Watchmen, Hmm
At the risk of geek expulsion I have to admit that upon finishing reading Watchmen this week I was pretty much indifferent to it all. The quotes on the back cover of my copy range from “the greatest piece of popular fiction ever produced — Damon Lindleloff” to “Time’s 100 Greatest Books Ever Written.” High praise, and maybe I am coming at this twenty-five years too late, but I found the whole thing to be a little plodding.
It’s clear Watchmen took comics in a more sophisticated and adult direction, coining the phrase “graphic novel” and its influence is clear to see in shows like Heroes and Lost, but for me it didn’t have enough story. It’s a character piece, a comic noir, a whoddunit. I just wasn’t that taken with it. I’ve been wrong before, though, and I’m probably wrong in this instance too, but them’s the breaks.
All I know is the Watchmen movie currently in production is going to have a hard time finding an audience, if it’s faithful to the comic. I can’t imagine this appealing to the current crop of comic book loving moviegoers. However, just as the comic ushered in a new plain with the aforementioned graphic novel, maybe the movie will usher in a new plateau for comic book films. Time will tell.
I liked it, I just didn’t love it. (Don’t hate me.)
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Don’t feel “wrong” for not liking or “getting” Watchmen. I think I mentioned when you first started reading it, it’s this really, really dense deconstruction of superhero comics of the ’70s and early ’80s and without understanding that context, i.e. without having read a lot of the comics from that era, it’s a really difficult story to get into.
Yes, it’s a dark, brooding, whodunnit noir with superheroes, but on a deeper level it’s a huge meta-criticism of the superhero comic book industry with layer upon layer of meaning. I mean, Watchmen is taught in university classes as a work of literary fiction, so don’t beat yourself up or apologize for not caring for it.
I haven’t read the book for a few years now. I suppose I should go through it again before the movie comes out. I honestly don’t see how it can a) work as a film, or b) make any money. It’s pretty far from mainstream comic books like Superman and Spider-Man, which have huge built-in audiences on name-recognition alone. Watchmen is really obscure to even mainstream comic book readers, let alone the even more general movie-going public, and it’s really only fawned over by the elite nerdarati. I wish Snyder and his production all the best, and I hope they give us a good, entertaining film, but I’m going to be skeptical until the day it opens.
One thing these comic book (any adaptations, really) movies need to understand and remember: there’s such a thing as being TOO faithful to the source material.
dave g - April 26, 2008 at 6:01 pm
“Watchmen is really obscure… and it’s really only fawned over by the elite nerdarati.”
Good gravy! This has been well selling novel for over 20 years. Someone other than nerds must be reading all those copies! I’m AVIDLY following the production of Zack Snyder’s adaptation, which looks very well done by the way. They’re following the book very closely, but with some careful cutting and pruning.
I do agree that Watchmen is dense and difficult material, not to everyone’s taste. However before you decide that you don’t like it, read it again. There are, as Dave says, many layers that you just won’t catch the first, or even second (or third!) time through.
jdsgirlbev - April 26, 2008 at 6:59 pm
I would read it again if I was compelled to, alas I don’t feel the need. There were things about I that I didn’t “get” for instance the adrift pirate.
I feel it set up a great set of characters and then just left them there after a pretty slight story.
Kevin - April 26, 2008 at 7:36 pm
“This has been well selling novel for over 20 years. Someone other than nerds must be reading all those copies!”
I won’t argue your point, I’ll just say that in my experience (comic book reader for nearly 20 years now; manager of a comic book store for a couple of years; interned with a comic book company very recently - not bragging, merely illustrating my credentials on the subject), while lots of people have obviously read Watchmen, they’ve done so because everyone else has read it. That is, people aren’t necessarily reading it for its merits, only to say that they’ve done so, so they won’t feel left out.
When I managed the comic book store, lots of people would come in who had never really been comic book readers and they wanted to read Watchmen, because they’d heard all this great stuff about it, and then they’d come back a couple weeks later and, like our dear Mr. Lehane, they’d sort of like the book but not really “get” it, which is not to say they can’t get it, but it takes a lot of time and knowledge about the history of the medium. Hell, I first read the book 10 or 15 years ago and reread it many times since and I still don’t get half of what Moore was trying to say.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is, Watchmen is not an easy book to read for one of your first comics, and I wouldn’t recommend to any new comic readers that they read Watchmen right away. For every cover blurb that raves about it being “the greatest piece of popular fiction ever produced,” there are dozens of people who would absolutely disagree.
dave g - April 26, 2008 at 7:49 pm
You got me.
The few comics I read as a kid were in passing, so I guess I am absolutely the wrong person to read Watchmen. I just felt for it to be so special it would have been accessible to all. Not so, it seems.
Kevin - April 26, 2008 at 7:56 pm