Watchmen - Alan Moore

"Who watches the watchmen?" - Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347

I am not usually a reader of graphic novels, but have been experimenting with this medium over the past year, with some excellent reads including Persepolis and Maus. My reading of Watchmen was prompted by the forthcoming release of the film this summer and although excited about the film, I really wasn't sure how much I would enjoy the graphic novel. Watchmen is a 12-issue comic book series written in the 1980s and since published as a collection. The series has since received critical acclaim and has a core cult fan base that has endured over the years.

Watchmen is set in an alternate history where the cold war is pushing the United States towards a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. The titular Watchmen are not in fact superheros, but are masked adventurers, costumed heros with no special powers per se, but merely a desire to dress up and fight crime. The only character who possesses superpowers is Dr Manhatten, a scientist transformed by a laboratory accident into an almost omnipotent being. These vigilantes have been outlawed, many keeping their true identities secret. The story begins with the murder of Edward Blake, a man with a mysterious past who turns out to be much more. His murder is investigated by Rorschach, the only vigilante still at large, who believes that the killer may be targeting costumed heroes. But with many of the other heroes retired, Rorschach is fighting against the odds to catch the killer, as the political climate worsens and the impending nuclear war draws closer.

I thoroughly enjoyed this graphic novel, despite it not being at all what I expected. In fact, I couldn't tell you what I expected. Watchmen is about so much more than superheros. Throughout the series, the back-stories of each character are slowly revealed and we begin to understand more about their decisions to become masked crimefighters. The story is about power, the search for it, and the misuse of it. It is also about the nature of morality, the reasoning behind these vigilantes' activities and the desire for power. The atmosphere is tense, and the situation rapidly descends into violence. A lot of violence. This graphic novel is very dark and it took me a while to get used to the level of violence. The characters themselves are quite hard to like, yet this didn't reduce my enjoyment of the story.

Although graphic novels are not my favourite medium of storytelling, Watchmen really opened my eyes to the kind of stories that can be told in this format. I highly recommend Watchmen to fans of graphic novels and those new to them. I am even more excited about the upcoming film now, though I am a little concerned that it will not possibly be able to delve into the Watchmen world into quite as much depth as in the graphic novel. There is a lot more I could say about Watchmen, but I am sure other reviews are far more eloquent than mine!

The book is also peppered with some great quotes from Alan Moore himself and eminent philosophers. I leave you with a couple of examples...

"It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace. This dichotomy is not an invention of the twentieth century, yet it is this century that the most striking examples of the phenomena have appeared. Never before has man pursued global harmony more vocally while amassing stockpiles of weapons so devastating in their effect. The second world war - we were told - was The War To End Wars. The development of the atomic bomb is the Weapon to End Wars.
And yet the wars continue."

"Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich W. Nietzsche

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