Watchmen Review:
Let me preface this by telling you something about comic books.
I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THEM.
Like, absolutely nothing. NOTHING AT ALL. Even things that you might consider to be common knowledge, I know NOTHING about, because not only do I not read comic books, but I’ve also always had the talent to be spectacularly unaware, despite being a Troper. So, if I do say something ungodly stupid in this review, it’s because I KNOW NOTHING. I make no excuses.
In fact, let me write a list of the things I know about the Watchmen before I read it:
- It’s a comic book
- Its main character had an unpronounceable name
- There’s a blue guy in it.
- It’s generally considered to be good.
Perhaps because of the last point, I was more than willing to let Waffles lure me into reading it. We sat down and read the first part of Chapter 1 together, and I read the rest by myself. And it was a notable enough experience that I thought it only appropriate that I write a short (knowing me, this means it shall be rambling and tedious) review.
Warning: THIS IS ENTIRELY MY PERSONAL OPINION. I WILL BE BIASED. THIS WILL BE SUBJECTIVE. YOU MILEAGE WILL VARY. I’M NOT SAYING I’M RIGHT. THIS IS JUST MY PERSONAL OPINION. PLEASE DON’T KILL ME.
Warning: THERE SHALL BE SPOILERS. I DON’T KNOW IF I SHOULD WRITE THIS, SEEING AS THE BOOK WAS PUBLISHED ABOUT 20 YEARS AGO, BUT JUST TO BE SAFE, THERE WILL DEFINITELY BE SPOILERS.
PLOT:
As perhaps every person on earth knows, the Watchmen is a deconstruction of the superhero genre. And it’s absolutely great at that. Like I said, I know NOTHING about comics or superheroes really, but even I can understand the comic’s intentions behind Rorschach’s extremism, Dr. Manhattan’s detachment, and Ozymandias’…well, extremism again. But at the same time, it talks about so much more than just that. The social commentary, questions of morality, even pondering on the meaning of life and time and space contained within these 12 short chapters are simply breathtaking.
I said the same thing about The Darkest Hour, and I’d like to repeat it here: any one of these concepts are infinitely complex and can fuel an entire story on its own, and the Watchmen somehow explores ALL of them, while still keeping track of the plot and maintaining its pacing. And each concept is explored in depth, too, raising many interesting questions that will surely keep me tossing and turning in my bed for the next couple of weeks. And not only does it give equal weight to all these problems, but it weaves and integrates them together, so that it hardly feels like the writers are going off on a soapbox.
I have a little habit when I’m reading books. I like to, if at all possible, read it in one sitting, and afterwards go out for a walk around my neighbourhood. And while I’m walking, I’ll think back about the book, mulling it over and dissecting it in my mind. And I like to judge the books I read by how long they have me pacing outside.
The Watchmen is not a long story, but I literally could not read it in one go, as I had to keep stopping to admire a particularly well-written line or a piece of fantastic artwork. And I finished reading it 2 days ago, and some part of my brain is still twisting itself into knots, madly processing all the messages in the books and the techniques used to deliver them.
I guess I had my doubts when I started reading the story, since many books that have been espoused as ‘great’ (like fucking Twilight) turned out to be less than spectacular upon perusal, but in this case, I definitely think the Watchmen deserved every bit of praise it got.
However, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.
I have a complaint about the plot presented here, though it is relatively minor. Specifically, Ozymandias’ plot.
Even more specifically, the reveal of the plot. I always felt Nite Owl’s reaction to it was a little…awkward. I mean, I understand his confusion over his discovery and certain level of denial, and I understand why he’d go to Antarctica anyways, because…what other choice did he have? I just wished he had his little confusion freak-out thing in Ozymandias’ office and eventually calmed down enough to resolve to go to Antarctica anyways, instead of just going ahead without question and only start freaking out a bit when they’ve arrived. I’m not saying the second way is wrong, it just doesn’t read as naturally to me, and it’s a COMPLETELY personal preference.
