Doyce has been rereading Moore/Gibbons’ original Watchmen graphic novel, and says many sooth things.
- Yeah, Nixon and The New Frontiersman are a lot less scary than Dubya and Fox News. Sadly enough.
- As powerful as the book is, it’s also a product of its time, the mid-80s, when “realism” in comics was either as illusive as Bat-Mite or as shallow as grim-and-gritty anti-heroes. Moore intentionally started with the rather stereotypical comic book character concepts and ran with them in directions nobody even knew existed, questioning what it meant to be a hero, what it meant to be human, what sacrifices are worth making (of self or others) and what aren’t. Coupled with Gibbons’ unheroic but powerful are and the overlying cinematic style, and it was a seminal work. That said, others have stood upon the shoulders of those giants, building upon what they had to say, which makes Watchmen like any other great literary work, and makes its flaws, failed pseudo-prognostication, and occasional clumsiness both very real and quite forgivable.
- I agree that the whole “Tales of the Black Freighter” substory was … a waste. I can follow the parallel to the main story, but it just didn’t thrill me. Doyce will be glad to know that those materials are (a) not in the movie coming out, but (b) available in a supplemental DVD and probably in the ultimate Watchmen DVD/Blu-Ray set.
- Moore does indeed act like a pompous ass much of the time, getting away with it to the extent he does by being a mad genius. Doyce’s comparison to Gaiman is interesting — to my mind, Gaiman writes about people and spirits (in various sense of the word); Moore writes about systems and ideas and concepts. Both have a lot to offer, and I’ve enjoyed both of their works in different ways — but I know which one I’d rather invite over for dinner.
- I, too, am looking forward to the movie. My only disappointment with what I’ve seen of it so far is that the heroes are too stereotypically pretty (esp. Nite Owl and Silk Spectre). Ah, well. If that’s the worst …
- And now I need to go and reread the graphic novel myself.
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I probably wrote out the passage mentioning Gaiman in a clumsy way: I didn’t mean to compare the two, but to mention that Gaiman – whose opinions on many things I tend to agree with – appears fairly fond of Moore, and I’m not.
No, you really didn’t compare them (and I noted it poorly myself), but it was an interesting contrast that it raised — two brilliant and influential Brits, but brilliant in very different ways.