The Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons: ***

This is a cool book that I certainly wouldn't have thought to read on my own, it being a comic book and all. But it was recommended to me by the same friend that recommended the movie Princess Mononoke to me, knowing that I, until that point, did not like animated films. Since Mononoke subsequently became one of my favorite all-time movies, I accepted this recommendation as well. And I'm glad that I did.

Reading this book made me realize just how limiting the standard novel is - why not include pictures more regularly, or music. I guess then it would become a film. But still, there's a lot of unexplored territory out there between genres. Novels are still basically nothing more than streams of words. And films generally leave little to the imagination and don't allow human minds to work their own magic the way books do. So this was a neat experience for me. I'd find myself just staring at the artwork at times, and then rushing through the dialogue at others. This book also uses its format to great advantage by mixing and matching stories simultaneously and using visual cues of some sort to guide the reader through. In this way, Moore and Gibbons successfully use visual and situational metaphors to communicate in a manner unique to the comic medium. The plot is revealed to the reader very astutely, and it plays with our assumptions and knowledge of history/current events (for 1985-6). I also liked the characters in the book - very deep, conflicted, sometimes virtuous, always-disagreeing people that felt so genuine. The book also presents opposing and contradictory viewpoints on subjects ranging from nuclear power, rape, genetics, love, and morality, among many others. Yeah, I wouldn't call it a light read, but it's a very worthwhile one, and it changed my impression of the value of comics.
(winter 2002)

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