Watchmen – Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
With the impending release of the Watchmen film, I thought I should snag myself a copy of this before the cover got plastered irrevocably with “Now a major motion picture!!” Having read it before when I was young I was already familiar with the basic premise and the main characters, but Watchmen turned out to be well worth the return visit.
I never really took note of this first time around, but the heavy saturation of parallelism that occurs in this book is really striking. Frequently the scenes will dovetail into one another, the last words of the previous matching the imagery in the next, joined in the same panel. Through the course of the book we voyeuristically read several issues of The Black Freighter, the story of a man’s fall from grace into near insanity, over someone’s shoulder. The words and images of this are often split apart and intertwined with the main story to great effect, the grotesque fantasy-comic scenes often narrating the subtext of a seemingly civilised scene, or more directly echoing street violence and bloodshed. This gives the story tightly-woven, intricately crafted feel and is performed with such confidence that, as a reader, you feel you are in very safe hands.
The heroes and villains that Moore creates for this series appear to be gaudy parodies thrown together out of necessity, most of them borrowing heavily from already existing characters. I wondered if they were the subject matter simply because that was what was expected: comics were about heroes and villains. For the most part Moore steers clear of giving them any actual powers and Jonathan Osterman is really the only character who actually displays anything resembling superhuman abilities, though Adrian Veidt’s ‘most intelligent man in the world’ comes in a close second. The trouble with these bold archetypes is that while they may be the way in for comics fans, vigilantes in tights are also a frequent barrier to entry for those who don’t regularly read comics, even though the work itself may be so much more than that. I can say that any future lending of this book on my part will likely come with a couple of qualifiers regarding them, just in case.
However, though at first glance the heroes may seem like throw-away, kitschy place-holders, their true nature is slowly teased out as Moore makes us wonder who really is a hero and who is a villain? And why is this place such a mess that’s going from bad to worse? The lurid, spandex-clad protagonists are not there by simply by default at all; the whole book is commentary on their flawed humanity, the warping effect that power and public renown has had on them and what happens when it’s taken away. At the same time it seems to be affectionately mocking the superhero genre of before and comes complete with names, gadgets and outfits that even the heroes themselves find ridiculous. Both their motives and methods come into question: Rorschach’s uncompromising and psychopathic approach to justice (a standout character for me); Dr Manhattan’s omnipotent indifference to humanity; Silk Spectre’s simple need to be loved; and The Comedian’s bitter and disillusioned abuse of power. It’s so engrossing to see these heroic self-contradictions being examined that the Watchmen deserves its status as a classic, and it’s ultimately what the book says about humanity and our inability to escape it that really resonates. If you get the chance, do try and read it before the film comes out and inevitably makes a complete hash of it.