I can not offer any comment on whether or not Alan Moore’s Watchmen
I can, however, say that as novels, graphic or otherwise, go, it sucks.
Watchmen is a thinly drawn (hah!) paranoid agenda-driven short story, made novel-length by the inclusion of pretty pictures, which, by the way, take the place of the descriptive prose that makes the written novel an art form. There is no character development. The plot is linear, with characters’ stories provided for background, but they neither show changes in any of the characters nor are they remotely interesting as subplots. The story rests on a base of anachronisms, both historical ones (the Soviet Union was already in the throes of an irreversible economic collapse when the book was written) and political ones (nuclear power is mentioned in passing as a major environmental threat). And the whole thing was just beyond boring.
Even when the book got a little interesting in the final two chapters, Moore screwed up his writing. You’re telling me that of the four people in the room in Antarctica in the final chapter, not one of them realizes that the artificial peace is strictly temporary, or at least argues that it is? The smartest man in the world thinks war is over, forever, unless the event that triggers the peace is repeated at unpredictable intervals? If he’s the smartest man in the world, we really are a race of orangutans with safety razors.
I always felt that the TIME book critics added Watchmen to their top 100 novels list as a token entry, as if they felt the need to put one graphic novel on there to head off criticism that they had ignored this burgeoning genre, but reading the book confirmed my suspicions. And really, this was a more deserving entry than Cry the Beloved Country
There is simply no comparison to the thematic and textural depth provided by a traditional novel and the superficial treatment inherent in the graphic form. And, since everyone seems to think that Watchmen is the genre’s peak, I think I can safely ignore graphic novels from here on out.
Not so much a genre, but it’s own medium of entertainment.
Shoe on the other foot: Gunther Grass won the Nobel prize for a story about a kid who was born with perfect awareness and who basically willed himself to stay the height and size of a 3-year-old because he didn’t want to grow up. Course, the power of the story is in the narrative.
The power of Watchmen is in perspective. Your critique of the work is flawed, because you are comparing it to reality. 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World… it was more about VISION.
It takes two or three reads to properly understand the depth of it. For instance, which is better: Machiavellian principle? Do the ends justify the means? Or to live without compromise? What about the difference between God and Man? Moore was trying to expose one of the fundamental flaws of religion–how we perceive God (i.e. giving him “human” qualities). This places God into a human context, but shows how “God” (or something similar) possesses a mindset which humans could not comprehend, and it forces us to ask the question about time and space.
Ultimately, it is a book which tackles a lot of philosophical, religious, and political issues, but you actually have to pay attention to notice them. That’s why it’s on the list.
James: What a load of malarkey that is. These questions are not “deep;” they’re pop philosophy and Moore is beating us over the head with them through the entire work. Compare the pseudo-philosophical aspects of Watchmen to Crime and Punishment or The Stranger (which I disliked) or Anna Karenina. Watchmen is thinner than a crêpe when compared to real philosophical novels.
The Watchmen was not a philosophical work. Did it have elements of philosophy in it? Certainly. But to be enamored with the “questions” it raises, one could not be well-read in philosophy or have any deep level of involvement with philosophical questions. They are superficially explored in the novel and never really come to any significant head.
That being said, I loved The Watchmen, as I took it for what it was; an attempt at infusing a super-hero story with more gravitas, more realistic heroes, deeper issues, and less whimsy. The fact that it is buttressed by aspects of moral and ethical theory, and touches on some philosophical questions is nice, but these inclusions are hardly substantial or note-worthy.
The Watchmen is a good story that cannot support the hype that has been placed on it. So it goes. Enjoy it for what it is.
Keith I have to agree with you on this one. I read graphic novels and comic books and many of them seem to jam their metaphors right in to your head. It really leaves nothing to the imagination. But when I read a comic the primary thing I look for is not what it says about society or whatever, I am just look for pure entertainment and The Watchmen doesn’t do it as well as others.
In anticipation of the movie, I sought out and read the entirety of the Watchmen. It started out kind of hokey, but I thought to myself that a super-hero comic book rarely tries to avoid this.As I continued reading, I was able to be drawn into the story and characters. Just as I started to invest some interest, it ends in an almost random fashion. It’s almost as if the development of the characters was the most important thing and the ending was an afterthought. It makes no sense in who the characters are, and it’s almost as if the author didn’t know where he was going with the story until the 9th or 10th issue. This showed a true lack of creativity in storytelling and demonstrated, once again, that comics are more about creating characters than figuring out what to do with them. I was even more repelled to find out upon a Google search that everyone in the world seems to think this is THE graphic novel. If that’s the case, I know why I avoided the genre for so long. Very, very disappointing. . .
“First, criticizing a comic book for its lack of prose is like criticizing cubism for its lack of fixed perspective”
I can’t and won’t speak for Keith. But for me, a central problem with “graphic novels” isn’t a lack of prose, it’s a lack of literature, and that I think is close to the complaint made out here. I’ve never come across one that is literature, or even close to being literature. Comics aren’t much written, and they are barely read.
I don’t even have a problem with that – they engage our sensibility in a different way from reading, and that’s fine. But no one would call a movie a “film novel” and yet many movies are much closer to being literature than “graphic novels” are. These works just aren’t “novels” in any meaningful sense of the term and the pretense that they are, I think, is insulting to everyone.