In the latest edition of Comics to Read Before You Die, Jessie Robertson looks at Watchmen….
Watchmen #1-12 (Sept 1986- Oct 1987)
Written by Alan Moore
Art by Dave Gibbons
Colored by John Higgins
Edited by Len Wein & Barbara Kesel
There isn’t a media outlet, comic book site, book review page or esteemed magazine that has not delved into the world of the Watchmen and highlighted its brilliance, its depth and its profound impact not just on the comic book medium but the written word itself. So what should make this column any different when examining this seminal piece of art? Will I be able to cull some new insight from the pages that so many have pored over, looking for symbolism and significance? More than likely not, but that’s not my job here. My job is to recommend a particular story in the comic book world that I love and I think no true comic book fan, or even passe fan of this field should pass up. And Watchmen certainly belongs on this list, probably at the top. I could have begun and ended this column with Watchmen, as review #1 and then retired it. I mean, Watchmen was placed on Time Magazine’s 100 Greatest Novels of all time! Do you know what else is on that list? To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Catcher in the Rye, Great Gatsby, Animal Farm, Catch-22, and the list goes on. Those are the books talked about whenever anyone anywhere mentions the greatest novels ever written. Okay, enough of the background, let me break down exactly what Watchmen is about, because, it can be daunting when first picking it up to a comic book fan. It has no recognizable characters, it’s thick, and it’s heavily lauded, all intimidating factors when jumping into it.
Watchmen is the story of how real life “super heroes” blended into our society and the ramifications and consequences of how they impacted us, the world and how their career choice impacted themselves. The book is set in the late 80’s for the most part, jumping back in time to the early 40’s when the first group of heroes, the Minutemen, appeared on the scene. Those heroes are discussed, and a couple are minor characters, but the focus of the story is a disparate group of heroes that were prolific after the Minutemen, a second wave of unique men and women who wanted to continue the tradition, all for their own agendas and reasons. The six main characters in question are the Comedian, a ruthless, brutally honest, morally vacant man who continued to work for the government as a black ops triggerman after the Keene Act (which outlaws all costumed heroes); Nite Owl II, Dan Dreiberg, who took up the costume and guise of the original Nite Owl, Hollis Mason, when he retired. Dreiberg is a sort of toned down Batman, who creates gadgets and his own Owl ship to use during Patrol; Rorschach, a mentally unstable but determined man who wears a mask that constantly changes shape and form; Ozymandias, proclaimed the world’s smartest man, and a gifted athlete; Silk Spectre, Laurie Jupiter, a second generation hero after her mother retired, and Dr. Manhattan, a being of immense power and ability, who was once Dr. Jon Osterman, a scientist who had his atoms split. Months later, he was able to put himself back together atomically and now has control over matter.
Watchmen uses these six characters as its basis because all of them have different viewpoints on the world and motivations for their actions which makes up the crux of a lot of the material. Each character at some point during the story (except for Comedian) gets his own back story, to explain why they think the way they do, the cause of their actions and where that motivation comes from. When the Keene act was passed, the only two heroes employed by the government were Comedian and Dr. Manhattan; in this fictional story, we actually won the Vietnam war, mostly thanks to Dr. Manhattan and his world-changing abilities. When we picked up the story in 1985, we see a man being brutally beaten and killed (as we find out is the Comedian) and Rorschach (who has continued to operate on his own, under threat of arrest) floats a theory that someone is targeting heroes, or masks as he calls them. His investigation is the impetus for the story to begin as he goes back and warns all his former teammates and is generally met with cold reception from all of them. There is so much plot to go over in this book I won’t reveal it all because devouring Watchmen is an experience, and I don’t want to ruin it for anyone.
When you talk layers in a story, there is no better example to point to than Watchmen. This was the genius of Moore and Gibbons, as together, with the writing and the artwork, continuous clues and pieces of the overarching puzzle are left everywhere. Gibbons draws the book in a style where you have 9 panels broken out in nearly every page, which gives you so much room to pack in story and details and the panels all contain clues as to the chaos going on in the fictional real world. The Soviet Union, feeling threatened by the US’s secret weapon, Dr. Manhattan, is growing tense and nervous and nuclear war looms on the minds of the world. Pakistan has been invaded. A group of writers, artists, psychiatrists and other high-minded individuals in the science and art field have gone missing and the police are finding no clues. All these stories are accentuated by newspapers drawn into the background of panels, minor, fleeting characters discussing the events, or quick snips of news broadcasts. At the end of most chapters is also an extra periphery document; excerpts from Hollis Mason’s tell all, print ads for Ozymandias new toy line, Ornithological articles written by Dreiberg, tons of material that adds to the depth of all these characters and the world they live in. These touches are what adds the deep layers of story and breathe life into this alternate look at life in the US when heroes were real.
