Who watches the Watchmen?

I haven't read any comics for ages. Four days ago, I went to the store, and I saw a giant box set called Absolute Watchmen. The smiley face with the blood on it really caught my attention. The box claimed that it was one of the best comics ever. I didn't want to spend $75 for this version of it so I got a cheaper version of it. After reading the back of the book, I knew that this was the right book for me. Fantastic reviews by well known people, one of Time Magazine's top best novels of the past century? And all of this for a comic book!

I've always pretty much thought that graphic novels were kiddo compilations of super heroes like Batman or Superman, it was obvious that the whole world and the super hero would triumph at the end of the book. This book isn't like that, the theme is so dark and the people are so corrupt that it feels as if there's no doubt something bad's going to happen to some of the super heroes. It almost feels odd to call them super heroes, since some of the actions they've done in the past are stuff that I'm not sure is allowed to be published on Epinions.

Watchmen is about retired super heroes called the minutemen. In the first scene, the super hero known as the comedian is shown being pushed out of a window. The mystery is a simple one of who dunnit. The Comedian obviously had his secret identity, so why would someone kill him? Well, more and more through the world, this group of young, (mostly in they're 30's-50's) super heroes have been dying. They need to find who's killing these super heroes, and why! It's not all that easy to do this though, because at the same time, the Russians are invading Afghanistan and there are threats of World War III. The people of New York start to rebel and riots break out on the streets. Everyone in the story seems to be corrupt, you hear of children killing parents. You hear of parents killing children. You hear of gangs beating up old men. You see one character chopping a dog.... Alan Moore really gets this point out that everyone in this time period is corrupt an evil. The superheroes can be evil, the seemingly nice people can be evil, this one thing that makes the story so great, it's so unpredictable because you don't know if someones going to stab someone in the back.

When you think about super heroes what do you think of? Well, I think of Superman flying around, or Spiderman using his web to capture bad dudes. Well, the Super Heroes in this book are nothing like that. This book has very little action, until pretty much the last few chapters. Not to say that that isn't exciting, but it really feels like instead of reading, and watching, a super hero comic, you are reading a drama/mystery.

The members of the group that you will be encountering the most are:

The Comedian: A pretty sadistic "superhero." He beats women, (and worse), and there is one scene where he shoots a pregnant woman, (this is not a book for those who can't stand stuff like this, but this scene, besides a dog beating scene will probably make you cringe the most). As you travel through the story, you really get the thoughts of every person in the group's opinion on him, and really everyone hated him, but they still went to his funeral, (which starts at the beginning of the book).

Rorschach: My favorite in the story. Rorschach talks in a monotone voice, and has no facial expressions, that is, when you see his face. His face is always covered by an cloth that looks like an inkblot, hence the name, Rorschach. He's very mysterious and you know that his mind has a million things going at once. In one scene, when shown an inkblot test he has this extremely vivid memory that takes a few pages long, his reply to what he sees is, "A pretty butterfly." His often are scrambled and sometimes unclear, but after seeing his memory from the Rorschach test, you know even though he may not say a lot of words, his mind is extremely vivid and deep.

Dr. Manhattan: The only super hero in the book that actually has super powers, every other human are just regular people dressed up as superheroes. He's giant blue guy who can teleport, use telekenesis, grow, clone himself, and do pretty much everything. The story is actually pretty realistic until he comes into play.

There are some other people in the book that will be constantly in the story, but it wouldn't be necessary to explain who they are really because they are just really basic people. They'd be along the lines of:

Nite Owl: Super hero that lives alone, now retired and has a space ship in his garage.

There's something about Alan Moore's writing in this book, that makes you know the characters so well. Nite Owl seems a shy. Ozymandias seems really upset and nervous all the time. Rorshach's words are dark and mysterious. The character who is the smartest man in the world's words are generally are really long words. Other comics, to get the mood across, may have another character say "Hey, why are you so upset?" Alan Moore spits on that idea and makes it that there's something about the way the words are placed in order and how many words that character says in his/her average sentence, that early on, you will know each of the character's personality and will almost be able to predict some idea of the lines of what his next sentence will be.

You constantly see repeated imagery in this book. There is graffiti tags by gang members all around town of two skeleton's in a holding embrace. All throughout the book, all around New York city, where the book takes place, you see in graffiti "Who watches the Watchmen," in random places, but the book never shows the full sentence. Alan Moore sure likes to do this sort of thing, just look at V for Vendetta. You hear "Remember, remember the fifth of November" repeatedly, and you see the graffiti tags of the V with the circle around it all throughout. The actual artwork is done by Dave Gibbons. The artwork doesn't get all fancy, Alan Moore the metaphors and poetic feel that the story posseses to not be in the artwork, but the words. I know you comic book fans are going to probably make fun of me but, the artwork is fairly similar to that of the Archie comics. It's not the most amazing artwork ever, it's really bright colored, with not that many wavy lines. Just simple drawings of people with sometimes fairly complex atmospheres around them. Heck, sometimes the artwork is fairly sloppy, but it still works!

So what makes this comic book so good? Well the story is fairly complex, and I can imagine you would get something more out of it every time you read it. You have a few great stories all working together at once. So you have the story of the Russians about to start World War 3, great concept. You have a love story between a few of the characters, even though one superhero is betraying another super hero, great concept. You have the mystery of who is killing the masked heroes, a great concept, and the main concept. As the story progresses, you see a child that is reading a comic book on the street. You get to know a little bit of the life of this child and this man working at a news stand and you get to read the comic of a stranded man who finds a haunted ship. This story vaguely ties into the story of the comic book with the corrupt society of everyone around you.

This book isn't for kids! There's a lot of extremely bloody sequences, and quite a bit of cursing and nudity.

All in all, there is so much too this book that I want to read it again. It's fairly long, especially for a graphic novel, but I just zoomed through this one. I couldn't stop reading it, it kept me up for hours before going to bed, "One more page, I thought." This is an amazing book, I encourage anyone to read it, (except if you are queezy and or a kid). This is the best graphic novel I've ever read, it opened my eyes to another genre of comics. Now I don't know where to go, I can't imagine any graphic novel being better than this.