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 enlarge | Author: Alan Moore
Publisher: Panini Verlags GmbH
Category: Book
This item is no longer available
Avg. Customer Rating:  655 reviews
Sales Rank: 4630513
Format: Import
Media: Paperback
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.3
Dimensions (in): 10.6 x 7 x 1.5
ISBN: 3899219724
EAN: 9783899219722
ASIN: 3899219724
Publication Date: November 1, 2005
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 Who Reads the Watchmen? January 4, 2009
A Band of Heroes that Portray the Essence of Mankind
Well, I enjoyed reading the Watchmen so much that I'm writing about it a second time. Mostly due to my dimwitted need to type fast. I typed so fast that I managed to turn a typo into a flipping keystroke that led me to the first page of this website, and thus, deleted all that I had written for th
e past two hours. But that is neither here nor there.
The Watchmen is a spoof off an array of iconic superheroes, taking place in a world that is more of a dystopia because of the champions. These heroes are a band of special persons who are granted immunity from the law. They are the Watchmen.
According to their time line, the US constantly shoves the Soviet Union diplomatically. For the time being it seems as though the Cold War will have an American victory after her victory in Vietnam. The war in Vietnam was won because of the Watchmen's involvement under the leadership of a living deity, Dr. Manhattan.
But after the war, the Watchmen gradually disbanded and it is only after the murder of the Comedian, do they reunite. The first man to start meeting with members again is Rorschach. He is a bitter man who has suffered the dysfunctional childhood of being son of a prostitute. All his grievances and hardships molded a man of relentless brutality and strive for justice. Such a hero is the byproduct of a society gone to sin. He is conservatively stubborn, extremely vicious, and all sorts of ugly. The epitome of what an innocent boy may become after a life of struggle. He is also the only man who truly wishes to avenge his one-time ally, the Comedian.
The Comedian is a would-be rapist and cold-blooded killer. For years he served his country in war and took whatever spoils he desired. He is the bizarro version of Captain America. Instead of justice, he represents dominance. He is all that is evil with man and is very deserving of his fate for he can never live in a world devoid of war and chaos. It is more of a lover for him than the Vietnamese he knocked-up during the war. Still, he is a brother in arms, but Rorschark cannot avenge such a man without help.
It takes an impotent coward and a sassy redhead to spring Rorschach from prison, after the supposed murderer framed Rorschach. Nite Owl was once a Watchman, but his hero days have been inactive for so long that he has fattened into a simple coward that can barely keep it up in the presence of a beautiful woman. He is a symbol of man's cowardly impotence. Both figuratively and literally. But after a daring rescue of civilians in a fire, and then later Rorschach's liberation from prison, Nite Owl begins to represent mankind's hope.
The beautiful woman previously mentioned is Silk Spectra. She is a witty temptress who acts as the object of both Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan's affection. Streaming along with her beauty, she is also very independent and strong. Though she lusts for passion as well. She is the essence of womanhood, both beautiful and merciless.
After Rorschach's escape, the three come reunite with Dr. Manhattan to find the killer. Though Dr. Manhattan is more an angelic creature than he is human. Suffering from and accidental physics experiment, Dr. Manhattan can manipulate matter and energy to whatever he pleases. He was the reason for such a victorious Cold War, but he could never fully control his emotions. After a past lover was diagnosed with cancer, Dr. Manhattan was blamed for the cause. He exiled himself to the desolate Martian landscape, which allowed the Soviets to take back their superpower status and thus invade Afghanistan. The third world war was imminent. Dr. Manhattan barely knew how to stop it, though he knew the outcome. He can foresee the future, but he cannot stop it. He is both omnipotent and ignorant of all things. The being that man worships, but can never become. God exists, and he's American.
The villain of this epic turns out to be Ozymandias, former member of the Watchmen, and considered to be the smartest man alive. It was he who murdered the Comedian in order to proceed with his master plan. The plan to stave off World War III. It was his brilliance that united the world under cohabitation. It was also his cold-hearted nature that allowed him to make sacrifices for this new world order. His lust for knowledge of things true led him to the solution. Murdering millions in order to trick the populous of an alien threat would end the Cold War in preparation of a galactic war that would never come. Ozymandias does this with his vast knowledge and his massive fortune gained from a series of enterprises that sold-out his life of crime fighting to manufacturing action figures. He is all that represents greed and self-envy. The hero that is corrupt and the villain with good intentions.
In the end, the heroes went along with this grand scheme to unite the world under a peaceful rule. All but Rorschach. Like the Comedian, he did not want to live in this world. And he could not bare the thought of allowing his friend's death to be in vain. Because of this, Dr. Manhattan vaporized the masked hero and left planet earth with his sense of omnipotent superiority. This is both a tragic and legendary tale. So much is dedicated to the theme of world peace. But then it asks at what price and throws the reader into a tale-spin of inner-debate on both morals and principles. Definitely a great read and I highly recommend getting the original story before the movie comes out. Who knows how they will change the story. Hopefully they won't butcher it too much, especially since Frank Miller is directing it. He's proven to be a great director for his works in Sin City, 300, and The Spirit. Still, no one ever knows. Hollywood has a tendency of making heroes corrupt, despite their good intentions.
 One of Great Ones January 4, 2009
One of the first graphic novels a person should read if they are trying them out. A must read for everyone really. Great story and tormented characters
A Graphic Giant... December 31, 2008
This is an awesome book. It is one of those books that lives up to the hype. Believe all the great things you have heard about this comic. Read it before the movie comes out... Don't let your first taste of the Watchmen come second hand from Hollywood...
