Watchmen

When it comes to comics, Watchman is a pure classic. It took comics from the childlike innocence that many people saw it as to the real world, with dark, morally flawed and ambiguous characters. Many of whom you are not sure who to root for, or even if you should root for them in the first place. As for me, this was my first time reading this, and wow, it was amazing.

This is a book that was excellent purely because of its gritty realism. These superheroes are ones that, with the exception of Dr. Manhattan, do not have super powers. They are normal people who have decided to take up a mask for a variety of reasons, not all of them savory. You won't find anyone fighting for truth, justice and the American way, nor to avenge the deaths of those gunndowned by violence. Many of the people featured have some fault or another, and many are just as durranged as the people they seek to fight, if not worse. This is the best element of the novel, and it is fascinating to see how their relationships unfold as we meet them and see them try and find the person who is killing all of the former, and current masked superheroes.

The art direction is also good. While the style is not perhaps to my taste, I did like the amount of detail that went into each and every one of the frames. It makes reading these panels an enjoyable experience that makes re reading them a requirement, rather than a desire. I can't wait to reread this to see what I may have missed before.

What are the negatives, you may ask? Well, this can be a bit of a heavy book, subject-wise, with graphic depictions of violence and sexuality that means you may want to look for something more lighthearted after this. Obviously, this should not be given to those in their Middle school years, at the very least. I'd say older high school, at the earliest. Still, these are mere warning, not anything truly wrong with the work as a whole. As an added aside, I did think that the ending with the giant squid thing was kind of stupid. Why couldn't half of New York been destroyed by a regular bomb or something? Still, overall, I liked this novel far more than I thought I would. This is a graphic novel that I know I am going to read again, of only to see the things that I missed the first time around. I give it a five out of five.