(upbeat music)
Meepelous: Hello and welcome, my name is Meepelous (they/she/he) and this is Literally Graphic!
And today we are finally looking at Watchmen (the original comic series) by creative team writer and co-creator Alan Moore alongside artist, letterer and co-creator Dave Gibbons; and colorist John Higgins. Originally published as twelve single issues between 1986 and 1987; they were collected and published as a trade in 1987 and have been kept in print ever since so that DC can hold on to the copyrights.
Starting this script, let’s lay out the parameters of this video. As indicated by my intro the main focus is the original comics run of Watchmen back in the 1980s. Will I have any original thoughts? Probably not, as this is one of those comics that has been talked about to death. But what I get out of this is the process and that always enriches my reading experience, so here we are. I have not read any of the more recent spin off comics due to generally bad reviews – although I’ve now added them to the maybe to-read list so perhaps that’ll happen eventually. I watched the movie about a decade ago (after I originally read the comic) and wasn’t immediately turned off, unlike my watching of V for Vendetta; it was more of a slow burn to ashes in the back of my mind. This will not become a movie review video however, but I’ll probably have a few things to say. I watched and enjoyed the Watchmen TV show around the time it originally aired but I failed to fit in a rewatch while I’m writing this. Again, not here to review it, but it seemed like a good point of contrast to both the movie and comic.
And do I need to say once more I am not an expert on what it was like to live in the 80s, let alone what this comic meant to people when it first hit the stands? As usual I am going to be talking about this comic as someone who first read it in University and has now re-read it about a decade later in the early 2020s. As we’ve already proven, my personal opinions have morphed a bit even in that short decade.
Moving along with the rating and content notes: while DC certainly does go through phases of slapping ratings on their comics, the edition I have does not provide any guidance as far as content goes. Content notes for blood and guts, r word, f slur, underage, violence against sex workers, a pregnant person, and women in general, sex, SA, n word, smoking, and just a fire hose of bigotry spewing out of Rorschach almost none stop.
Looking at the violence depicted; while Watchmen is not the most obsessed with blood and guts comic that I have ever read, it does definitely appear. It still stands out in contrast to the movie where Zack Snyder is a bit more obsessed with the physicality and damage superheroes can do. He actually turned up the strength level and power level of the so called heroes, who are much more super abled in the movie then in the comics.
Moving along to creator biographies, obviously I just released a video reviewing V for Vendetta. You’re going to have to click back to that to get the biography of Allan Moore.
In contrast, I have yet to talk about artist Dave Gibbons, so here we go. Clicking over to Wikipedia Dave Chester Gibbons was born in 1949 in England. Apparently also collaborated with Alan Moore on the Superman story “For the Man Who Has Everything”. Before Watchmen Gibbons was initially published in British Underground Comics publications, worked on Year of the Shark Men, contributed to the first issue of 2000 AD, and was the lead artist on Doctor Who Weekly/Monthly for issues number 1 to 69. After Watchmen Gibbons remained extremely prolific, doing work with Frank Miller, the DC/Marvel crossover event, Star Wars, and in 2011 he participated in setting two Guinness World Records for fastest production of a Comic Book and Most Contributors to a Comic Book among many other accomplishments.
Colourist John Higgins is another british artist. Born in Walton Liverpool he also worked at 2000 AD and did colours for both Watchmen and Batman: The Killing Joke. According to Wikipedia, among his many other works, Higgins also drew a serialized feature “Curse of the Crimson Corsair”, which is part of the Before Watchmen series.
What kinds of keywords came to mind reading this book: time, aging, flawed, legacy, post modern, critique, relationships, nuclear threat, vigilante, gender, and morality.
Clicking over to Comic Vine, Watchmen is described as “Alan Moore’s seminal comic series. It has been proclaimed one of the greatest literary works ever created and was the only comic book to be featured in Time Magazine’s best 100 English-Language novels from 1923 to present.
