The Book: Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
The Story: Just when you thought I couldn’t get any nerdier, look at me… reading comic books. Ha.
I know that it would probably make some seriously-in-love-with-Watchmen people cringe, but what I kept comparing Watchmen to was the movie The Incredibles. Superheroes are the bomb dot com and they’re popping up everywhere. Some bad stuff goes down and the government makes it illegal to practice superheroery. Superheroes go and get normal lives. A few of the old superheroes are still kind of into their old thing. Something bad happens to an old superhero. The other superheroes defy the law, get new costumes and travel to some remote place to fight an old, mad superhero. Same story, huh? There’s even mention in both Watchmen and The Incredibles about how unsafe capes are in superhero comics. Heh.
Anyway, that’s pretty much what happens here. There are other stories going on: a new generation of superheroes, the world being kind of a mess, and a couple of love stories… but mostly, we’re looking at a darker version of The Incredibles.
What I Thought: I have read quite a few graphic novels before, but I had never read one that was so comic-booky if that makes sense. I tend more toward stuff like Craig Thompson… pretty and almost girly… I have been hearing about Watchmen for, oh, ever and finally decided to give it a go.
It kind of took me a long time to get into it. I didn’t feel any kind of connection with the characters and even had a hard time getting them straight at first. Maybe around the halfway point something clicked for me and the rest of the book went by really fast.
I was kind of surprised at how dark the whole entire novel was. There were very few points of light, even in the past stories and the love stories. It was just all kind of bleak, but I think that that was the point. Everyone was insane or messed up or just plain mean. So when I say that I didn’t “enjoy” this read, I don’t exactly mean it in a bad way. I don’t think it was meant to be enjoyed as much as to be just taken in.
I also have to say that I totally “get” why this book is so popular. I can respect anything that was kind of the first of its kind. I realize that in writing this novel that they did something that hadn’t been done before and it kind of made people drop their jaws. I get it. It is also kind of a testament that people are still talking about it now, 20-something years after it was first released. Most novels can’t say that, put aside in the under-represented world of graphic novels.
My husband (who is somehow nerdier than even me) was thrilled out of his mind when he came into the bedroom one evening and I was laying there reading Watchmen. Earned me major “wife points.” So, just another bonus.
Conclusion: If you ever need to prove how nerdy you are, make a Watchmen reference. To do that, you’ll have to read this bad boy. This is a game changer, and for that I think it is worth your time, but I don’t think I’d make it your first graphic novel experience.