Avg. Customer Rating:(based on 655 reviews) Sales Rank: 45 Category: Book
Author:Alan Moore Publisher:DC Comics Studio:DC Comics Manufacturer:DC Comics Label:DC Comics Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published) Media: Paperback Number Of Items: 1 Pages: 416 Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2 Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 6.6 x 0.9
Product Description This Hugo Award-winning graphic novel chronicles the fall from grace of a group of super-heroes plagued by all-too-human failings. Along the way, the concept of the super-hero is dissected as the heroes are stalked by an unknown assassin.
One of the most influential graphic novels of all time and a perennial bestseller, WATCHMEN has been studied on college campuses across the nation and is considered a gateway title, leading readers to other graphic novels such as V FOR VENDETTA, BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and THE SANDMAN series.
Amazon.com Review Has any comic been as acclaimed as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen? Possibly only Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, but Watchmen remains the critics' favorite. Why? Because Moore is a better writer, and Watchmen a more complex and dark and literate creation than Miller's fantastic, subversive take on the Batman myth. Moore, renowned for many other of the genre's finest creations (Saga of the Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, and From Hell, with Eddie Campbell) first put out Watchmen in 12 issues for DC in 1986-87. It won a comic award at the time (the 1987 Jack Kirby Comics Industry Awards for Best Writer/Artist combination) and has continued to gather praise since.
The story concerns a group called the Crimebusters and a plot to kill and discredit them. Moore's characterization is as sophisticated as any novel's. Importantly the costumes do not get in the way of the storytelling; rather they allow Moore to investigate issues of power and control--indeed it was Watchmen, and to a lesser extent Dark Knight, that propelled the comic genre forward, making "adult" comics a reality. The artwork of Gibbons (best known for 2000AD's Rogue Trooper and DC's Green Lantern) is very fine too, echoing Moore's paranoid mood perfectly throughout. Packed with symbolism, some of the overlying themes (arms control, nuclear threat, vigilantes) have dated but the intelligent social and political commentary, the structure of the story itself, its intertextuality (chapters appended with excerpts from other "works" and "studies" on Moore's characters, or with excerpts from another comic book being read by a child within the story), the finepace of the writing and its humanity mean that Watchmen more than stands up--it keeps its crown as the best the genre has yet produced. --Mark Thwaite
Excellent very very Excellent January 6, 2009 This is a great story. The characters in this story are amazing. Each is compelling and there is no clear winner or loser. I love this story.
Mindblowing January 6, 2009 I've never read a graphic novel before, but Watchmen certainly earned my praise. The interweaving plots and exceptional storyline succeeds at getting inside the readers head. It makes us question what we all believe about society. Can't wait to read it again.
AMAZING!!! January 6, 2009 I've read this book a couple years ago and have recently re-reead it when I heard the movie was coming out. This book really might be the greatest story ever told in the graphic novel medium. AMAZING!!!
Great graphic novel! January 6, 2009 Really a fantastic story that couldn't be told any other way than graphic novel format. I can't wait to see the movie!
Loses It Allure with Age & Multiple Readings January 4, 2009 5 out of 8 found this review helpful
Okay, I realize that w/out Alan Moore, the road for a genius such as Neil Gaiman would have been more difficult. No doubt Moore helped pave the way for those who would take comic books to greater heights, exploring the medium's potential to its fullest.
I'm not sure TIME MAGAZINE put THE best "graphic novel" on its list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. Without a doubt, the collected volumes of Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN would be more worthy of inclusion...same for Art Spiegelman's MAUS.
I've read all three (WATCHMEN, entire SANDMAN series & MAUS) an equal number of times. With SANDMAN and MAUS, I always discover something newly unknown and magical with each repeated reading. With WATCHMEN I tend to see more of its warts & flaws with each reading.
Gaiman and Spiegelman have an ear for poetic prose and dialogue. By comparison, though dense and laden with many words, Moore's style of writing is often so verbose, as though a lack of brevity will equal a profound statement. It doesn't. Often less is more...and this is a lesson that Moore, even after all these years, has yet to master.
Finally, when dealing with writers such as Neil Gaiman or Art Spiegleman (and there are dozens of others whom I could mention, but felt it simpler to limit comparisons to these two accomplished writers in comics), one feels that they often bring out the nightmarish and horrific in order to shine a light on what is, essentially, the better angels within humanity. And both writers DO enter into dark & disturbing terrain.
By contrast, one gets the feeling that Moore sometimes pontificates on the importance of humanity as a cheap vehicle to go full guns into his disturbing mind and world. Acts of grace...when they occur in Moore's work...seem to exist only to remind his readers that the world is not entirely one of no god, no hope, no future. However, if given his way, I get the feeling that Moore would happily skip the better angels of humanity and would dwell entirely in the abyss.
After having lived with WATCHMEN for over twenty years, it is a flawed, bloated and pompous work...more an exercise in histrionics rather than a work that sheds anything new on humans (be they costumed, with super-powers, or otherwise). It does not hold up nearly as well as the works of Gaiman or Spiegleman. TIME magazine picked the wrong token graphic novel to include in its 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.
When I read MAUS, I wish that I had Spiegleman's knack for pathos and natural dialogue. When I read Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN (or just about any of Gaiman's work), I wish that I had Gaiman's extensive knowledge of myth, archtypes, religions, symbols and literature (as well as his eloquence in both narrative and dialogue). When I read Alan Moore (whether it's WATCHMEN or V FOR VENDETTA or LOST GIRLS)...I pretty much find myself forever grateful that I'm not Alan Moore.
I don't mind that Moore tackles disturbing topics. More than anything, I resent when Moore...with all the people skills of a misanthrope...exploits tender human situations (which, in Moore's hands, feel completely void of any sincerity/empathy) for the sole purpose of making his bleak, nihilsitic vision all the more potent.
We get it, Alan...the world is a place where there be dragons. It's why you seldom leaves you small town in England (and will do your research through books rather than ever visit the settings with which he writes with the false authority of a self-appointed expert). Fine, Alan. Just leave the goodness and grace of humans out of your tomes. Humanity and grace serve a higher purpose than the way you exploit them...as a vessel to merely offer a dichotomy/diversion to the demons that drive you.
What's written above would also apply to Frank Miller...
Gaiman/Spiegleman and Moore/Miller...one may as well say "the sacred and the profane."
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