The Watchmen

I would like to start off by saying that I did end up enjoying The Watchmen more than I thought I would. I had a number of people comment on the fact that I was reading a comic book, which I in turn replied "No, it's a graphic novel." I had never previously read a comic book or been a fan of them either. However, this was not what I had expected at all.

I will have to agree with the article's author on the book being tiring. After I read what was required for class, I did feel physically tired. I don't know if it was because I was trying to hard or what, but having to interpret and catch everything in the book was laborious. And even though it is a graphic novel, it still took a while to read: it wasn't just looking at the pictures and reading the speech bubbles...I felt like I had to examine every panel.

Also, he talks about the characters and mentions "I am repeatedly seized by how no one character is a hero and that costumes, adrenaline-junkie-genes, super-smarts, and even money don’t make you perfect. That what humans like Dan and I often want, and also fear: a magic wand to fix everything, something that will leave all healthy, happy, untroubled especially when the world seems more for ill than for good." I would also agree here, speaking to the fact that, other than Dr. Manhattan, all of the characters were pretty normal. We discussed in class about them being kind of like Batman, and I think that's a really accurate representation. Alan Moore probably did this intentionally, along with plugging in a number of historical things to increase the story's ability to relate with the reader and keep it from being to large of a stretch.