And another thing were the artists and scientists kept on an island, who were very important plot points, and I wished we could have seen more of them. As it is, they only had a few short panels in Chapters 8 and 10 and felt more like a tool used to quickly justify the ending, and I really wished we could have seen more of them. As it is, it feels that they’re plot devices more than characters.
The Watchmen has absolutely mastered the art of parallelism anyways, juxtaposing very different scenes that nonetheless manage to mirror each other perfectly; surely, they could have included the activities on the island as yet another parallel?
Ozymandias’ little display where he orders his company to buy various goods judged on TV broadcasts near the end also kind of bugged me. I just felt like his intelligence was...a bit TOO exaggerated, to the point where it was destroying the beautiful realism of the story. I mean, I’m okay with a character being smart enough to watch several dozen screens at once in a campier worker, such as Death Note, but in Watchmen, it just felt a little out of place. That, and it felt far too close to micromanagement, what with him dictating the moves of each department, instead of leaving it to the department heads to decide. And no matter HOW competent he is, there’s no way he can micromanage a firm that size. Well, that, and television isn’t exactly a fantastic mirror to reality. I mean, the fabricated stuff we put on do reflect our psychology somewhat, but most of the time, it’s just writers using tropes established decades and decades before, because this is the formula that’s proven to work. If you dig deep, sure, you can learn a lot about us as a society through TV, but just sitting there and staring at a dozen different screen for a few minutes? That isn’t nearly enough to identify a pattern, much less correctly deduct what that pattern means.
But again, these are very, VERY minor problems and didn’t obstruct my enjoyment of the book at all. I actually loved it, from the absolutely fantastic pacing, to the weaving of such different plot threads together, to the absolutely BREATHTAKING parallelism, to the show-within-the-show, to the little nuggets of humour even in a story this grim…It’s absolutely FANTASTIC, and trust me, I had to think for a LONG time before I could come up with something to complain about, because I like bitching.
On a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest mark, I’d give the plot and themes in this book 9/10. As minor as the complaints were, they actually did manage to momentarily jar me out of the story, though I was quickly drawn in again. On a whole, they don’t impact the story much, and this is still a GREAT book.
CHARACTERS:
I have to confess that I cheated a little before reading the comic by going on TV Tropes and skimming through the Watchmen page. And I had gotten the impression that it featured a very large and diverse cast that stretched across several generations. So, I was quite surprised to find out that the core cast of the Watchman mostly revolves around just five people - Rorschach, Nite Owl, Ozymandias, sort of kind of Dr Manhattan, and my personal favourite, Laurie Jupiter (LOOK, HER REAL SURNAME IS HARD TO SPELL, OKAY?).
I guess a big part of why there seemed to be so many more characters is because the Watchmen is absolutely FANTASTIC.
The characterisation in this book is JUST.
FUCKING.
PERFECT.
There’s no other word to describe it.
The main characters themselves, of course, are ENDLESSLY fascinating. My friend, Waffles, can absolutely talk for days on end just on Rorschach's issues, and I learned that none of her vague fangirl-ing is exaggerated. In fact, she might have been downplaying just how great that character was. He was someone who you definitely couldn’t agree with, and yet couldn’t exactly disagree with either. Many fandoms boast supposed Magnificent Bastards who could talk the virtuous hero into turning to the Dark Side, and The Watchmen is the only book I’ve seen so far to make that boast come true. The things he says do offend my sensibilities, and yet at the same time, just like his therapist, I find myself being helplessly drawn into him and it quite scared me how some of the things he says kind of resonated with me. And trust me, that’s hard to do, especially when your character has such skewed beliefs.
