Watchmen sucks!
PearlJamaholic
Posts: 2,019
i just finished this comic and its pretty bad. all this hype of it being great and the best...what is that? ive read moore's v for vendetta and 5 of the 6 swampthing books he did, all were awesome, the one swampthing volume was a bit slow, but watchmen is terrible.
other than rorschach the characters were boring. and the ending, you have to be kidding. i read alot of sci-fi and all but that was ridiculous. and what was with the pirate story filler? maybe i miss the importance there. but that pirate comic was actually better than the watchmen story. i know comics in the 80's didnt have the best coloring, but this falls short here too.
this story falls short in so many ways, and honestly the whole 'lives behind the mask' isnt new or anything, nor did alan moore create it. i was hoping he would tell a better story than whats been done before but his was pretty bland.
i dont get the hype for this at all. if this was the first thing i read from moore id be like wow he sucks, bor-ing. im starting to think alot of the praise comes from non-comic book readers. cause there has been tons of better stories told in comics than this.
other than rorschach the characters were boring. and the ending, you have to be kidding. i read alot of sci-fi and all but that was ridiculous. and what was with the pirate story filler? maybe i miss the importance there. but that pirate comic was actually better than the watchmen story. i know comics in the 80's didnt have the best coloring, but this falls short here too.
this story falls short in so many ways, and honestly the whole 'lives behind the mask' isnt new or anything, nor did alan moore create it. i was hoping he would tell a better story than whats been done before but his was pretty bland.
i dont get the hype for this at all. if this was the first thing i read from moore id be like wow he sucks, bor-ing. im starting to think alot of the praise comes from non-comic book readers. cause there has been tons of better stories told in comics than this.
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"What a stupid lamb."
"What a sick, masochistic lion."
i really thought it would be great. moore is one of the comic writers that i know by name and will pick up anything that has their name on it. warren ellis is another. but i was dissappointed with watchmen. i was really hoping to be blown away, but i didnt even find it very good. total buzz kill. im not even excited for the movie anymore.
the pirate story is an allegory for the overall novel
if you read the chapter about rorsharch, flip to the exact middle of the chapter. the panels on the left are a reflection of the ones on the right. if you go a page earlier and a page later, they reflect each other.
the ending? it is what happens with someone that smart. and in 1985, typically stuff didnt end like that.
i understand that you dont have to like it. not everyone should like the same thing.
but it is one of those stories that after it sits a while in your brain, or you think more about it, you appreciate it more.
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I would agree with this as well. It's something that definitely needs time to settle in to. I didn't care for it when I first read it, but for whatever reasons I couldn't get it out of my head. After a while, it all began to make sense.
i dont see the reflection thing really..... and the panel use for the most part is very boring. 9 per page all exactly the same size. so nearly the whole book is mirrored. maybe i shouldnt have read his swampthing stuff first. that has awesome use of panels and he does a better job of showing the human part of super heros in that run. the issues where swampthing overruns gotham is beautiful. and this was before watchmen. what swampthing will do to get abby back, and batman being stuck in the middle of it all.
also the book fails in the idea of 'what if' humans were superheros. the whole story he tries to explain that they are just normal people with masks, other than dr manhattan. yet we have one of them catching a bullet, i dont even think any other superhero can do that except superman? rorschach almost has a spider-sense. and they all seem to have an unhuman ability to taking a beating. so really this is more of the same, superhumans in costumes. weaker than most superhumans but still above human ability.
and the vigilante idea was done way before 1986. maybe i had the wrong impression going into this. but moore introduces nothing new, and for the most part doesnt even tell a better story than the previous takes on the issues.
i hope youre right, ive been thinking about this story all night, hoping the diamond in rough will be discovered. ill probably be thinking about this for a few days, but i dont think ill ever see the so called greatness of the story, cause i think the story has been given too much credit, and its importance in story-telling and comics. maybe thats why im so disappointed cause i thought moore told a brand new story and everything, i dont know.
*spoiler warning*
lovecraft wrote stories that had 'aliens' invading earth in the 20's. im pretty sure moore read lovecraft so maybe this is were he got the idea for his ending. that genetic creature is even very lovecraftian in looks. maybe the ending was not very mainstream in the 80's but again moore did nothing new here.
I agree with everythign you said. I really enjoyed the comic and not to get too nerdy but i've read my fair share of comics as a kid and as an adult lol
to each their own perhaps your expectations were very high when you read it. I know when i read it for the first time i heard it was good but no wehre near the buzz it has now and now that i've read it 3 times i tend to like it more each time.
