What Makes Watchmen (the comic) so Great?
- Thread starter Shapsters
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For it's time it was pretty groundbreaking. It opened a lot of doors for comic writers and artist to express themselves more freely. It made Time's best novel list because of its concepts and higher-than-normal level of writing. The reason it's got such geek-cred is because of the follow-the-leader mentality. Several of us were discussing this at work the other day. So many of us grew up with this being considered such a subversive tome that even the fringe geeks knew about it but hadn't read the whole series even though they all bought the bound version so people could see it on their bookshelf.
The plot most definetly, and also character development. The fact that heroes are in the "real" world for once was quite interesting, and worth exploring (also worth exploring what would happen if one of these heroes had actual superpowers, and how that would affect history and society). The heroes themselves were very well characterized, Rorschach in particular, and did not really feel like empty shells like other heroes can be.
Once you read something written by Alan Moore, you realize there isn't much difference from prose to comics. His books contains little action with the focus primarily on the characters. I have read so few prose books that characterize the amount of characters Watchmen contains so well.
Basiclly refined the Criminal hero steriotype...
Make a character as easy to understand as Nite Owl, and made him more difficult to understand
Dr. Manhattan was an interseting character comics still don't seem to have anymore
Backstory to watchmen was groundbreaking, no one ever puts that much thought into a story.
Instituting new ideals into society, like cutting the knot with a sword, kill a million to save a billion.
The animation was simple, and good.
Put adult themes, and true people mentality into comic books.
Twists characters like Captain America=The Comedian, and makes him human.
IS BASED IN SOMEWHAT OF A BELIEVABLE REALITY!!!!
Thats why it is amazing.
Make a character as easy to understand as Nite Owl, and made him more difficult to understand
Dr. Manhattan was an interseting character comics still don't seem to have anymore
Backstory to watchmen was groundbreaking, no one ever puts that much thought into a story.
Instituting new ideals into society, like cutting the knot with a sword, kill a million to save a billion.
The animation was simple, and good.
Put adult themes, and true people mentality into comic books.
Twists characters like Captain America=The Comedian, and makes him human.
IS BASED IN SOMEWHAT OF A BELIEVABLE REALITY!!!!
Thats why it is amazing.
The fact that the comic broke so many rules and stereotypes about superheroes at the time was what made the comic so great. You had superman, batman, captain america running around doing all these good things and all the citizens applauding them. Watchmen took that and flipped it. You have superheroes being the dirt of the earth that everyone was walking over them. Basically Watchmen went places other comic books didn't want to go.
