I feel it's important to bring Watchmen up from more of a recent viewpoint, though. Many of the people who gave it five stars either read it 20 years ago and have let it accumulate a rosy glow ever since, or else simply aren't familiar with the state of modern comics.
I spent the first ten years of my life reading hundreds or thousands of comics (and books too, thank you very much), and there's little about Watchmen that distinguishes it from the current crop. The art is subpar, the cliches glaring, and the "mature humor" nearly as subtle as Roseanne. The integration of contemporary issues such as nuclear tension and sexism lends it more weight as a snapshot of an age without actually contributing to its longevity.
The attempts at sophistication- the subcomic "Tales of the Black Freighter", the repetitive wordplay- fail miserably, and do more to make the book an embarassing showcase of pretension than comic innovation. As my father is fond of saying, "If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bulls**t."
If you're a comic fan, Watchmen is a harmless waste of a few hours. If you want a real introduction to the comic medium, though, stick to Maus or Hepcats.


Nauseatingly overrated   February 11, 2001
 30 out of 64 found this review helpful

Let me just start by saying that I think I can appreciate why this book was so groundbreaking when it came out in the mid-eighties: the innovative moral ambiguity of its heroes, the epic scope, the highbrow epigraphs (Ooo, Nietzsche! Dylan! This must be some of that real art!), the looming menace of nuclear apocalypse endowing the story with a sort of anxious fever-dream quality, and so on. But I have to admit that I found it a singularly annoying read in 2001. I think Alan Moore's most irritating and overused device throughout this series is the heavyhanded juxtaposition between caption and image. If your idea of great and subtle artistry is one homicide detective saying to another, "Well, what say we let this one drop out of sight?" in a panel depicting a flashback of a murder victim plunging to his death, this book is for you--there is panel after panel of this sort of obvious layering straining for cleverness. But if you're someone who gets annoyed at having your face repeatedly rubbed into the writer's overwrought stabs at significance, look elsewhere. The melodramatic plot was interesting enough that I made it all the way through, but I have to say I'm happy it's over. Check out "From Hell" for a more mature example of Moore's work.


Truly Great, But Missed Opportunity with the New Coloring   October 20, 2005
 30 out of 38 found this review helpful

This review should be helpful to anyone interested in purchasing a copy of this book, but it's mostly intended for those who already have a copy of Watchmen who are deciding whether to purchase this newest edition as well. I know a review like this would have been helpful to me when making my decision whether or not to buy, considering I already had two copies of the previous edition. If you don't have a copy of Watchmen already, all you really need to know is that you should get a copy, and this is the best version available.

As to the book itself, Watchmen is one of the best stories/mysteries/character studies I've ever read. It's been considered a classic for years, has won tremendous aclaim, was recently selected by Time Magazine as one of the one hundred best novels of the past one hundred years, and is very well illustrated. There's no question that Watchman is a book that deserves five stars, and I recommend it to everyone who hasn't read it yet. This volume is also the best edition released to date, so if you don't have a previous volume and you have the funds, you can't go wrong getting this.

That said, I must admit I was expecting much more from the new coloring that I kept hearing and reading about (Wizard magazine and various websites had articles about how the whole book was being recolored, and the insert attached to the slipcase also mentions that the whole book has been digitally recolored.) The book originally came out several years ago when coloring in comics was much more restricted, and while the coloring in Watchman was done very well for it's time, coloring in general has come a long way and has improved greatly since. The coloring in modern comics uses gradients to add depth and shadows, uses light sourcing for the same, has a much larger pallete of colors that can blend smoothly one into the other, and uses computers to essentially add special effects to the page. The result (when combined with good line art) is much more realistic, believable, solid, three dimensional worlds. The coloring now a days can really add depth and nuance. Some prime examples would be books like Phoenix Endsong, Green Lantern Rebirth, Absolute Batman Hush, or Absolute Panetary, but pretty much every monthly comic today benefits from improved coloring.

