prelude to a review...
Like just about everything that makes me fucked-up, this begins with my father, who read Shakespeare, Steinbeck, and Spider-Man with the same detail-obsession and critical thought process, who sought more than just mindless entertainment in the gaudy costumes, stylized dialogue, onomatopoeic action, and ever-recycled storylines. As dad showed me the exotic dance of Victorian British language, introduced me to the confusing snark of magical realism, and carefully reminded me of the marginal origins of Dumas and Pushkin and how it influenced their plot-weaving, he also explored the moral struggles of Peter Parker, the Nietzchean influence on Superman, and the familiar dynamics of the X-Men. Most importantly, he weaved all together so seamlessly, even unconsciously, as I rushed behind him to catch discarded Vietnam War Novels, copies of Animal Farm and The Count Of Monte Christo and entire storyarcs of Detective Comics and consumed them with the neurotic reverence only a true geek and longtime virgin can truly appreciate. In short: I'm a fanboy, but a fanboy shackled to the perhaps-too-conservative idea that the comic medium carries the same (if you'll excuse the cliche) powers and responsibilities as any other printed word.
To make matters worse, I grew up in interesting times for comic books. Too young to have witnessed the post-Vietnam sobering of the 70's, I began life in that awkward time in the early 80's in which the medium wasn't sure of its direction, only to be pleasantly shocked by its sudden maturation in the mid-80's and outright explosion of the early-to-mid 90's. Even if I wasn't truly mature enough to grasp the concepts, I still read it all: Miller's The Dark Night Returns, Claremont's and the Simonsons' run on the X-Men , Pekar's American Splendor, Eastman & Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...and, yes, Watchmen, by Moore and Gibbons.
In short: the nerdiness is strong with this brother.
It gets worse.
Amidst my extensive graphic novel education, my father also dedicated an inordinate amount of time toward cultivating my cinephilia and audiophilia. (In the interest of space, I'll spare you the gruesome details of that magic.) I spent an equally obscene amount of time in the 90's coming up with dream scenarios for the "ultimate" film based on my favorite comic books--right down to the score. By this time, of course, I had the Burton Batman films as a model, as well as the other sci-fi/fantasy films whose visual majesty mirrored the images I'd read on the printed page. The fact that Jim Cameron was still kicking around Spider-Man was a geek-boner I carried well into my mid-adolescence, and when the X-Men and Batman cartoons came out, I was rapturously happy, as it finally meant the hollywood establishment was starting to recognize the commercial viability of the characters.
I didn't re-visit Watchmen until high school, I guess, when I found the sixth issue floating around in a box of grab-bag comics I'd tossed into a box when we left Hawaii. Eventually, I hit the store and snagged the trade, which I'd last read in '89 at the Ames Public Library, and flipped through it. I was still into mainstream superheroes at the time, though, and, although I dug it, I still preferred The Dark Knight Returns, which retained enough optimism for me to champion it.
Until college, of course.
Those of you who know me know me well enough to sense my enormous shift from petulant, cynical asshole to petulant, cynical, incredibly vocal asshole. Around this time, I put down the superhero stuff--it had become too overblown, due in no small part to the market over-saturation that nearly bankrupted the entire industry, and the creativity of writing (so important in the 80's) had given way to the Liefield-ized crap art stuff. Add to the mix my political maturation, and the fact that I was learning how to critically understand and appreciate literature, and poof! A cause is born. Watchmen became my book-of-choice, the answer to all of my observations on American adult life, the template for how to look at the ambiguity of a world so overgrown with corporatization, bullshit territorialism, jingoism and the absence of empathy. I say with no sense of shame that some of my first thoughts as I watched the World Trade Center collapse were of the idea of how easy it would make it for the Bush Administration to railroad their initiatives into reality from that point on.
I mention all of this because it's important to know the depth of my fanboy-ness, and how my academic and political background makes me look at things in certain ways. At the risk of sounding egotistical, I feel I apply a more strict rubric to the art I consume than the average bear; I do this because I take it seriously, because the things I consumed as a lad were the things that made me feel as if I had something in life to look forward to, because I hated the real world so much, and the art I consumed had to be perfect to transport me from it.
To make matters worse, I grew up in interesting times for comic books. Too young to have witnessed the post-Vietnam sobering of the 70's, I began life in that awkward time in the early 80's in which the medium wasn't sure of its direction, only to be pleasantly shocked by its sudden maturation in the mid-80's and outright explosion of the early-to-mid 90's. Even if I wasn't truly mature enough to grasp the concepts, I still read it all: Miller's The Dark Night Returns, Claremont's and the Simonsons' run on the X-Men , Pekar's American Splendor, Eastman & Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...and, yes, Watchmen, by Moore and Gibbons.
In short: the nerdiness is strong with this brother.
It gets worse.
Amidst my extensive graphic novel education, my father also dedicated an inordinate amount of time toward cultivating my cinephilia and audiophilia. (In the interest of space, I'll spare you the gruesome details of that magic.) I spent an equally obscene amount of time in the 90's coming up with dream scenarios for the "ultimate" film based on my favorite comic books--right down to the score. By this time, of course, I had the Burton Batman films as a model, as well as the other sci-fi/fantasy films whose visual majesty mirrored the images I'd read on the printed page. The fact that Jim Cameron was still kicking around Spider-Man was a geek-boner I carried well into my mid-adolescence, and when the X-Men and Batman cartoons came out, I was rapturously happy, as it finally meant the hollywood establishment was starting to recognize the commercial viability of the characters.
I didn't re-visit Watchmen until high school, I guess, when I found the sixth issue floating around in a box of grab-bag comics I'd tossed into a box when we left Hawaii. Eventually, I hit the store and snagged the trade, which I'd last read in '89 at the Ames Public Library, and flipped through it. I was still into mainstream superheroes at the time, though, and, although I dug it, I still preferred The Dark Knight Returns, which retained enough optimism for me to champion it.
Until college, of course.
Those of you who know me know me well enough to sense my enormous shift from petulant, cynical asshole to petulant, cynical, incredibly vocal asshole. Around this time, I put down the superhero stuff--it had become too overblown, due in no small part to the market over-saturation that nearly bankrupted the entire industry, and the creativity of writing (so important in the 80's) had given way to the Liefield-ized crap art stuff. Add to the mix my political maturation, and the fact that I was learning how to critically understand and appreciate literature, and poof! A cause is born. Watchmen became my book-of-choice, the answer to all of my observations on American adult life, the template for how to look at the ambiguity of a world so overgrown with corporatization, bullshit territorialism, jingoism and the absence of empathy. I say with no sense of shame that some of my first thoughts as I watched the World Trade Center collapse were of the idea of how easy it would make it for the Bush Administration to railroad their initiatives into reality from that point on.
I mention all of this because it's important to know the depth of my fanboy-ness, and how my academic and political background makes me look at things in certain ways. At the risk of sounding egotistical, I feel I apply a more strict rubric to the art I consume than the average bear; I do this because I take it seriously, because the things I consumed as a lad were the things that made me feel as if I had something in life to look forward to, because I hated the real world so much, and the art I consumed had to be perfect to transport me from it.