Watchmen

I've heard from almost everyone that Watchmen is superb, the pinnacle of comics as a medium, a work of art, except for one person whose opinion I respect, although he doesn't exactly appreciate the medium at all, so I took that with a grain of salt. My previous experience with Alan Moore was familiarity with V for Vendetta from seeing the movie (which he unjustly hated) and reading some of the book, with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen from seeing the movie (which he also hated, considerably more justly), and with the fact that he looks like a psychopath who lives in the woods. With all of these conceptions jammed into my brain, I jumped into Watchmen, and proceeded to thoroughly enjoy, although not completely love most of it.

It's certainly not a normal comic, concerned more with developing its unique characters than setting up elaborate fight scenes. Throughout the entire twelve issue run, I can think of only one instance where large amounts of space were used only to visually express a scene, and that was at a point of great impact in the story. It's very dense with dialogue and information, although they do a good job of revealing things without just spelling it out the whole time or getting too expository. Each issue (or "chapter") except for the last ends with four pages of almost entirely text that enhances the story, consisting of documents or something that were written by characters within the fiction. While sometimes enlightening, I found these portions to be a little boring and sometimes only skimmed them if I was anxious to get back to the narrative.

The story has its twists and turns, and to be honest, what turns out to be the actual truth behind it all is quite a bit stranger than I was expecting. It all works fine, it's just weird. The focus is a bit less on plot though than it is on the characters, with Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan, and Silk Spectre II getting the most focus, although the Comedian is quite vital despite being dead at the very beginning. Rorschach is my personal favorite, which I think is true for most fans of the book. With Bioshock's success, objectivism has seen more attention in pop culture lately, but Rorschach was all about that years ago. He believes absolutely in his values and will do anything to uphold them. In addition to strong writing, the book is also quite interesting visually, not just because of the solid art, but the creative ways they transition between scenes and into flashbacks, that sort of thing. It's a good blueprint for a film adaptation, and they're filming one right now, with 300 director Zack Snyder at the helm. I'll be looking forward to how that comes out, although I'm sure Moore will hate that too.