Note: this began as part of my comic book journal Trollheart's Futureshock. I may get back to that at some point, but for now I want to concentrate on resurrecting this part of the journal, and so have given it its own separate one.
One of the most important and influential works in the field of comic books and graphic novels of the late 1980s - indeed, of the twentieth century -
Watchmen has the distinction of being one of the very first to bring the term "graphic novel "into the mainstream, even though its writer professes to dislike the term. I can see where he's coming from: it's like people who don't want to be accused of reading comics are able to sniff and say “Comic? No no no. This is a
graphic novel!” as if that makes a difference. Of course, there is something that distinguishes what we think of as comics from graphic novels. Firstly, and most importantly, they do follow the format of a novel in that there is a complete story within their pages, whereas comics will tend to continue the story or stories in other issues, and the story or stories could run for weeks, months or even longer. Secondly, generally they're in a hardback or semi-hardback format and usually all pages are in colour, as opposed to some comic books where maybe only the cover and the middle pages are in colour.
Graphic novels can be written specifically for that format, but often they have been previously published in a series and this series is then collected within the pages of what becomes a graphic novel. This is in fact what happened with Watchmen, along with
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and
V for Vendetta: intrinsically just a way of appealing I guess to comics collectors and squeezing more money out of them, but it's how I came into contact with Watchmen, through my younger brother.
I should like to make it clear that this journal will concentrate on the graphic novel only; there may be mention of the movie, but only in passing. The fact that it has a different ending (though largely is otherwise very faithful to the graphic novel) keeps me from going into it, and anyway I don't want to. This is not just a synopsis of Moore's
meisterwerk, it is, as the title says, a forensic deep dive, in which I will be examining in almost minute detail every aspect of this incredible work, which bears repeated readings and offers new insights every time it is again approached.
Written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, two men who had made their name working for
2000AD in the seventies,
Watchmen imagines an alternative future in which the USA won the Vietnam War very quickly with the aid of superheroes sanctioned by the government. As the novel opens however it is a much different time, and tensions are building between the US and the USSR on a scale not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis of the sixties. It is here we begin our tale.