Watchmen (comic)

Just finished Alan Moore’s Watchmen, and am deeply impressed. A superb piece of work, sophisticated, eloquent, innovative and willing to take risks, I now see its far-reaching influence, not just on The Incredibles – the writers of which derived most of their good ideas from concepts found here, as I said before – but on the comic book world as a whole. There were some good ideas in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but beside the concepts, storytelling skill and coherence of tone on display here, that other famous work of Moore’s pales into insignificance. Even though the cheesier side of the superhero comic becomes apparent in several places, it is always with a clever twist or sudden shock of reality that makes it palatable.

Watchmen gives us a world where superheroes really exist. Not a simple, black-and-white world like the early DC or Marvel universes. Not even the grimmer reality of later, still sanitised comics. Moore pulls no punches, and gives us a real world, of crime, sexual perversion, prostitution, broken homes and murder. We meet the last active costumed hero: Rorschach. His character design, apparently based on the blank-faced The Question, is superb: a noir-style overcoat and hat, but a face covered with a material that somehow shifts and changes so that his face always appears to be a Rorschach ink blot. Whatever world this character is introduced into, he would look cool. We soon discover that he is something of an extremist, using horrible force to get his information, and with some chilling right-wing views. Later, he is framed, arrested and psychoanalysed, and this side-story is one of the most compelling and bleak.

And this is Watchmen’s strength: once the mystery of the plot is established, it becomes a secondary matter, wrapped up rather melodramatically, but still in a striking, subversive manner that belies its predictable frame, in the final two chapters. The ending, ultimately, is an intriguing, if not particularly original one, posing the question ‘Is a Pyrrhic victory really a victory at all?’, only rather than questioning what is apparently a triumph, we are made to question what is apparently a great loss, but ultimately beneficial to mankind. Interesting stuff, if not very delicately presented. But this is Moore’s writing, and – film-makers take note, for this is why From Hell and LXG failed – where Moore’s writing thrives is in details. From the minutae of little background references to detailed character backstories, Moore likes to answer questions. Thus we have clever snippets of other media: autobiographies, trashy right-wing newspapers, a pirate comic that always seems to be commenting on the world around its reader. We have a detailed evocation of a world and its characters, even when they have superpowers (though I must say, if there’s a weak point in the story, it’s the concept of Dr. Manhattan, whose mental powers never quite stood up to examination). He creates sympathy for even the incidental characters whose lives are forfeit to the inconceivable plans of others. Best of all, his characters are human (even those who are, in fact, superhuman): flawed, changeable, often not particularly likeable, but always fascinating.

A great achievement, which makes me want to read From Hell, and other seminal comic works – The Dark Knight Returns, for example, and Sandman. All in good time.