Watchmen and graphic novels in general
Jul. 14th, 2006 09:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseYes, I've been reading Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. I'm about halfway through at the moment, and I have to say I've been pretty floored by it - both by how well they handle the myriad characters, and how tightly meshed the various storylines are - bits of plot and visual cues that you think are throwaway the first time you see them have you paging back for them later on the story. It's not a happy tale, certainly, but it's still a story well-told and a horrifically fascinating look at humanity as a whole, and what's fundamentally the same in all of us despite the barriers we put between ourselves and others who aren't of our race/religion/social class.
I can also really see why so many people consider this the story that revolutionized the comic book as a medium for "serious" storytelling. Comic books have been the traditional medium for superhero stories, so it follows that this tale (which deals with superheroes as a group of people - some interesting, some disturbed, all very human) should be told in this medium. However, it's a story dense enough that telling it in any other medium would be a disservice - you can fit so many more important visual details in the pictures that would be tedious to describe in text, yet at the same time you don't have to spell it all out for people the way you would in a movie - much of the quiet fascination comes from inferring for oneself what happens between the panels. It would also be much more difficult to tell the same story in movie form - part of what make the story interesting is that it's very non-linear, hence the flipping-back-through-the-pages aspect. While stories of that nature have been told successfully in movie form before, I think the panels of a comic book work much better than a form that is by its very nature streamlined and linear.
As for the story itself - not having finished it yet, I can't say for certain how optimistic/pessimistic it is or how much I like it, but I can say with certainty that it's a well written enough tale that it should appeal to those who like intelligent stories. However, it's also a dark enough tale that it should be avoided by those who don't like stories about the darker side of human nature (or in other words - Mum, don't read this one). =)
I can also really see why so many people consider this the story that revolutionized the comic book as a medium for "serious" storytelling. Comic books have been the traditional medium for superhero stories, so it follows that this tale (which deals with superheroes as a group of people - some interesting, some disturbed, all very human) should be told in this medium. However, it's a story dense enough that telling it in any other medium would be a disservice - you can fit so many more important visual details in the pictures that would be tedious to describe in text, yet at the same time you don't have to spell it all out for people the way you would in a movie - much of the quiet fascination comes from inferring for oneself what happens between the panels. It would also be much more difficult to tell the same story in movie form - part of what make the story interesting is that it's very non-linear, hence the flipping-back-through-the-pages aspect. While stories of that nature have been told successfully in movie form before, I think the panels of a comic book work much better than a form that is by its very nature streamlined and linear.
As for the story itself - not having finished it yet, I can't say for certain how optimistic/pessimistic it is or how much I like it, but I can say with certainty that it's a well written enough tale that it should appeal to those who like intelligent stories. However, it's also a dark enough tale that it should be avoided by those who don't like stories about the darker side of human nature (or in other words - Mum, don't read this one). =)
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Date: 2006-07-14 06:02 pm (UTC)(And while I'm here, I'm going to jump in a day early so I can be the first to say Many Happy Returns. No present this year, though.)
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Date: 2006-07-14 06:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-14 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-14 06:07 pm (UTC)As for Alan Moore - the man's a genius writer. He's always come off to me as a bit neurotic, especially about his work, but he's a genius. And I love it when I can find his radio interviews and whatnot online - his accent's thick enough to float bricks on, I love just listening to it. :)
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Date: 2006-07-14 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-14 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-14 06:27 pm (UTC)But it's hardly the most distinctive aspect of the story -- Moore creates truly flawed individuals, and makes their "heroic" identities almost the most normal things about them. Sitting down and talking with the man behind the Rorschach mask is so much more brutal than him breaking arms and fingers in the streets. So many layers of secrets and lies in the sepia-toned past of the Minutemen, aspirations of Golden-age glory that fall into a mire of mundane failure....
It's as if for each character or theme or concept, Moore starts with a classic comic book premise and from that point grounds it in his vision of reality -- if a kid had been bitten by a radioactive spider, he would've lost all his hair and died in weeks, I'm sure. In finding what's so shocking and distinctive about Watchmen as opposed to what we expect from a "comic book," we learn a lot about what distinguishes our own world....
Definitely one of the hundred most important works of the 20th century.
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Date: 2006-07-14 06:37 pm (UTC)I just finished the chapter where we learn Rorschach's history; I'm not sure which I find more heartbreaking, his or Dr. Manhattan's. Certainly Rorschach led a much more brutal existence, but his exposure to the awful things people do to each other at an early age taught him deal with it by withdrawing and not letting it affect him. (I particularly liked what he did to the girl's kidnapper - nice bit of poetic justice there). Doc Manhattan, on the other hand, was an accident that left him completely bewildered; I think in the end, he suffers more simply because he's never learned to deal with people and events - and now, being no longer human and existing in all these times at once, his chances of learning to deal with it all and still have an identity of his own are pretty much nil.
Also, I think I owe Alan Moore for the phrase "Tijuana Bible" - what an interesting bit of American counterculture. =)