Alan Moore’s Watchmen November 28, 2007
Posted by Jason W Ellis in Comics, Review, Science Fiction.trackback
Seth let me borrow Watchmen by Alan Moore (writer) and Dave Gibbons (illustrator/letterer). If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a twelve issue series that was originally published between September 1986 and October 1987, and it won the 1988 Hugo Award for Other Forms.
Watchmen gives the reader a real punch to the gut that I haven’t experienced in other comics (though I might take that back–I’m reading Frank Miller’s The Dark Night Returns now). Take this how you will, but I felt real blue about Rorschach at the end. Despite his fascist worldview, he was right about what he wanted to do in his own way. Furthermore, all superheroes are fascist in their own way. Just because Rorschach had political and moral views totally askew to mine, doesn’t mean that his denial to go along with Ozymandias’ plan makes him the bad guy.
I’ve read online for awhile that a movie was in the works. I hope that it fares better than other movies inspired, raped, and pillaged from Moore’s work (e.g. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). I’m with Wil Wheaton when he writes:
However, I am putting the studio on notice: if you pull any studiofuckery with Watchmen, you will see a rampaging horde of geek rage that will make The Phantom Menace look like a Fred Thompson campaign rally [Read more here].
“Studiofuckery.” Excellent term, Wil. Maybe this will be the one that bucks the trend.
Good old Will Wheaton. The Watchmen film will be shit, lets not all build our hopes up.
Yeah, there’s a good chance that it will suck. It’s interesting to look at the differences between Frank Miller’s stories and Alan Moore (as well as other comic book authors). Frank Miller maintained control over his works, while authors including Moore sold the rights without retaining any kind of executive producer status. These practices are definitely reflected in the final film product of these respective authors.
Watchman, like Dark Knight Returns gets better with every reading.
Rorschach at least was willing to fight to make things right, not destroy everything to prove a point.
I think part of Moore’s point was that all superheroes are fascist. Rorschach is a character that you’d avoid in real life. It’s a testament to Moore’s writing that anyone could feel sympathy for him.