A graphic novel? No, really not, I am informed. This is aaactually a comic book series, of the limited variety. I read it in a single volume, however, and it felt very graphic-novelly to me in that format. Whatever. I managed to get to this one before the movie was actually released, and I hated the movie anyways, so I can distinguish it from "I Am Legend" that way.
The Watchmen is Alan Moore's take on the Cold War through the eyes of heroes and superheroes caught up in a noir plot, and it is a masterpiece of the first order.
I remember very well the circumstances under which I read this. I was working as a music guy at Barnes and Noble, and I had asked the person who made the schedules at that time to work as many morning and day shifts as I could because my girlfriend Karen was a student at the time and any time I was working late I simply wouldn't see her at all for the whole day. So I have this conversation and then I got a schedule in which I was listed to work, I exaggerate not, nothing but night shifts for three weeks.
I was a bit put out by this, as you might imagine. The music department where I worked had no windows and a fairly tall wall separating it from the rest of the store, and it was as far away from the entrance (where all the windows were) as you could get in that building. Also, with the national decline in music sales caused by mp3s in full swing, I just didn't have many customers. I could go hours at a time without human contact. I would show up in mid-afternoon, work until 11 or 12 pm, go home and unwind (I have always found it nearly impossible to go from working to sleeping in less than 2 hours), and then sleep late the next day to catch up on sleep. Basically I was going days at a time with an hour or two at most of sunlight (which isn't so great for those of us who happen to depend on sunlight in part for the quality of our moods) and barely seeing Karen or anyone else.
So I decided to pass time by bringing "The Watchmen" back to the music section with me to secretly read while on shift (which was, shall we say, highly frowned upon by some of my superiors). Lo and behold it turns out that Alan Moore is one of the most pessimistic writers of our time and that "The Watchmen" is a dark and depressing work. So yeah, this period of time really stands out as a dark one, both figuratively and literally, and it was on account of this sense of darkness that I was inspired with one of my future literary ideas (of which I am very proud- you'll see it sooner or later). I did not bring anything else back to read at work, to the best of my recollection. Experiment failure.
Oh I haven't actually said much about the content of the work yet, have I? Well, it was excellent. The characters were very complex, very interesting, and twisted as hell, and the plot, the themes, and Gibbons' art were superb. I would say I liked it more than "V For Vendetta" and less than "Sandman" all told, but the only knock I've got against it is that it was just too dark for me to handle. It isn't a read-all-the-time kinda book, unless you are a strange and twisted person."The Watchmen" is, however, brilliant. A must-read, and highly memorable/excellent. Alan Moore is an crazy genius.
No comments:
Post a Comment