Watchmen
by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons
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| Watchmen Babies | 3 | 05/11/2008 05:36PM |
| Alternate Reality? | 0 | 03/31/2008 11:03PM |
| Alternate Reality? | 2 | 10/02/2007 08:03AM |
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Aaron's been telling me for a long time that I should read a select few of his favorite comic books. And I haven't been avoiding them. But when I'm looking around the house for something to read, I forget to wander over to the comics section. So finally he just made a stack of books for me, and I started with Watchmen.
And within the first few pages I was testing his patience with questions/comments including:
"Why is Rorshach the hero when he's clearly insane?"
"...more
And within the first few pages I was testing his patience with questions/comments including:
"Why is Rorshach the hero when he's clearly insane?"
"...more
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graphicnovels
Read in May, 2007
recommends it for:
people interested in the nature of heroes
I just finished reading 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, about comic books and superheroes should read. Set in an alternate American time line, skewed by th...more
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Read in June, 2008
I've heard nothing but unflinching hyperbolic praise for this book. I wonder if it's even possible for anything to live up to the kind of hype this has suffered. It's the only graphic novel/comic book to be included on Time Magazine's list of 100 greatest novels since the beginning of Time's publication. That's a lot of pressure - to be the sole symbol and representation and of an entire art form for a popular and wide audience. I mean, this thing needs to be devastatingly good.
Forget al...more
Forget al...more
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Read in December, 2007
recommended to Lesliemae by:
Andrew Leskrecommends it for: if you love the anti-hero vigillante.
Each chapter was both a surprise and delight. Simply, I am astonished. Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!
Inscription: (May 2008)
I've been studying for most of the afternoon which means that Erik has needed to be out. We live in a bachelor apartment, so the options for the other person when one needs to read/study can be rather limiting.
While I was reading over Alan Moore's Watchmen, I was considering his message: human ideologies, religious abstractions, and science have all failed us. What was ...more
Inscription: (May 2008)
I've been studying for most of the afternoon which means that Erik has needed to be out. We live in a bachelor apartment, so the options for the other person when one needs to read/study can be rather limiting.
While I was reading over Alan Moore's Watchmen, I was considering his message: human ideologies, religious abstractions, and science have all failed us. What was ...more
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Read in April, 2008
recommended to Elizabeth by:
book group
This is one of those books that I often picked up and looked at, but never read. I'm shallow enough to admit I was turned off by the artwork and lack of recognizable characters. I must say, I am so glad that Watchmen was chosen by one of my book groups, forcing me to get past my first impressions.
Watchmen takes place in alternative universe, where the emergence of costumed adventurers has altered the course of modern history. The superheroes, the majority which are neither supe...more
Watchmen takes place in alternative universe, where the emergence of costumed adventurers has altered the course of modern history. The superheroes, the majority which are neither supe...more
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Read in July, 2008
What with the movie trailer finally out, I thought it'd be time to go through the book again. It's a graphic novel that has an immense history. It's considered to be one of the most important works in the genre in, well, ever. Read any analysis of Watchmen and you'll read that it revolutionized comics. It changed everything.
They're right.
Before I get to the actual story - and it's a formidable story - I want to address the immense technical achievement that is evident in this ...more
They're right.
Before I get to the actual story - and it's a formidable story - I want to address the immense technical achievement that is evident in this ...more
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Read in June, 2008
I am an English teacher at a urban high school. Just this year, I got the go ahead to teach an Intro to Graphic Literature course. Graphic novels are becoming a very important writing form for the 21st century, and I have read some amazing work that is still under the genre title "comic book," a designation that is increasingly becoming outdated.
If you want to look for the Shakespeare of the graphic novel form, look no further than Alan Moore. His other graphic works include V f...more
If you want to look for the Shakespeare of the graphic novel form, look no further than Alan Moore. His other graphic works include V f...more
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Read in January, 2005
Graphic Novel. It's 1985. We won the Vietnam War. Nixon is still president. Someone is killing off costumed superheroes, and the world is on the brink of nuclear war. I wasn't expecting to like this book. What, I wondered, did a comic from the late eighties have to offer me, a hip and happening girl in the oughts? You can practically see the dots in the color! I'd checked it out from the library on the advice of friends, and I'd tried to read it once before, but gave up before I got even five pa...more
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Read in May, 2007
You can call it a graphic novel, but it's really a comic book about superheroes. And that's good, because that's the only way this story could be told! If you're creating a twisted ironic story about comic-book superheroes dealing with the real world, then you also need to be able to mess around with the conventions of the medium where your subjects arose. A novel or play or whatever just wouldn't work as well.