Another great point is how, through some kind of black magic, the author actually managed to convey the sense that Rorschach is…well, Rorschach. I mean, plenty of fandoms have characters who CLAIM that their former self is dead or something, but it’s only here that I really buy that claim. I feel awkward referring to Rorschach by his real name, and the chapter where he was without his mask really made me feel vaguely uncomfortable, because…that is just not the face he was supposed to HAVE! I still have no idea HOW the author managed to do that…
And that’s not to say the other characters are any less complex. Each and every one of the character are not only well-rounded, fully-human, and continue to grow and develop throughout the story, but also fit within the bigger picture by playing off of each other and having relationship that, while sometimes not healthy, are perfectly understandable considering their individual psychology. I feel their biggest accomplishment here is actually managing to convey a slight taste of what Dr. Manhattan, someone whose fundamental quality is that he is NOT human, sees. In Chapter 3 (probably my favourite of the chapters), the one entirely from his point of view, I really did…well, I guess understand where he was coming from and sympathise with him. I mean, I’m creeped out by him and I fully understand why he’d scare the other characters, but really, I never really felt that alienated from him. Again, I have no idea how, the author just managed to do it. It’s black magic, I swear.
And that’s not even talking about the minor characters! And yeah, even the people who only appear in maybe a dozen panels (like Janey and her girlfriend) are still rounded, well-developed characters. They have an understandable motif and are all very sympathetic. There is not one character that isn’t a full-formed human being in this story. And with the fantastic way they interact with and are tied to each other, where background characters aren’t just background characters, but still linked to the main story through chains of acquaintances and coincidences, this book has captured the feel of a realistic society. And that really went a LONG way towards helping it achieve its goal of social/political commentary and deconstruction.
If I had to come up with SOMETHING, I guess I’d complain about, again, the scientists and artists on the island. Somehow, it just feels to me that they’re the weakest part of the plot. I don’t really buy the idea of top authors, artists, and scientists being put on a deserted island to work for a secret project because…while I can buy the scientist part, in my experience, most famous authors and artists were absolute BRATS. They tend to be very temperamental, and I just can’t buy the thought of any of them being willing to spend what was YEARS on a deserted island away from civilisation no matter how much they were paid. Even if they agreed, not realising the full scale of the project, I can’t believe there wasn’t any huge tantrums or violent internal conflict. In a book with characterisation as rounded as this, the comparatively flat artists and scientists just bugged me.
And it’s just odd that SO MANY people are that willing to abandon their families and friends and the comforts of civilisation, and to work on such a nebulous project? I mean, even supposing a couple of dozen people were JUST. THAT. DETACHED from their families and friends…who would agree to such an ambiguous work? I mean, throwing your life in the hands of someone you don’t know and just TRUSTING that they weren’t luring you to the island to hold you hostage? Or kill you? Or just use you as slave labour forever? And most really famous scientists already have their own projects, I assume. And I can’t imagine many of them being willing to abandon their own work for years at a stretch…Again, I wish we could have seen more of them. They were a very central group of people, and yet were also the flattest, just because they were never really onscreen.
On a scale of 1 to 10, this would definitely be a 10/10. Because the relative flatness of the scientists and artists never really impacted my enjoyment of the book. It wasn’t until I was wracking my brain, trying to dig through all the myriad layers of the story, that I even noticed this.
Art:
Like I’ve said before, I’ve never really read comics before.
…Okay, so I didn’t read comics at all before.
Instead, I basically grew up reading Japanese comics, or manga. And this is the first time I’ve ever read anything in this particular style and I just…LOVED IT. It was FANTASTIC.
I mean, I still like manga and all, but I found this style to be equally breath-taking, and there were some just GORGEOUS panels in here that blew my mind. I mean…what else can I say?
The scenery was amazing (particularly the chapters set on Mars; GOD, that was beautiful), the characters were wonderfully drawn (and the more realistic style helped set up the atmosphere of the story), and the little details in the scene, like Rorschach carrying his sign littered throughout chapters, is absolutely wonderful. And the few full-page spreads at the end of the carnage in New York actually did make my breath hitch in my chest.
There’s just nothing I can think of to complain about…I guess the artist could have tried to make Rorschach’s face a little uglier, because I really didn’t think it warranted being described as ‘fascinatingly ugly’ (seriously, that was a bit of an exaggeration), but that doesn’t really matter anyways, because his face DOES unsettle me (mostly because Rorschach without his mask is just wrong).
