I liked it okay. The literary significance aside, which matters not one bit to me, I basically felt distracted all throughout reading this. You've got a rape casually tossed in, but it's not explored enough to seem necessary. You've got a child's essay that very briefly touches upon Truman's use of the atomic bomb. You've got a tomboy, sexually confused taxi driver and her lesbian girlfriend. You've got the "world's smartest man" making typos in a memo (that, or an incredibly lazy publisher). You've got this strange pirate aside, a very clumsy analogy to one of the novel's main characters. I could go on and on, listing these rough edges, these spiky unnecessary appendages on a beast that is gruesome and terrible and otherwise a delight to behold.

Some may call these details an essential part of fully realizing the world - and you should make no mistake, Watchmen is real and gritty and believable - but I found them distracting. Every time I came upon the sections involving the newsstand seller (and the aforementioned pirate "comic within a comic"), I groaned my frustration. So very clearly symbolic and so very clearly meant to represent a sort of common man perspective - it was just awkward.

So I give it 3 stars out of 5. It's good, possibly great, but I'm too young to have been blown away by its cultural significance. I liken it best to watching Star Wars. Earth breaking then, but now...? The effects are dated and the script is clunky.