Watchmen
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, 1987.
Part of the weird time-space compression that is
traditionally called “growing up” or “getting old” or “senility” is that if
you’re not careful, you will continue to regard things that were considered
fresh and new many years ago as “fresh,” or “new.” What a surprise, then, to get around to
reading Watchmen – one of those new “graphic novels” that people seem to have
been talking about a lot lately – and discover that it has a copyright date of
1987, which according to my calculations is 26 years ago. Sheesh.
During those twenty-six years, people have done a lot of
rehashing, reconsidering, and reconstructing of the super-hero motif. There has been, for example, the new Batman
movie franchise, and then also the new new Batman movie franchise, and there
have probably been a couple of generations now of comic artists who have
reinterpreted the notion of superheroics to each other via the internet. So it is a little bit hard now (and deeply
inadvisable, I might add) to transport oneself back into the 1980s and try to
figure out just how clever the Moore and Gibbons take on the genre is, or was.
Certainly, you have to give Watchmen points for highly
literate storytelling, strong graphic art, and an aggressive exploration of the
conventions and possibilities of its genre.
Among any number of neat tricks, here’s one that stands out: a minor
character spends much of the book reading a comic book. That comic-book-within-a-comic-book’s text
and artwork leak out into the main story, creating weird parallels and
contrasts. The overlap is managed so
that we encounter the main story and its counterpart more or less
simultaneously. It’s pretty cool, and it
would only really work in a comic format.
Watchmen takes place in a well-developed alternate reality
that seems to branch off from history as we know it around 1940.
Instead of costumed magical beings with
magical powers, the
Watchmen of the title are simply costumed human beings –
mostly.
That means that this assay into
the superhero genre also a great big questioning of the whole notion of
superheroes, an open speculation on how American society would really act to
the presence of people in tights and capes running around fighting crime.
Mostly.
Except, it turns out that there is one magical being in the mix,
complete with a conventional science-experiment-gone-awry creation myth.
This inconsistency bugged me a little, but to
be fair it doesn’t hurt the basic comic narrative any, and I suppose it keeps
the work as a whole from being too much of a one-dimensional exercise in asking
“What if superheroes didn’t really have superpowers?”
It also, in a roundabout way, sets up a brisk
questioning – by comic book standards – of the concept of a nuclear
deterrent.
Visually and emotionally, Watchmen takes a lot of its cues
from film noir, and the whole of the thing is saturated with a mood of grim,
detached pessimism. Thoroughly
saturated! Thoroughly, thoroughly
saturated! You have to celebrate the
creative achievement of invoking and sustaining a certain mood, even while
wishing that the thing wasn’t such a complete downer.
And this is, I suppose, half of why I didn’t particularly
care for this innovative and sophisticated work of literature. For, although Watchmen certainly makes a
strong case that the comic medium needn’t be limited to telling stories that
are basically amusing in nature, I am not sure that the evolution of the medium
as a light entertainment is entirely accidental. Hell, I really don’t want to say that comics
are best suited for laughs and kid stuff, because I realize that we are past
all that now and that many people passionately believe otherwise. But nevertheless, really, in my heart of
hearts, I think I feel that comics are best suited for laughs and kid stuff.
The other half of why I didn’t particularly care for this innovative
and sophisticated work of literature is that it’s all about superheroes. Now, I realize that you can get very excited
about studying popular culture and you can ruminate about archetypes and have
all sorts of intellectual fun with the enduring importance of superheroes in
our collective imagination. But I would
like to suggest another point of view, not because I particularly feel like
being negative, but because I think it has become a minority report and
therefore a point of view that should be voiced from time to time in order to
prevent the tyranny of an assumed consensus.
Here goes: I would suggest that our stock of well-loved
superheroes are really just instances of cheap pabulum that were originally
churned out as a platform for advertising to children, kept alive by nostalgia
and frequent infusions of capital in the form of easily constructed big-budget
movies. So, even though Watchmen takes
an apparently very innovative look at the concept of superheroism, in the end
it’s still a superhero comic. As a
superhero comic, it’s probably pretty awesome.
But because it is a superhero comic, its real substance is limited by the
essential triviality at its roots.
Watchmen takes place in a well-developed alternate reality
that seems to branch off from history as we know it around 1940. Instead of costumed magical beings with
magical powers, the Watchmen of the title are simply costumed human beings –
mostly. That means that this assay into
the superhero genre also a great big questioning of the whole notion of
superheroes, an open speculation on how American society would really act to
the presence of people in tights and capes running around fighting crime. Mostly.
Except, it turns out that there is one magical being in the mix,
complete with a conventional science-experiment-gone-awry creation myth. This inconsistency bugged me a little, but to
be fair it doesn’t hurt the basic comic narrative any, and I suppose it keeps
the work as a whole from being too much of a one-dimensional exercise in asking
“What if superheroes didn’t really have superpowers?” It also, in a roundabout way, sets up a brisk
questioning – by comic book standards – of the concept of a nuclear
deterrent. 