Each time I read that Watchmen was being completely recolored, I couldn't wait to see how great the world was going to look, so when I finally got my copy and opened it up, I must admit to being quite a bit dissapointed. At first the coloring looked exactly the same to me as it always had, and very dated -- it didn't look any where on the level of most modern comics. I actually had to go and get one of my two trade paperback versions of Watchman to compare the coloring to assure myself the coloring had in fact been updated in the new version. In a side by side (quick) comparison it was obvious that the new coloring was crisper, more controlled, and did have a few more details added, but it was far more true to it's original, dated coloring than to modern coloring. When I opened the book I expected to see a new realism and depth, I expected Doctor Manhatten to practically glow like the power of the Green Lanterns in Green Lantern Rebirth (which is colored so well it really does look like a special effect.) I expected to see a Rorschach like the one Wizard had in it's article about the new edition and the new coloring -- that Rorshach was colored as if he were a fully three dimensional figure in a world with a fixed light source, with shadows and gradients and depth -- he looked real. By not coloring this book to the full extent of modern capabilities, I think DC really missed an opportunity. I absolutely love Watchmen, so I don't mean to harp, but the new coloring isn't on a level with the coloring in most monthly books being released right now -- certainly not on a level with monthy books like New Avengers, Infinite Crisis, etc. It isn't bad, and it is better than the original, but it isn't nearly what modern coloring can be -- and if DC was going to go through the trouble of recoloring the book, then advertise the fact that the book had been recolored (which was one of my big incentives for getting this version since I already had two copies of the original version,) then why not do the coloring to the best of modern abilities, which they definitely did not do.

Anyway, this book still gets five stars easy. It's heroic, tragic, touching, suspenseful, very well illustrated, and truly thought provoking. Some of the other reviews have really broken down why people should read this better than I ever could, so I won't even try, but again I do recomend it highly to everyone, and this very nice version is the best version available. If you don't already have a copy, you can't go wrong with this. If you do already have a copy (I had two paperbacks) it's probably still worth it for the extras, the nice hardcover, and the somewhat improved coloring. Like I said, it is the best version available. But if you already have a copy and you're only interested in getting this new one for the promise of the new coloring, you might want to see if you can find a copy you can look through before you make a purchase.



Corny, melodramatic writing   November 18, 2004
 29 out of 230 found this review helpful

Moore's original burst of inspiration was to take a form of children's literature - the super-hero comic book - and fuse it with the Hemingway-derived melodrama of the hard-boiled school of crime and detective fiction. Teenagers, poorly-read and possessing malnourished tastes in prose, were predictably awestruck by the results. They thought it was 'realistic'; they thought this was 'great literature'.


Graphic literature at its best   September 20, 2001
 27 out of 31 found this review helpful

I'd written in my review of Marvels that it was my favorite graphic novel of all time...I guess I hadn't read enough graphic novels. The Watchmen is easily as good as Marvels, The Dark Knight Returns, or what have you. This is a super-hero epic designed for adults who have a serious interest as comic books as an art form. The term "graphic novel" is sometimes misapplied to over-blown comic books...that is not the case here. Alan Moore is a great writer (arguably the best in the field) and, in The Watchmen, he has created a story of great depth, scope, and meaning. I have discovered internet sites dedicated to pointing out the hidden subtexts and motifs of this book...they are not reading too much into it. The task Moore sets for himself (as he often does) is to ask the question, "What would the world be like if super-heroes really existed?" That question is more far-reaching than the average comic book implies. The plot unfolds, not in a comic book way, but the way it might really happen. The ending is completely original and totally unexpected.

On a personal note, this book will forever be entwined in my mind with the events of September 11, 2001. Some of the issues in the book cut a little too close to home. But for me specifically, I'll remember staying up late the night before reading this book, and then being awakened by my roommates early the next morning to the scene of the World Trade Center in flames...and thinking that I'd read the comic for too long. Things this terrible don't happen in the real world, only in comic books...right?