Watchmen

It is often said that Watchmen is the most influential comic ever to be released. That comics wouldn’t be where they are without it, for good and for ill. But how did we get here, exactly? More to the point, just what influence did Watchmen provide to the larger world of comics? What, ultimately, is the legacy of Watchmen? Who watched the Watchmen?

“I think that a good argument can be made for D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation as the first American superhero movie, and the point of origin for all those capes and masks.” ~ Alan Moore

“I’ve got a nose for white supremacy and he smells like bleach.” ~ Angela Abar

Watchmen, the 1986 twelve issue DC miniseries, as written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and colored by John Higgins, is a comic self-consciously about comic books. The comic explores and challenges the implications and consequences that accompany the existence of superheroes – stars of the most dominant genre of comics in the Anglosphere then and now – and uses them to explore contemporary concerns about the cold war, Reaganism, and nuclear annihilation. Its grid based layouts, mirrored chapters, and non-linear character perspectives calls attention not just to the comic book’s constructed nature, but the ways in which it was constructed and how we engage with and read them.

[Read more…] about Who Watched the Watchmen (2019)? I Did.

It is often said that Watchmen is the most influential comic ever to be released. That comics wouldn’t be where they are without it, for good and for ill. But how did we get here, exactly? More to the point, just what influence did Watchmen provide to the larger world of comics? What, ultimately, is the legacy of Watchmen? Who watched the Watchmen?

Before Watchmen failed. It had proved to be a disaster that nobody seemed to really want more of. DC’s hopes and dreams of winning hearts and minds whilst exploiting the Watchmen IP had come crashing down. Nobody, it seemed, cared about what came ‘before’ Watchmen, much like they weren’t dying for a sequel about what happened ‘after it’. It turned out they just liked Watchmen, on its own.

And so the enterprise of Watchmen exploitation had to be rested…for a while at least.

Enter: DC Universe Rebirth #1

[Read more…] about Who Watched the Watchmen? DC Universe Rebirth

It is often said that Watchmen is the most influential comic ever to be released. That comics wouldn’t be where they are without it, for good and for ill. But how did we get here, exactly? More to the point, just what influence did Watchmen provide to the larger world of comics? What, ultimately, is the legacy of Watchmen? Who watched the Watchmen?

In the wake of Watchmen, there have been many stories influenced by its style. There have been stories that riffed on what it was doing and ones that reacted against it. There have even been prequels to the narrative spun by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. But there had never been a direct sequel to Watchmen, let alone one that pushed the ultimate button: crossing over Watchmen with the DC Universe.

There had been attempts in the past, certainly. A cameo from Rorschach here. A thematic test image where Rorschach fights Frank Miller’s Batman there. And maybe one or two riffs to make things look spicy. But never anything as concrete as a complete sequel to Watchmen. That was… until Doomsday Clock.

Written by Geoff Johns with art by Gary Frank, Doomsday Clock is the big sequel to Watchmen. As part of the DC Rebirth initiative, a twelve issue miniseries was announced to pay off the big reveal at the end of the story: the DC Universe had been attacked by Dr. Manhattan.

A cursory glance at that sentence might make one… unsure. For all that the Before Watchmen comics weren’t uniformly good, there was a degree of draftsmanship to them. Not so much trying to one-up Watchmen as make a cheap cash-in without any sense of taste. But something like Doomsday Clock is… different.

[Read more…] about Who Watched the Watchmen? What Doomsday Clock Gets Wrong