Watchmen by Alan Moore (NO spoilers)

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Finally picked up Alan Moore's Watchmen. I'm pretty excited to get into it, the way I've seen som of you guys rave about it...
 
Great. Can't wait to hear what you think of it.
 
E, get ready to be knocked out by teh sheer awesome ness of this book.
It is so awesome, you will finish it and say: "Man this is awesome", then walk up to Baby E and say: "Man Baby E, this is awesome!" then walk up to Wife E and say "Man Wife E, this is awesome" then if you have any other kids, you'll walk up to them and say "Man any oother kids E, this is awesome" and all the other kids E will feel unhappy cos you told them last about how awesome it was.
 
GMaster said:
E, get ready to be knocked out by teh sheer awesome ness of this book.
It is so awesome, you will finish it and say: "Man this is awesome", then walk up to Baby E and say: "Man Baby E, this is awesome!" then walk up to Wife E and say "Man Wife E, this is awesome" then if you have any other kids, you'll walk up to them and say "Man any oother kids E, this is awesome" and all the other kids E will feel unhappy cos you told them last about how awesome it was.
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...Eh. It's okay. It's certainly no V for Vendetta or even Moore's earlier work on Swamp Thing. I respect it as a monumental work for comics, but its in the same place for me as The Dark Knight Returns. Monumental for its time, but not the writers best work.

It is good though, just so damn hard to live up to the hype people like GM here put on it.
 
It's very good, but it reminded me more of a novel with pictures than a comic. Definitely in its own class as a work of literature, and very well written, but it is no comic book by any means.

You'll see what I mean. It's a piece of literature with social commentary.
 
There are so many cool hints in Watchmen, well, not cool, but hints.
Rorschach in left handed, and when he hasn't got his costume on on the first page we see him check his watch, which is on his right hand, proving he is Rorshcach.
 
Guijllons said:
Vendetta is good, but it's hardly as multilayered as this book, and the vendetta ending was particularly naff i thought. Way too obvious.
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Watchen is just too damn... dense. Its beyond multilayered, to the point that I felt that if I didn't catch everything then I'm somehow missing out on the bestparts of the story. Yes, V's ending was obvious, but it also fit perfectly. A less obvious end would have done nothing but serve to convolute the messages of the story. And honestly, as an american living in a partiot act inspired world V resonated with me. If you pay attention to your suroundings then its hard not to be afraid, and even worse when you realise as an individual theres very little you can do to change things. Thats why I enjoyed V more than Watchmen.

And his Swamp Thing was just the ****, especialy the Crisis tie in bits.
 
GMaster said:
Err, well...you know it is a Graphic Novel, right?
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man, you know what I mean!

It was originally in comic form, but it reads more like a novel.
 
I have to say... I preferred V for Vendetta over Watchmen. In fact, I prefer Promethea too. But Watchmen is the finer work.
 
I'm halfway through this now. Very interesting. It's weird though, I feel bad because I don't think I'm getting the full effect of what this book was and what it accomplished because it's been copied so many times.
 
I've read the first issue and am halfway through the second.
 
UltimateE said:
I'm halfway through this now. Very interesting. It's weird though, I feel bad because I don't think I'm getting the full effect of what this book was and what it accomplished because it's been copied so many times.
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It has been copied a lot, but the density of the subplots certainly hasn't been emulated. As I mentioned before, if you have some knowledge of the politics behind comics surrounding the golden age a lot of what is written about really fleshes out.
 
Guijllons said:
It has been copied a lot, but the density of the subplots certainly hasn't been emulated. As I mentioned before, if you have some knowledge of the politics behind comics surrounding the golden age a lot of what is written about really fleshes out.
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I can see that. I was talking specifically about Ultimates, and while Ultimates means more to me because of how much it improved characters I already liked, you're right - even halfway though there is so much depth to this book that I don't think anything could touch it.
 
I've read Watchmen through at least fifteen times, and each time I do I find something new I didn't notice before. There are SO many little details sprinkled throughout it. The only other work I can think off offhand that I would put on the same tier with it in terms of detailed density is From Hell. But then again, I'm a sucker for historical fiction ;).
 
I got this last week. Pretty damn good, but like Baxter said, I'm not sure I caught everything of the story. I'm thinking about geting V for Vendetta and some more of Moore's work soon.
 
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