The Watchmen Revisited

Originally published on Comicworldnews.com.

Allen Ginsberg described Hubert Selby’s epic debut Last Exit To Brooklyn as a book that was going to “explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America…” He could have easily have been describing Alan Moore (Swamp Thing, From Hell, The Courtyard, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and Dave Gibbons’ (Martha Washington) The Watchmen.
The Watchmen waded into uncharted waters and challenged a medium that had been wallowing in self-reference and repetition for at least forty years. The book stood in a stark defiance (backed by Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns and Howard Chaykins’ American Flagg) against every notion about what comics were and what they could do. Moore and Gibbons brought an underground bravery to mainstream comics and nothing has been the same since.
Like Last Exit…, reading The Watchmen, at least as a trade, can be daunting just for the sheer girth of information. We’re dealing with the intimate lives of six different lead characters and seven supporting characters that help give foundation to the lives of the leads. Not to mention the background characters that have continuing roles throughout the book, like the newspaper vendor, the two detectives, the ex-wife of one of the leads, the prison shrink. No character is just there- each is unique, has a purpose, and is spotlighted. Besides the sequential art, each issue (except the last) ends with an excerpt from an autobiographical novel, background information on a comic book being read by one of the extras, an essay, a police report, an ornithological essay, newspaper articles, a page from a catalogue, or an interview. These extra bits give even more depth and insight into what a superhero is, where they came from, what purpose they served and a general feel for the universe in which The Watchmen revolve.
The Watchmen opens with Detectives Fine and Bourquin investigating the homicide of an Edward Blake, who we soon learn is the legendary masked adventurer The Comedian, one of the last still active crime fighters, since the passing of the Keene Act, which outlawed all masked adventuring/vigilante, except those sanctioned by the government, like The Comedian. His murder is also being investigated by the last of the outlaw vigilantes, Rorschach, who deduces that there is a mask killer on the loose. He tries to warn his former colleagues, Dr. Manhattan, Laurie Juspeczyk, Dan (Nite Owl) Dreiberg, and Adrian (Ozymandias) Veidt, while beating his way through the criminal underworld looking for answers. None of the other ex-heroes have much interest in Rorschach’s theories and dismiss him as the nut job the rest of the world already thinks he is. But then their lives start to fall apart.
The next logical step for any comic book to take, would be for the heroes to come out of retirement, join together, and go kick the crap out who ever is screwing up their lives. Moore gives us something a little different. A little more real, and so much more fascinating.
That’s all I’m going to say about what happens in the book. For one, the surprises should be left to the new readers to discover on their own, and two actually going into the details of this monster would require a book of it’s own, to navigate through the dark, maze-like alleys of the plot and subplots. (Actually, I don’t know why no one has thought to do one of those fancy critique/companion books on The Watchmen, like the ones for Ulysses or The Sound and the Fury. After all, comic book or not, Alan Moore is just as fine a writer as Joyce or Faulkner.)
There is a general feeling of uneasiness and familiarity to The Watchmen, especially in the context of America’s post 9/11 state. The bloody conclusion, political ineptitude and dirty dealings hits far too close to home for comfort (let’s not forget, The Watchmen debuted in 1986, the Reagan/Bush era, when the Cold War was still very real). The Watchmen’s Nixon era America is not a far stretch from W. Bush’s America; civil unrest, paranoia, mass murder, un-American laws (the Patriot Act, anybody?), depression, and disillusionment. Now at the twentieth anniversary of The Watchmen, it’s still doing what good art has always done in times of struggle; provide a cathartic release and help give a comprehensible voice to our stress and fears, thus making them easier to focus on and deal with.
To say The Watchmen is a story about retired super heroes, is like saying Last Exit To Brooklyn is a story about a neighborhood. That doesn’t even scratch the surface. Like Last Exit…, The Watchmen raised the bar so high, we are still waiting for someone to match them, and it seems like, finally, twenty years after Moore and Gibbons threw down the gauntlet there are writers worthy of the challenge. If there is anyone out there that will topple Moore, it will probably be Warren Ellis, if not Moore himself, who has never stopped to rest on his laurels. There is a reason The Watchmen top so many people’s favorites list. If you don’t know why, go find out for yourself.