Eat This Comic!

Matt recently asked me a question about Watchmen (please, for the love of Alan Moore, don't click that link until you have read the graphic novel) which induced a 4-colored flashback of my misspent youth.

Watchmen exerts its influence beyond the 9-panel pages, some consider it one of the best English novels in the last century. So much could be and has been said about its literary value, artistic integrity, and impact on the industry, but for the purpose of this space I want to talk about its voice.

We should not assume Watchmen has a message (here's an attempt by David Itzkoff of NY Times). Moore and Gibbons would say that they began with a few ideas in mind to make a really good comic, then let the story tell itself. Comics excel in exaggerations which makes it the perfect medium for parodies, subversion and political commentaries, but I am convinced none of these are the intent of the author. Each of the major characters in Watchmen had dramatically different perspectives and convictions, each of them were alloted their turn for the reader's ear, and in the end all of them earned our sympathy. If anything then, Moore's caricature is of you and me, blowing our biases, tendencies, and pathologies into cosmic proportions, and leaving us to reconcile ourselves.

I'm gonna resist the temptation to defend the above analysis. If you are interested we can go into the characters in more detail in another post. Meanwhile, go read Watchmen.