Review of Alan Moore's Watchmen

I am, like many nerds and other such people that are awesome, extremely excited about the forthcoming adaptation of Watchmen, by Alan Moore. It is bittersweet, for Moore has already said that he has no intentions of viewing this adaptation and (I’m assuming this by his tone) does not really approve of the fact that this film has been made. If you peruse the Wikipedia entry on Moore's greatest work you can study up on his numerous conflicts with publishers involving creative rights, etc. Zack Snyder of 300 fame helmed the whole affair and from the previews the end product looks like something to be reckoned with. But this isn’t really about the film. This is about the graphic novel. While I do anxiously await the film’s release, and anticipate that I will be writing about that as well, it would do little for me to speak much about it, other than to provide you with this amusing and pertinent link regarding recent developments in the release of the film.

I enjoy reading graphic novels, but I am by no means a comic book expert. I’ve read more Wikipedia articles concerning various comic heroes and villains than I can directly remember, and I know more about failed productions of comic book series and graphic novels than anyone should. I really only claim knowledge of a few particular releases in the graphic novel world, including Frank Miller’s comics (namely his Batman collections), Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum, Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, and most recently Watchmen. Obviously, I like Batman, if for no other reason than the one Moore apparently hated comic heroes for—Batman knows that sometimes a leader has to be a fascist. One of the things that made Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again so appealing to me was Batman’s unrelenting, uncompromising dedication to justice. It occurred to me that the members of Gotham were lucky that Batman made few, if any, mistakes and that his idea of justice was pure. In this way, Batman is like Superman in the sense that he knows, better than the people he protects, the limits of justice.

Watchmen introduces us to a group of characters who are human first, superhero second. Their sense of justice is just as good as the rest of us in society, and they are just as prone to making mistakes. Almost a decade before the events of the novel, the government passed legislation making vigilantism illegal and thereby outlawing crime fighters other than those designated so by either the local or federal government because of some of those mistakes. The plot is driven by the murder of one of the most infamous of the group, a man called the Comedian. Another crime fighter by the name of Rorschach (a man that has chosen to continue his masked escapades illegally) begins investigating to see if he can determine whether or not there is a conspiracy to kill what he calls “masks,” or people who dress up in order to fight crime. What is of incredible importance to the novel, and what becomes in some ways the driving force of the novel, is the fact that most of the heroes have no super powers. They are perfectly normal people who choose to fight crime in outfits that hide their identity. There are two exceptions: Jonathan Osterman (a.k.a. Dr. Manhattan) and Adrian Veidt (a.k.a. Ozymandias). Dr. Manhattan transforms into something nearer to a god than a human after an accident at a nuclear facility. Ozymandias, a man who revealed his identity to the world in order to avoid persecution, seems to have been born with higher than average strength and intelligence. The inter-chapter narrative, as much as it is one cohesive piece of literature separate from the rest of the text, gives us glimpses into the personal lives of the heroes, as well as society’s perceptions about their existence and performance.

I’ve always told myself that I would never use the phrase “spoiler-alert” in a piece of writing, and perhaps that was too ambitious of me, but I need to use it here. SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU DO NOT WANT THE GRAPHIC NOVEL’S ENDING REVEALED TO YOU. Well, it’s not exactly a spoiler, but I talk about themes that you’d only know about if you finish the novel, so I thought I’d be nice. The narrative unravels into a group of people deciding that human beings cannot and will not work together unless they are forced to under the common threat of annihilation. As these people become more desperate to do good, they fall prey to evil. Whether or not human beings plan to annihilate one another mutually is inconsequential. Mutual destruction is one thing, but if we are threatened by an outside group (see: 9/11 and Al-Qaeda), well, that’s another thing altogether. All of a sudden China decides to send aid. And Muslim countries send their condolences. And people with nothing in common across the United States get together, put aside their differences, and drown their sorrows. I often hear people lament about the fact that we no longer have that sense of cohesion that we had following 9/11. It would appear, several decades earlier, that Alan Moore anticipated this very thing.

Alan Moore’s exploration of justice in terms of the ethical ramifications of his protagonists’ actions leads us to a broader discussion of the very nature of their actions. One general principle that most superhero comics must follow is that like Batman, heroes and superheroes are often fascists. The good people are left alone, to a certain extent, but the foundation that our democracy was built upon begins to crack and shift in the name of self-preservation. I thought it interesting that the most recent Superman movie sought, in a passing line, to remove this burden from at least the Superman series. When Clark Kent asks Jimmy Olson how it is that Lex Luthor is not in prison, Jimmy responds by telling him that Superman didn’t show up to Luthor’s hearing to testify, and so he had to be let go. Here we see director Brian Singer’s attempt at placing his protagonist’s actions within the bounds of law. Sure Superman apprehends criminals without the help of law enforcement, but he always submits to the laws of the land. There are other occasions when this happens in other comic series, but on the whole it is rare to see a masked crime fighter going to court to carry out due process.

All in all, this graphic novel brilliantly explores the very nature of the mythical superhero, and challenges its readers to determine for themselves if the protagonists actions are indeed warranted. Most likely readers' responses will fall along political lines, but thatâ??s another discussion altogether. If you are looking for a graphic novel that defies all expectation and gives you an experience similar to that of works such as Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, or Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, this is the place to go.