Getting back to the main characters for a bit, I’d like to discuss the motivations of each and examine how that plays into the overall and moving story of Watchmen. Rorschach, in a lot of ways, could be contented as the voice of the story, as we get pages of his journal throughout most of the chapters up until his final conflict where he writes what could be his last page. His viewpoint on the world is that it’s basically gone to shit and the government shutting down all the masks was the downfall. He chides his former teammates for giving up the fight when he continues on, living in poverty and squalor, with no friends, no personal life, only the constant job of keeping on his path, hurting criminals for information, solving cases, etc. Make no mistake about it, as well, Rorschach is completely damaged and isn’t able to develop real relationships with anyone, except Dan Dreiberg, who also feels the pull of comradery of being a hero.
Dreiberg grew up idolizing Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl and loved birds; he also has a genuine compass of right and could be the only person in this group with the pure intention of helping those that can’t help themselves. He still gets together with Mason, to talk about old times and discuss past criminals they apprehended; it’s a life he didn’t really want to give up but did anyways to tow the line.
Sally Juspeczyk got into the hero business by being pushed by her mother to do it. She was trained and molded since being a child, as a lot of parents do, by her mother projecting her life onto her. Sally never seems particularly happy being a hero but seeing Dr. Manhattan for the first time intrigues her enough to keep at it. She sort of follows in her mom’s footsteps by settling with Manhattan and falling into semi-retirement as a housewife. I think she feels she has a lot to prove to herself when the opportunity comes to don her tights again, as she spent a lot of years tied to a man who was more preoccupied with being the world’s savior than being her husband and lover.
Dr. Jon Osterman was the son of a watchmaker, and to him those mechanics made sense; the order, the way the cogs moved in sync to keep time, but once Hiroshima hit, his father knew he needed to change fields to keep with the times. Becoming a nuclear physicist, he worked with an intrinsic field generator and due to an accident, was transformed inside of it into a character who then lost his tether to the flesh and blood world. As he becomes the hero of the Vietnam war, his attentions turn away from people, and he can only focus on tachyons and atoms.
Ozymandias, or Adrian Veidt, we don’t learn much about until near the end of the story, as he was the son of a rich family, he draws inspiration from Alexander the Great. He shed his wealth to charity and began to make himself his own man, becoming a hero, and building himself an empire based off of that image.
Then there’s the Comedian; we only learn about him through scenes from the other characters and there’s not a lot to like. He is the worst impulses of everyone, completely selfish and brutish, he takes what he wants and never seems to suffer the consequences until you get deeper into the story.
During the story is also a young man reading his own comic book called Tales from the Black Freighter, a pirate story of a man trying to get home to rescue his family from certain death as the dreaded Freighter is headed there. This man lives in madness and uncertainty and struggles to find his own humanity in that madness. It’s a dark, grim story but it continually mirrors some of the events in the main plotline, and it sort of pulls you in as you go. This is yet another example of more layers upon the story that just add to the rich world of the Watchmen.
This book, among a few others, notably from Frank Miller, were looked at as monuments of change in the comic book medium; no longer did stock villains and cheesy dialogue remain prevalent on the page; these were real people with real problems, psychological issues, flawed personalities, and real world large issues looming in the background that purveyed a new kind of storytelling; this book drastically changed the way comics were written.
In 2009, after nearly two decades, Watchmen was finally brought to the theaters as a major motion picture, directed by Zack Snyder. The movie idea had been through multiple studios and development deals and seemed to be a project that would be “unfilmable” due to its sheer amount of content, side stories and issues related to the time. But the young filmmaker was able to pull it off and the movie grossed over 185 million dollars in its release and was general well received by critics and fans alike, as it had that dark, grim feeling the book has, combined with all the action, violence, sex and themes the book used. The film’s dark , dreary pondering tone also was the basis for a lot of criticism for the film as well. Either way, Watchmen was called for a reprinting of its collected volume in the 900,000 range, ushering it into a new era and new hands for another generation.
I read Watchmen for the first time in 2006 and it was a revelatory experience, delving into the pages of beautiful and downtrodden artwork, the elaborate panels, the idealistic and thought-provoking dialogue and tying it all together in my own mind, pulling on different threads, and absorbing it all for the first time. It’s an experience I hope a lot more of you reading this get to have, and hope I haven’t spoiled too much of it for you. Watchmen will continue to be talked about, and looked at as a true pioneer in every written medium, and praised as one of the best pieces of art created during our or our children’s lifetimes.
Jessie Robertson