Perhaps my favourite little detail is the way Laurie’s mascara got smudged when she cried. That little detail really made me feel for her, somehow…I guess because it’s so damned realistic that you can’t help but empathise?
Anyways, this is DEFINITELY a 10/10. The art was just amazing, FULL STOP. In fact, I’m actually eager to read more comic books, just to check out this somewhat unfamiliar style.
Overall:
Even though I do like to be as optimistic as I can possible be, I have to confess that I was very sceptical about the Watchmen when I started reading. I’ve heard of it online before, as I said, and everywhere I went, there were only positive opinions. And, for some reason, that made me a little suspicious. I’d like to blame this on Twilight, whom everyone around me (mostly my classmates) had assured me was the GREATEST BOOK EVER. So I started reading, fully expecting to be blown away, and…yeah. I was very disappointed. So, I’m almost traumatised in a way, and I find myself more suspicious towards works that have praise from lots of people than towards ones that have a more balanced review.
Thankfully, the Watchmen turned out to be a piece of ART.
There were a lot of elements that I simply didn’t have time to talk about in this review, including the insertion of text pieces which serve to fully flesh out the universe we are in or provide little glimpses into the minds of more minor characters, or serve as foreshadowing, or fleshing out a message that was contained in the story itself. I found the mix of different mediums also surprisingly effective, as it sort of symbolized all the myriad different viewpoints and beliefs that conflict against each other within the Watchmen universe and the different tones of the writing really gave the reader an idea that this didn’t come from the same person, that there was a greater world out there. So, it was fantastic world building, too.
The repeated motif of each chapter, with the slowly dripping blood and clock hand approaching 12 also creates a sense of doom and inevitability, and keeps the reader in suspense even throughout the beginning chapters as we feel an omnipresent sense of foreboding and anxiety. The start of each chapter, with an extreme close-up of an often symbolic item in a setting, followed by a full, establishing shot of the new setting is not only visually interesting, but also carries through the message of the need to look at the big picture, and that a new perspective will usually make what was baffling completely reasonable.
The story-within-the-story mirror and parallel the plot, serving as excellent foreshadowing and character exploration by proxy, lending more meaning to the seemingly innocuous events as well as illustrate yet another corner of the world. And the dismissal of the story by the in-universe reader (I forget his name) prompts us to question ourselves and take a deeper look at the Watchman. Not to mention, the fact that a comic book is using a comic book to deliver its message (or at least some of its messages) is delightfully meta and ironic.
I could go on for all eternity and not scratch even the surface of all the things that made me squeal with delight. If I had to choose one favourite ‘technique’ of the Watchmen, it would have to be the fact that the plot of the Watchmen is very grand, and yet even through all the chaos, somehow, we were able to get a good idea of exactly what the society of the Watchman world was like, from their media to their sub-cultures to their social values. And that is a staggeringly impossible task to achieve.
In the end, I can only judge the Watchmen by how well it accomplished its intended purpose - deconstruction of the superhero genre, as well as political and social commentary of the 1980s America. And unfortunately, I can only judge it by my own personal reactions to the story.
And I have to say, it succeeded FANTASTICALLY. Even to one as ignorant as me about the tropes commonly associated with superheroes, the Watchman still managed to provoke me to reflect on the validity of vigilantism and the ambiguity of morality. After I put the book down, I quite literally spend a couple of days just turning everything over in my head, struggling to sort out all the issues presented by that book, and frankly, I doubt it’s possible to see every single little symbol or message buried in that book, because of its breath-taking complexity. And that is a FANTASTIC thing. All books should be something that provokes thought and reflection, and hopefully change in the reader. I’m not sure whether the Watchman had changed my beliefs, but just the fact that it got me to seriously think on them and debate them with myself means that it has more than fulfilled its intended purpose.
The book is successful in that it managed to do everything its creator likely intended it to do, and therefore, I feel no other score would properly justify this work of art except a 10/10. If there exists a book that is perfect, then this would probably be it.