

I find it particularly amusing that these same people just gloss over the works of people who did put an extraordinary amount of time, thought and effort into their works.

Was Watchmen a good series? Yes, I enjoyed it immensely. Was it this nearly prophetic masterpiece of brilliance and insight that people apparently send large chunks of their lives contemplating? No. No it was not.

Frank Miller didn't write it. Alan Moore did.

[Vinta 18]

Bak_and_Blue wrote:

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Frank Miller didn't write it. Alan Moore did.

And I remember Dave Gibbons saying that when the script for the first issue was dropped on his front porch his house shook. Every detail was included, from the position of the blood stain on the smiley pin (5 minutes to midnight) to the characters in the background.

And no one who analyzes literature believes that the author put all those nuances in intentionally. That's the first thing they teach you.

[Kryton]

<pssst...that's not a blood stain>

[AlanC9]

stj wrote:

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Nor am I perfectly convinced that Ozymandias' projections were correct in the first place. The protagonist of the pirate comic becomes a monster from the desire to save his family from a nonexistent threat. In the real world, only the US government has used or made it official policy to initiate use of nuclear weapons. In Watchmen's fictional universe, Tricky Dick is riding high at home. Why would he queer the deal?

Note that Ozymandias isn't the only person assuming that the strategic situation was leading to catastrophe; the excerpt from "Super-Powers and the Superpowers" makes this clear, and foreshadows Ozymandias' plan. Granted, the reasoning doesn't make all that much sense. A lot of talk in the 80s about nuclear weapons also made no sense. I'm sure you remember all the nonsense about the nuclear freeze and cruise missiles.

Edit: I've got no idea if Moore meant the threat to be real or not. The unreal threat from the pirate comic might not be an intentional parallel with the main plot situation.

One last thing---I don't see how Silk Spectre and Nite Owl II could have avoided thinking they could suffer Rorschach's fate.

Meaning that Ozzy would kill them? I don't see it. He hadn't demonstrated any such intention before they agree to go along with his plan. Is he supposed to change his mind later?

As for the ending, Moore said that he preferred to leave it in an indeterminate state, but that given where the name Ozymandias comes from, it's highly likely that all Veidt's works and plans would come to nothing. For whatever authorial intent is worth.