A Book a Week - Watchmen

Book Twelve in the Book-a-Week Quest

Watchmen (1986-87)

writer: Alan Moore

artist: Dave Gibbons

colorist: John Higgins

I knew nothing about Watchmen going into this.  Not a thing.  Unfortunately, I don't know if that hindered my enjoyment of this graphic novel.

I'm not used to reading "graphic novels" in the slightest.  I had to read a few comic books for an English class in college, but they were of Batman and Superman -- superheroes that are known by all.  Plus, they were only 70 pages long, tops.  This one clocked in at at least over 200.  

I don't know if it's the nature of a graphic novel or just the nature of this particular graphic novel, but I had a tough time following the story and getting emotionally attached to the characters.  There were times when I would literally have to thumb back through the book to try and remember who particular people were...and there were many times where I gave up on this endeavor and just kept reading.  Despite the fact that there were pictures, I just felt zippo connection with any of these people.  And when these people talked...it just rang so false to me.  And then when they talked about science stuff, I got bored much too quickly.

I mean, I guess part of the problem with that is that I didn't know whether I should be rooting for these masked "ordinary" do-gooders or not.  Should I care that they're being murdered...killed off one by one?  I mean, I guess they were doing good, but for some reason the government didn't think they were and maybe the government was right.  Of course, that's all resolved in the end, but it took a while to get there.

There was this whole subplot with this comic book inside of a comic book that I'm sure makes sense and ties in with the greater story...but I just found myself waiting for that to be over (fortunately, I've heard that subplot was nixed from the movie...although the movie's still an ungodly 165 minutes long...I mean, I read the book, and I can't see how the hell the movie is that long...).

In a similar to respect to this rambling review that I'm writing, the novel just seemed to go all over the damn place...and maybe that's what "graphic novels" do.  One minute you're with this guy, you turn the page and you're with someone else, then in the next frame, you're back with the original guy.  Didn't like that one bit...

Plus, as a comic, it seemed like there were way too many pages that were separated into 9-block rectangles.  I don't know...maybe I'm just not remembering the comics I read for school, but it seemed like they broke the monotony up a lot more by varying the amount and size of blocks on each page.

Alright, I realize that this whole thing so far has kinda been trashing the book, but I can't say that I didn't like it.  There's something about it that I kinda found interesting.  The ending was unexpected to me, and it did kinda tie things together (although it took way too long to do so).  For some reason, I'm intrigued by the book.  Now, I'm never gonna re-read it, and I'm sure people will tell me that if I did, I'd find so many hidden secret things that foreshadow everything else that would happen...I don't care even remotely enough to do that.  However, this was by no means even close to the worst thing I've read in this book-a-week quest, and I'll admit that I'm somewhat intrigued to see the movie now (if only to see what they did at the end, as I've heard it's quite different from the book).