‘Who watches the Watchmen?’ This slogan was everywhere: on the Universal Product Code box of direct market comics; adorning the bottoms of letter columns, and in provocative full page house ads. DC knew it had its hands on something truly great, and it wanted to whet the appetite of as many fans as it possibly could. When the first part of the 12 issue maxi series, “Watchmen” hit the stands, readers weren’t quite sure what they were going to get. But when word of mouth began to spread about both the quality of Alan Moore’s scripting and Dave Gibbons’ detailed drawings, ‘Watchmen’ became a fast seller and a fan favorite.
The writer had originally intended for his opus to chronicle the future of the fondly remembered heroes from the defunct publisher Charlton Comics. However, DC soon decided it had its own plans for those heroes and so Moore created new characters to give ‘Watchmen’ its own distinctive universe. The story itself is a masterful example of comic book storytelling at its finest. As the obsessive Rorscharch began to investigate the murder of his old teammate the Comedian, a mysterious conspiracy unraveled that both saved the world and damned it. Filled with symbolism, foreshadowing and ahead-of -its-time characterization thanks to adult themes and sophisticated plotting, “Watchmen” elevated the super hero comic book into the realms of modern literature.”
Clicking around all the usual haunts where I source my synopsis, so many of them were not actually about the comic but more about describing the hype that’s developed around it for the past couple of decades and the plot description on Wikipedia is way too long… To hit the highlights of first paragraph though “In October 1985, New York City detectives are investigating the murder of Edward Blake. With the police having no leads, costumed vigilante Rorschach decides to probe further. Rorschach deduces Blake to have been the true identity of The Comedian, a costumed hero employed by the U.S. government, after finding his costume and signature smiley-face pin badge. Rorschach believes he has discovered a plot to terminate costumed adventurers and sets about warning four of his retired comrades… Dreiberg, Veidt, and Manhattan attend Blake’s funeral, where Dreiberg tosses Blake’s pin badge in his coffin before he is buried. Manhattan is later accused on national television of being the cause of cancer in friends and former colleagues.”
Next up I generally talk about the writing and the art. It’s a very dense and layered book, which is certainly not a grantee of skill and whether it’s peak comic or not, it is not everyone’s cup of tea and I respect that. While the layered story within a story tickles my brain, seeding the story with so many outside references is the kind of thing that in my lifetime has been used by some to try and intimidate others out of fandoms. You aren’t a real fan if you can’t list off all these factoids at the drop of a dime, or might just be generally stupid if you don’t pick up on them immediately, and such like. Noted detractor Grant Morrison also feels like this “The fact that none of the characters were allowed to be smarter than the author, that really drove me nuts…The world’s smartest man is an idiot. He makes a plan all his life that is undone by the end of the book in an instant. The psychiatrist sits with Rorschach for five minutes and Rorschach tells a super banal story of how he became a vigilante and the psychiatrist cracks. If you’re a criminal psychiatrist who deals with men in prison, you’ve heard a million of these stories. It was all to make a specific point about how the real world isn’t like superhero comics.” See CBR article in the description for more on what Morrison has to say, but I definitely agree about that annoyance with the psychiatrist.
Looking briefly at the art, the strict 9 frame structure is extremely striking. And like the writing, there is lots of little important details which can be fun to suss out. With style and colour choices that really amplify what is happening.
I do think there’s a lot of material in here, no matter if it’s approved or not by the author, that many people don’t need to be subjected to in the 21st century if they don’t feel like it. Not to mention all the people who insist on thinking that Rorschach is a hero… A perhaps predictable predicament; I don’t know. But one of the things I think all this really boils down to is a problem of putting this book on a pedestal. It’s a certain kind of good, sure, and it seems like people feel very strongly that it set a new standard for comics – as I already mentioned I wasn’t there to watch this timeline unfold and haven’t become an expert in the mean time. Sure. But nothing is perfect and the higher the pedestal goes the more important it becomes for people to voice their critiques. Even if Moore seems to not be a fan of such things. See link in the description to the interview with Slovobooks where Moore attempts to rules lawyer his way into his intent washing over the impact parts of his work has had on people. Obviously I disagree with this approach.
