Thursday, November 20, 2008

Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

I have mentioned before that I have not historically been a huge fan of graphic novels, but I find them growing on me lately. One of my main issues when it comes to reading them is the art. This may seem very obvious, but if I dislike the style of the illustrator for the graphic novel, I often won't give the book a chance. I'm learning to do differently though.
I picked up Watchmen mainly because of the movie coming out. This is silly, because for the most part, at least lately, I have hated what Hollywood does to the books that I love (Lord of the Rings being the exception to the rule). But I do like movies based on comic book characters, so . . . well anyway, I read it. I was not a huge fan of the style at first, but it grew on me. It only detracted from the actual story occasionally, so that was good. The story itself is terrific. I love the "Who watches the Watchmen?" theme of the whole thing - who knows who is really good or bad, who decides that? What does it mean to "do the right thing" in very morally complicated situations? The way that the superheros deal with these questions defines them. The other thing that I really liked about this book was all of the stories within stories. It seemed like it might have made it hard to keep track of, but really, the secondary stories added to the overall theme, making reading the book a very rich experience.
I honestly don't know whether or not I will see the movie, because of my hatred for the past few books-into-movies I have witnessed, but as it's about comic book characters, well . . . I probably actually will. And I will definitely be looking into reading more work by Alan Moore. And I may even give Sandman a chance, because I do really like Neil Gaiman, and maybe, like with Watchmen, I can get over my dislike of the visual style.

1 comment:

Jessica said...

Thanks for the info! Although, it appears that the link may not be working . . .