There are some really powerful sections (especially Rorschach's story and its effe...more
There are some really powerful sections (especially Rorschach's story and its effe...more
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Read in July, 2008
Took me a couple of days to read Watchmen from cover to cover. The only reason it took even that long was because of my full-time job and the constant need to reference earlier parts of the story throughout. I don't think any book I've ever read -- textual and comic alike -- demanded so much back-referencing.
There are things going on in the background of almost every panel that have bearing later. Genuine clues to all the various mysteries crop up constantly if you pay close attention. ...more
There are things going on in the background of almost every panel that have bearing later. Genuine clues to all the various mysteries crop up constantly if you pay close attention. ...more
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Read in May, 2008
Watchmen is the only graphic novel to win the Hugo award and is considered one of the works that helped popularize the graphic novel medium. The story takes place in an alternative 1980s, where costumed heroes are real and have heavily influenced the history of the 20th century. Nixon is still president, the U.S. won the Vietnam war, and the U.S. (armed with the time and space controlling super-hero Dr. Manhattan) is winning the Cold War. By the mid-80s, most of the heroes are in retireme...more
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Read in June, 2008
I first heard about this book at a book club meeting, probably almost a year ago now. It basically came with the warning 'It'll change the way you look at comic books forever.'
So then a few months later I'm in Borders trying to burn a coupon, and there it is on the shelf. So I pick it up, and rides around in the back of my car for a month or two.
So I finally get around to reading it, and it's riveting. At first, I get a little confused due to having to think like its 1986 again. But aft...more
So then a few months later I'm in Borders trying to burn a coupon, and there it is on the shelf. So I pick it up, and rides around in the back of my car for a month or two.
So I finally get around to reading it, and it's riveting. At first, I get a little confused due to having to think like its 1986 again. But aft...more
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Who’s watching Watchmen? Everybody apparently. This book—or comic book, or graphic novel, or whatever you want to call it—has been picked apart endlessly in the 20 years since it was first published, every frame microscopically studied, its plot, characters, and symbols charted out no less elaborately than Ulysses’. Its fans, like fans of everything else, are intensely protective and argumentative. Reading a book like this now, for the first time, is likely to result less in actual criti...more
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Read in January, 2006
This was my crash course for Alan Moore books, and admittedly, this kind of spoils the rest of the work I'm told by starting at the top and working my way down.
To put it simply, this is a pretty awesome book. It's not life changing, but it has a depth that many comic books don't get to investigate. The comic book industry pretty much has the comic code infuse morals and ethics into comics for a very long time. Few books were willing to buck it because lots of establishments wouldn't sell any...more
To put it simply, this is a pretty awesome book. It's not life changing, but it has a depth that many comic books don't get to investigate. The comic book industry pretty much has the comic code infuse morals and ethics into comics for a very long time. Few books were willing to buck it because lots of establishments wouldn't sell any...more
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Watchmen by Alan Moore Illustrated by Dave Gibbons
I've wanted to read Watchmen ever since the junior Goth comic book artist kid that we all idolized my freshmen year wore his Watchmen t-shirt to school. For some reason I was too deeply geeked in Batman that year so while I read A Dark Night Returns I missed this. It kept coming up and I kept adding back on my list, but finally when Dan mentioned in Lab the other night that the bumbling cosmonaut who turns into an inept God in...more
I've wanted to read Watchmen ever since the junior Goth comic book artist kid that we all idolized my freshmen year wore his Watchmen t-shirt to school. For some reason I was too deeply geeked in Batman that year so while I read A Dark Night Returns I missed this. It kept coming up and I kept adding back on my list, but finally when Dan mentioned in Lab the other night that the bumbling cosmonaut who turns into an inept God in...more
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Read in May, 2007
recommends it for:
Ricardo
I just finished Alan Moore's classic and seminal Watchmen, the graphic novel that is said to have changed the graphic novel genre and stretched it beyond its former limits. Now THAT one was DARK. It's about former costumed super-heroes who had been forced into retirement by law who are suddenly caught up in a mystery wherein someone seems to be offing the former super crusaders one by one as the apocalypse of the world nears. It's said that the current TV show hit HEROES is loosely based on this...more
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Read in February, 2007
recommends it for:
Fanatical comic book readers
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 were almost ever seen in mainstream comics before. Its effects were massive: it ushered in a new wave of "cool," where Superman and Spider-Man were lame, and everyone wanted murderous an...more
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