Watchmen ( Graphic Novel )
B +
I hate giving so many B+’s and thinning it’s quality, but this is exactly how I felt this book needed to be rated. First and foremost, I love Watchmen. I thought it was a fun, quick, engaging read. Any book that makes the reader think critically and entertains them at the same time is automatically a winner in my opinion. Structurally speaking, Watchmen is perfect. It moves along swiftly, doesn’t waste any time on extraneous matter, and hits all the right moments in terms of action, dialogue, and plot. What the book lacks, however, like many almost perfect works, is real subtlety.
Many would argue for one of two counterpoints to this statement. One, that this is a graphic novel, and that this medium doesn’t, and maybe even can’t, call for subtlety. This is a superhero book after all, and not a piece of classic literature. Two, that this book actually is subtle in it’s subplots and secondary meanings within dialogue.
Let me address both of these arguments. This is a superhero book, sure, but not a very typical one. We have one person with “super” powers, who basically acts as a stand in for God. He is the questioner of all the themes of this book. Even when he isn’t narrating, he is the narrator. A being that can do anything he wants in any time period at any moment. He walks on water in one of the last frames of the book. He has seen strings and quarks and neutrinos. If he questions materialism then so should we. Besides him, who like I said, basically acts as a means to raise important questions, we have basically a crime novel where the detectives wear costumes. One of the central themes is the examination of superheroes and superhero comic books. This is in many ways a slap in the face to the 50 years of comics before it. Nothing about this book is over the top, except it’s opinions. Being subtle would’ve fit the structure perfectly. Secondly, this book isn’t subtle in it’s various chapter breaks or Black Freighter comic-inside-a-comic. I will get into that later.
What is good about this book? The character development, the illustrations, the pacing, the ease at which it is read. Everything makes sense, and everything flows. The concepts are all there. The universe is well defined, and easily believed. The gadgets and toys are all real. The fights seem real, the costumes are practical to a point. Every character that is introduced is closed out by the end of it. We are left with no strings to tie up on our own. Well, one big one at the end, but this is just a summation of the theme of the book, and is very predictable. You’ll see what I mean when you get there. Otherwise though, this is a nice, tight work. Everyone should read it as it only takes about 3 or 4 hours.
What is not so great about it? It won’t change your life, that’s for sure. Without reveleaing too much about the plot, which is difficult, suffice it to say that at no point should anything that is happening in the book’s panels confuse you. Their double and sometimes triple meanings are either abudantly clear, or delicately explained very shortly after they occur. Moore wants us to think ultiamtely about Morality. Even if we are presented with the questioning of superheroes, authority, determinism, and much, much more, at the center of it all is Moore’s highly exagerated views on the moral code. Each character is given an incredibly entertaining, often tragic, backstory to explain WHY they are the way they are, but in the end, they stand at different points along the moral spectrum. One character will do what is morally right (which again, may be in question) all the time, regardless of the “ends”, whereas another character will do what is universally right in the end, regardless of the “means”. This dynamic sets us up for a struggle that falls just short of being extremely gratifying. In many ways though, Moore wants the ending to not quite get where we want it to. This is, after all, a very blatant criticism of what we formally knew as comics.
In the end (if anything ever really ends), I am thoroughly impressed with this book. Like most things, a little overhyped, but a worthy read. I don’t like Moore’s opinions in my face, and it’s clear that he sympathizes most with Roarshach over everyone else. This is where the points come off. Moore almost pulls off tricking us into thinking that all these characters have equally valid points, but we know that he doesn’t really think so. He has an opinion. Many in fact. He has an opinion about politics, about the economy, about the human condition, about the nature of man, about god and about determinism, and most importantly, about what it means to be moral in an immoral world. So do I, and while I may agree with Roarshach or not, I don’t snidely write graphic novels about it - yet.