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Wow, I haven't read it in quite awhile, but I would have hard time agreeing less.
Maybe it doesn't seem so 20 years later, but it was VERY groundbreaking at the time. If Moore didn't invent "lives behind the mask," he certainly did it in a new way.
It's a classic. Far superior to V for Vendetta IMO, which I also liked, but had nowhere near the scope or scale.
I suggest waiting a little while and trying it again. I remember thinking it a bit pretentious the first time I read it, and I also (initially) thought Ozymandias' master plan was stupid, but the stuff I liked stayed in mind enough for me to give it another try a few years later, and it blew me away.
and I have to point out that because the ending just wasn't done for the time - it WAS new then.
I think you should let it sink in...before you say it sucks.
Spoiler Alert:
Interesting comment about Ozymandias' master plan...create a global enemy and all will unite...it's working so well for Bush. The same idea formed part of the basis for Clancey's "Red Storm Rising."
I just read it for the first time...of course, I'm a good bit older than your average reader, but there was a beauty to it that I've only found so far in The Sandman. Manhattan's miserable existance as omnipotent...knowing how love will end before it begins...sure that there is nothing of value in human life until he contemplates the endless things that must happen to make a person who he or she is. The pirate subplot...the whole notion that abandoning our values and morals...even for an end which we believe to be good ultimately corrupts and may cause the very thing we seek to avoid. Tolkein once said that he hoped people did not read the Lord of the Rings as allegory...he wanted us to take the story and apply it in our own lives and worlds.
Right now...The Watchmen seems very applicable to our world.
Anyway, just the opinion of a late bloomer fan.
Peace to all,
Day
"But --you say that Dreams have no power here? Tell me, Lucifer Morningstar...Ask yourselves, all of you...What power would hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to Dream of Heaven?" Dream speaking to Lucifer as written by Neil Gaiman.
i dont know how it can be seen as new. maybe in comics, i dont read alot of pre-80's stuff so i dont know. but taking a already told story element and putting it in a new format doesnt make it new.
if you look at jack london's the iron heel it has kinda the same ending hook. only when the enemy becomes so big and unstoppable do the people unite against it. here someone creates the enemy, but in london's story the main character realizes that only when the opression hits everyone will they notice what was going on. and this was written in 1908.
and i really used the word sucks as an attention grabber. ive read far worse, in comics and in novels than this. its actually an ok, if not good, story. but nowhere near the hype or even great.
(OK...fess up...I'm not the only one that's read Lost Girls am I?)
"But --you say that Dreams have no power here? Tell me, Lucifer Morningstar...Ask yourselves, all of you...What power would hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to Dream of Heaven?" Dream speaking to Lucifer as written by Neil Gaiman.
Perhaps even more interesting, my original problem with the end was the whole "psychic alien from another dimension" angle and the fact that the threat wasn't some terrorist faction from outside the US or Russia causing mass destruction to New York...
It just seemed silly to me at first, but the 2nd time through, it worked completely. And anyway, the alien is really sort of a MacGuffin.
I don't have an answer to the question I'm about to pose...when Watchmen was created, was the alien more plausible than terrorists? Somehow, I think that was the case, and it says something about how our national psyche has changed.
I haven't done the second read thru yet...in fact, I only finished the Absolute about a month or so ago...do you catch more the second time?
"But --you say that Dreams have no power here? Tell me, Lucifer Morningstar...Ask yourselves, all of you...What power would hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to Dream of Heaven?" Dream speaking to Lucifer as written by Neil Gaiman.
maybe im wrong but at the time it seemed nothing could touch america except russia. so to think a rag-tag bunch of terrorists could kill millions of people was probably too unbelieveable. not to get political but even today terrorists couldnt do that kinda damage. 9-11 wasnt even close to the damage caused in watchmens ending, and that was their 'big' plan to bring america to its knees.
i think the 'alien' angle is better than if he did some lame tom clancy kinda crap.
I keep meaning to pick it up, but it's pretty pricey.
As to Watchmen and what it's about, here's a pretty good article with a bunch of responses on the subject.
http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/watching_the_watchmen_watchers_04_how_do_you_answer_this_question/
Me, I love it. Just re-read it again and felt that out of anyone, this was Nite Owl's story.
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Nope
It was good and different, but in the end, as I said, it was unsatisfying.