<![CDATA[Watchmen]]>

false <![CDATA[Watchmen]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1238274511m/472331.jpg 472331 25 Has any comic been as acclaimed as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen? Possibly only Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, but Watchmen remains the critics' favorite. Why? Because Moore is a better writer, and Watchmen a more complex and dark and literate creation than Miller's fantastic, subversive take on the Batman myth. Moore, renowned for many other of the genre's finest creations (Saga of the Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, and From Hell, with Eddie Campbell) first put out Watchmen in 12 issues for DC in 1986-87. It won a comic award at the time (the 1987 Jack Kirby Comics Industry Awards for Best Writer/Artist combination) and has continued to gather praise since. The story concerns a group called the Crimebusters and a plot to kill and discredit them. Moore's characterization is as sophisticated as any novel's. Importantly the costumes do not get in the way of the storytelling; rather they allow Moore to investigate issues of power and control--indeed it was Watchmen, and to a lesser extent Dark Knight, that propelled the comic genre forward, making "adult" comics a reality. The artwork of Gibbons (best known for 2000AD's Rogue Trooper and DC's Green Lantern) is very fine too, echoing Moore's paranoid mood perfectly throughout. Packed with symbolism, some of the overlying themes (arms control, nuclear threat, vigilantes) have dated but the intelligent social and political commentary, the structure of the story itself, its intertextuality (chapters appended with excerpts from other "works" and "studies" on Moore's characters, or with excerpts from another comic book being read by a child within the story), the finepace of the writing and its humanity mean that Watchmen more than stands up--it keeps its crown as the best the genre has yet produced. --Mark Thwaite 4358649 book 1986 Watchmen total:30392|5:15932|4:9490|3:3784|2:934|1:252| 30392 131092 38272 4648 2 41 false true Sun Dec 09 15:50:23 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 09 15:54:23 -0800 2007 more...]]> 2 37 false false Sat Aug 09 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Aug 11 20:13:38 -0700 2008 Mon Aug 11 20:20:19 -0700 2008
I ain’t knocking that. Imaginat...more...]]> 1 21 false false Wed Jul 23 03:44:35 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 23 06:50:09 -0700 2008
To be fair, I'm somewhat of a snob...more...]]> 5 17 false true Mon Mar 16 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Mar 25 15:35:49 -0700 2008 Mon Mar 16 10:14:33 -0700 2009 17 Alan Moore was trying to say with Watchmen, discussions about the meaning of his graphic novel, and I am convinced that the mean...more...]]> 5 14 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Fri Aug 17 23:29:54 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 24 18:02:32 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 18 false false Thu Apr 16 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Feb 07 18:49:32 -0800 2009 Thu Apr 16 21:14:44 -0700 2009 ...more...]]> 5 7 false true Thu Feb 26 19:46:22 -0800 2009 Tue Oct 14 07:27:57 -0700 2008 Thu Feb 26 19:46:22 -0800 2009
Rorshack says in chapter 2, "Nothing is hopeless. Not while there's life." Extremely interesting considering the source.

Hollis Mason in his autobiography: "Real life is messy, inconsistent, and it's seldo...more...]]> 5 8 false false Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1988 Fri Sep 05 17:17:17 -0700 2008 Tue Jun 16 22:20:16 -0700 2009
My friends ...more...]]> 4 8 false false Sat Jun 16 08:03:23 -0700 2007 Sat Jun 16 08:03:23 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 7 false false Tue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat May 12 06:15:39 -0700 2007 Sat May 12 07:35:28 -0700 2007 Watchmen by the very intense Alan Moore of V for Vendetta fame. I've been on a bit of a comic book/graphic novel kick recently after completing a whole host of non-fiction work for use in my Master's thesis. The Watchmen is one of those books that anyone who cares, or cared, ...more...]]> 1 7 false false Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Thu Aug 09 11:35:04 -0700 2007 Wed Jul 23 09:33:42 -0700 2008 The Watchmen is considered one of the most important comic books in history. The costumes are less spectacular, the origins more bleak, the heroes more despicable and/or self-loathing, the villains almost non-existent, the relationships more strained and the political overtones more blatant than wer...more...]]> 4 5 false false Mon Jun 09 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat May 31 09:55:47 -0700 2008 Tue Jun 10 07:33:58 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 5 false false Sun Dec 09 16:41:53 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 09 16:42:53 -0800 2007
Seriously its one of those blessed rereadings where every twenty pages or so I come across a sequence and go "Yeah I remember thi...more...]]> 4 5 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Mar 03 07:34:34 -0800 2009 Tue Mar 03 07:44:37 -0800 2009 Sandman, but they were largely drowned out by the chorus for this piece. (Piece? Book doesn't feel right.)

It did take me a little bit to adjust my...more...]]> 3 6 false false Sun Mar 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Jan 25 09:22:39 -0800 2009 Sat Mar 28 14:41:35 -0700 2009 passé. Since the costumed adventurers of the 30s and 40s called The Minutemen disbanded in the 50s, masked vigilantes became increasingly un...more...]]> 5 6 false false Tue Nov 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Sun May 13 19:13:46 -0700 2007 Tue Apr 21 16:13:01 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 4 false false Fri Mar 13 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 11 20:59:10 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 15 08:42:43 -0700 2009 Watchmen when I was twelve years old. That doesn't mean that I had to be twelve to like it, but that would have been how old I would have been when these first came out. Instead of reading them then I was a pretty lo...more...]]> 5 4 false false Mon Jan 26 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 16 13:08:30 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 29 10:55:59 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 4 false false Thu Feb 05 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 28 13:37:11 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 05 20:50:34 -0800 2009
This is not a comic book for those who want their...more...]]> 2 4 false false Thu Jan 01 16:58:29 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 01 17:40:12 -0800 2009 Watchmen didn't really do anything for me. In fact, I was so "meh" about it that I had to go do some research in order to see if I could figure out just why, exactly, it's so acclaimed.
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