Watchmen Comic Review

When I headed to Lake Tahoe a while ago, I brought along some reading material in case the weather was not adequate enough for skiing. Instead of opening the book my brother gifted me, I spent a fair amount of time revisiting a book he had borrowed from a friend. Now that I have perused its contents to make them fresh in my mind, I can talk more about the critically acclaimed comic series Watchmen and give my review.

Watchmen is a story that challenged the comic book conventions of its time and still manages some relevance in the following century. From what I understand, comic writer Alan Moore wanted to write a series involving characters DC Comics recently acquired, but when DC balked at that idea, Moore and artist Dave Gibbons built a world in which people based on those characters fought crime as costumed vigilantes until a person with actual superpowers appeared and Congress passed a law , the Keene Act, banning costumed crimefighting. The backdrop to the story is an impending nuclear disaster caused by Cold War era mutually assured destruction and the societal decay from the lack of investment in civilian infrastructure. The antagonist of the series seeks to solve this problem, and one vigilante still working despite the law’s passage finds out about the plot. I suppose I should mention that in this universe, President Richard Nixon changed the Constitution to remove term limits and is still in office in the 1980s, the superhero Dr. Manhattan allowed the United States to win the Vietnam War, and Lee Harvey Oswald probably did not assassinate JFK. Somehow the story gets even crazier.

To be honest, the overall plot of Watchmen is particularly corny. One of the main characters pulls off a grand scheme that causes the United States and the Soviet Union to end the Cold War to combat a greater threat to humanity. However, in order to pull off the plan, the comic requires existence of advanced genetic engineering and genuine psychic powers, the latter of which is only mentioned in supporting materials until the antagonist reveals the plot’s details to the other characters. The genetic engineering is properly foreshadowed, but the comic deliberately develops a horror out of a science fiction B-movie and expects the people of the world to take it seriously. Then again, when the superpowered Dr. Manhattan exists and is working for the United States government, it is within the realm of possibility that the world leaders would react in this fashion.

On the other hand, the characters in the story and the supporting materials make this comic a classic. Between chapters that advance the plot, Moore and Gibbons develop issues to dive into the backstories of the principal characters. You learn why the Comedian and Rorschach act horribly in their lines of duty, why the first Silk Spectre pines reminisces about a past her daughter, who succeeded her in vigilantism, wants never to recall, and why the superman Dr. Manhattan acts distantly toward his peers. In addition to studying the characters, the series compilation includes extra pieces like excerpts from Under the Hood, the story of the first costumed crimefighting organization formed after the Great War. Read them to find out about the second Nite Owl’s interest in the nocturnal raptors and the contents of the tabloid that Rorschach reads regularly. When I revisited the series, I especially liked how the comic interweaved a pirate story into the main narrative. It seemed almost impossible to bring the tale in adapting Watchmen for other mediums, and only through close inspection did I find out what was going on in the story and why it related to the journey of one of the main characters.

The comic series Watchmen is a great read that deconstructs a world of costumed heroes and takes on a life of its own. Its darker take on the subject material when it was originally published influenced following works even though the grander scheme sounds like it comes from a Republic serial villain. Take a look at the series, and be advised that a second reading might be necessary in order to understand foreshadowing and key character interactions. You could watch the movie too, but the comic form brings depth that in my opinion would only be found in a graphic novel.