A Comic Book Masterpiece December 31, 2008
** This review contains minor spoilers. **
In Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's "Watchmen," there is a character called the Comedian who resembles the Joker from "The Dark Knight" in his gleeful contempt for humanity. And he was one of the good guys.
Somewhere in the multiverse, in a realm where superheroes exist, the Keene Act of 1977 outlawed "masked vigilantes," with the exception of those who worked for the United States government. Edward Blake, a.k.a. The Comedian, continued under federal contract, committing atrocities in the Vietnam War, until one day in 1985 he was thrown out his New York City apartment window. One of his few remaining admirers, a jaded rogue known only as Rorschach (once described by Moore as a study in a real-world Batman - the end result is, unfortunately, "a nutcase") becomes convinced that someone is targeting costumed adventurers and sets out to warn his ex-comrades. Things get even shadier after the Comedian's funeral (attended by such notables as the Dan Drieberg, once the Nite Owl II; Doctor Manhattan; Laurie Juspeczyk the second Silk Spectre; and Adrian Veidt, previously called Ozymandias) when godlike superhuman Doctor Manhattan is publicly accused of giving a several of his former associates cancer and subsequently exiles himself to Mars. Once hailed as America's ultimate weapon ("The superman exists and he's American!"), his departure emboldens the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan and plunge the nuclear powers into political instability.
As World War III lurks on the horizon, an ominous conspiracy becomes increasingly apparent, as Veidt is attacked in his office building, Rorschach is framed for murder, and rumors arise of a mysterious island where scientists and avant-garde artists labor together on . . . something. "Watchmen" is best described as a multilayered superhero mystery written as postmodernist metafiction - that is, "writing about writing," or making the artificiality of the art apparent to the reader. As one retired hero (Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl) recalls in his memoir: "For me, it all started in 1938, the year when they invented the super-hero. I was too old for comic books when the first issue of ACTION COMICS came out, or at least too old to read them in public . . . There was a lot of stuff in that first issue. There were detective yarns and stories about magicians whose names I can't remember, but from the moment I set eyes on it I had eyes only for the Superman story." Pastiche is also evident in the snippets of magazine interviews, newspaper articles, and book excerpts that precede each chapter and frame the costumed adventurers of this alternate 1980s in their greater social context. Mason's nostalgic recollections of Superman's cheery can-do moral absolutism later become a moment of sadness, almost, as the contrast to the chaos of the present is increasingly apparent. A dark supernatural pirate story called "The Black Freighter" that recurs throughout "Watchmen" as a comic in a comic reflects the current mood far more accurately. Its crazed protagonist kills his wife in her bed in a deluded attempt to save her from murderous buccaneers, not unlike the "Watchmen" villain, who "saves" the world by slaughtering half of New York City.
Not surprisingly, "Watchmen" is, above all, an attempt to deconstruct the superhero myth. But overall, it is humanity that drives "Watchmen": humanity at its best and at its worst. I read Boccaccio's "The Decameron" and found myself amused at how little our nature has changed since the fourteenth century (our capacity for crude humor certainly seems thoroughly undiminished). But today (and in the 1980s) there is a new paradox: that of technology, which has given us superhuman powers to both move the earth and to destroy it. "All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance," as T.S. Eliot once said. Exemplifying this is Doctor Manhattan, accidental post-human entity created, as many superheroes such as Spiderman have been, by chance exposure to something out of a laboratory. Now add that the emerging postmodernist worldview - which is inherently nebulous, unstable, and even nihilistic - and what is the result? That, I believe, is what "Watchmen" really explores.
In short: "Watchmen" a visually striking, superbly-written graphic novel, but definitely not breezy reading. Moore and Gibbons may have built their story on a genre that has historically centered on good triumphing over evil, but their updated vision has none of Superman's rose-tinted valiance. Because the real world is rarely so pretty.
 Not your average, run-of-the-mill comic book December 31, 2008
"Watchmen" was originally published as a limited series of 12 comics in the mid-1980's and these 12 comics are reprinted together in this one book. It is considered by many to be the "greatest" graphic novel of all time, but I personally did not care for it.
The main thing that I did not like about "Watchmen" is that it takes to long to get to the "main story". The first half of the story is primarily composed of the histories of many of the main characters (each of these earlier stories is structured in a very similar style to an average episode of "Lost" and it is not surprising that one of the recommendations on the back cover of my copy of "Watchmen" comes from one of the co-creators of "Lost"). After that, much of the next quarter deals with the personal relationships between the superheroes. It is only in the final quarter that the main story really comes to the fore. I understand that one of the reasons why many people consider this to be a great novel is because it does deal with the histories and personal lives of these characters, but I personally felt that they were overdone. Nine comics of this sort of material was just too much for me.
When the main story, about a conspiracy to bring about a major disaster (which I won't go into details about, so as not to spoil it), does come to the fore, however, the story improves greatly. I really enjoyed the final three comics. I thought they were exciting and original and I liked many of the issues raised by the motives of the story's "villain", except I found the very end of the story to be disappointing (I felt that there should have been more) and had I been buying this novel one issue per month, I probably would have given up long before I got to that point.
Overall, I agree with all of the other reviewers who state that this is not your average, run-of-the-mill comic book. However, if you are thinking of buying this, keep in mind that because of that fact, it might not be for you.
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