Watchmen by Alan Moore

            My experience reading some of Alan Moore’s comics has taught me that his work can be a bit tough to swallow when first reading through it; Watchmen has thus far been the most difficult to read through (when the narration starts off describing a dog that’s been run-over, and the murder of another character on the following page, you know you’re in for a dark story).  However, it’s probably the most intricate work I’ve ever read from a story-telling perspective; this is mostly due to the writing, but Gibbons’ careful work on the paneling, and use of multi-media content to weave a highly layered graphic novel make it among the most interesting works to hit the market in decades.

            One of the reasons I enjoy Watchmen is because of the gritty sense of realism, found in both the writing and the art.  Alan Moore’s descriptive voice through characters like Rorschach set and kept the tone throughout Watchmen, and Gibbons’ level of attention to detail really made the world of Watchmen immersive on levels few other graphic novels have been able to accomplish (the layers of foreshadowing between the writing and the art are insane – for instance, a “Missing” poster for one of the writers Veidt hired appeared as early as Chapter 3, when it’s not revealed what direct relevance he or The Black Freighter have to the story until Chapter 8 and 12).  Chapter IV and IX were particular favorites of mine, due to the careful and deliberate consideration Gibbons gave to paneling (not that he didn’t to the rest of the story, but these two chapters stood out in particular).  Moore’s deconstruction of the average “super hero” story in Watchmen, using the characters to analyze and comment upon what kind of person it takes to actually take up masked vigilantism, is interesting in part due to how it affected the comics industry in later years to come (for instance, how comic-based films are approached, how new series are formulated with these ideas in mind, etc.  Kick Ass being a close/current offspring of the same stance initially taken by Watchmen).

           Another thing I find interesting about Watchmen was the fact that it uses more than just the imagery in panels to tell its story.  The Black Freighter, a comic-within-the-comic, alongside content like newspaper clippings, book excerpts, and police reports, aid in further expanding upon the universe Watchmen takes place in, and may be loosely seen as an early ancestor of current, “true” multi-media comics online (for instance, the web-comic Homestuck utilizes videos, music and various levels of interactivity to tell the story, while a small handful of other online comics are either partially animated). 

Deus-ex-Squidmonstera!  What.