-momentary pause-
The political origins of Rorschach, while known, are not always brought up in discussions/reviews of the work so I would like to highlight them here. Namely that Rorschach is a direct critique of Mr. A – an objectivist super hero created by Steve Ditko. A self proclaimed evangelist for this philosophy developed by enemy of the common man Ayn Rand. An interesting contrast between the comic and the book is that obviously Moore is not a fan of any of these people, but (at least at the time of movie production) Snyder was a fan of objectivism
Otherwise, it was interesting to (as I continued into this re-read of Moore) see where it overlaps and reflects things that pop up elsewhere in Moore’s work. For example both Watchmen and V for Vendetta both end in a large man-made catastrophe meant to bring the masses together in a new way. Even if V and Ozymandias are at completely different ends of the class spectrum. Similarly, I was struck by some overlap between Dr Manhattan and the origins of Swamp Thing. I’ll probably have more to say about the latter once I start re-reading that property.
The one thing that did become clear watching interviews with Moore about Dr. Manhattan; Moore did not have any faith in top down change coming from the hands of characters that had become equal to the gods. While their lack of action can feel very nihilistic at points, I feel like so far in my reading of Moore this is often contrasted directly or indirectly (through recurring themes across his work) that change comes up through the often maligned masses. This would also seem to generally align with Moore’s stated politics.
That said, one of the major differences that jumped out to me between V for Vendetta and Watchmen is the level of binary gender, binary gender roles, gender based violence etc that our characters are participating in or the subject of. For a minute it kind of gave me a bit of whiplash; but ultimately it makes sense, considering how Moore seems to see the world that the Watchmen reside in. But more on that in a second.
I guess this transitions us to the representation side of things, obviously this is supposed to be work of satire, which makes this a bit more difficult to parse. Much like with V I feel like almost all, if not all, the behavior in Watchmen is not receiving a gold star of approval from the creative team. But writing satire is playing with fire and this is certainly not the only satire where many readers have lost the thread over what is being satirized. Saying something is satire is also not a force field that repulses all critique either, and that’s not even getting into the amount of things that people label as satire in bad faith as a form of self defense.
Anyway, before we dive in, another disclaimer that I will not get to everything.
Looking at sexuality and gender, a lot of shit goes down. Most of it is bad and I think we are supposed to think it is bad, but something about it still seems to fall flat. And why do we have to be subjected to yet another rape scene in which another man has to save the woman from the rapist? Moore can say he is against rape all he wants, but at most it comes across as trying to be edgy. How are we going to show how Comedian is the worst? By having him shoot a pregnant woman and rape one of his co-workers. Oh gees, that’s certainly the female representation I was hoping for. 
Of course at least in the white woman’s case we do get a bit of other character development. The mother daughter discourse around using or not using one sexuality, for me at least, did feel like a discourse I still hear bouncing around from time to time. As a generally pro-conceniousal sex person I feel like the rape of Silk Spector is a way of warning against women owning their sexuality which should really not be the case.
There is of course also massive age gap between Dr. Manhattan and Laurie, who is a teenager when he moves on from his previous lover to her. Much like Edward Cullen and Bella Swan, without the pretense that he looks young.
Looking at male sexuality, Rorschach does accuse Oxymandias of being gay, but otherwise it doesn’t feel like men have to deal with the same level of sexual scrutiny or emphasis. This despite the fact that in comparing the two binary genders, men are actually naked a lot more in this comic – but in a way that is de-sexualized and (on a positive note) anything but I guess “alpha male”. Which was a bit refreshing. There is violence against queer people, although seemingly perpetuated by not good people. It’s still violence against queer people, that once again, renders it very much not a must read for anyone.

Grant Morrison on Why He Hates Watchmen
Slovobooks Interview
The Dysfunctional Sex of Watchmen
Watchmen Doesn’t Get Watchmen – Max Marriner
Alan Moore Talks: Watchmen
Alan Moore created Rorschach to dunk on Randian superheroes