OK, granted, we haven't known each other for too long, so I don't have an intimate knowledge of the types of stuff you may or may not like, but you are definitely doing yourself a disservice by not reading this, at the very least from a "milestones in comics history" standpoint.
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created the book to take the medium to its limits. Some of this involved taking superhero tropes to their worst conclusions. So they came up with conclusions like "If there really was a Batman he would be a sociopath." But they also came up with conclusions like, "If there was a nuclear war coming, how much would superheroes really be able to help? Why do you need so much firepower to catch petty criminals? Wouldn't the police resent their presence?" It's not really about going for shock value, but more about deconstructing the medium and creating a work of art out of it.
Re: Dark and Gritty. Yes, Watchmen, like DKR (which I haven't read yet) is credited with starting the grim and gritty trend, but it's one of those works that may have STARTED a trend but aren't necessarily part of that trend. You know how Halloween is credited with starting the slasher film genre but actually has minimal blood? Or how Saw was the start of the "torture porn" genre but only has one super-brutal scene of violence and no women are killed? It's kind of like that.
The book can be violent, and some of its heroic characters do un-heroic things. (There's an almost-rape scene. Rorschach also kills criminals.) I've heard people say if Nite Owl, who perhaps best fits our traditional view of a "superhero," wasn't in the book, they wouldn't have enjoyed it. But the book doesn't glory in its violence. Any character that does anything bad is usually condemned by another character.
But Dark and Gritty is sort of a mis-label, there are moments of great beauty in the book, too. There's this one chapter where Dr. Manhattan, who is a Quantum superhero so he experiences all time at once, sits on Mars and looks back on his life, except to him he's not really looking back because everything is happening to him at the same time, and we're privy to this knowledge that while he has this incredible power he also has basically no way to make his own life better ... moments like those you really can't call "Dark and Gritty."
Speaking of Dr. Manhattan, the characters in Watchmen are really amazing. Every one of the six main characters (Rorschach, Nite Owl II, Silk Spectre II, Dr. Manhattan, The Comedian and Ozymandias) has multiple, complex facets to their character and their own detailed history that Moore & Gibbons nevertheless manage to cram into 12 issues. And, like any great piece of literature, there are times when you HATE the characters and the next scene you feel sorry for them and then you go back to hating them. Or maybe on a second or third reading your view of a character changes or you notice something new about them.
Heck, I've done maybe two straight readings of the book, and I've read my favorite scenes multiple times, and I usually notice something new every time I read it. As a sort of small example, Dr. Manhattan has two girlfriends in succession, and he gives the first one these earrings. And then on the second reading I realized his second girlfriend was wearing the first girlfriend's earrings. And then when the second girlfriend started fighting with him she stopped wearing them. It's not something the characters mention at all, but it's something neat you notice on multiple readings.
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This will be long ...
Date: 2009-02-05 05:19 am (UTC)Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created the book to take the medium to its limits. Some of this involved taking superhero tropes to their worst conclusions. So they came up with conclusions like "If there really was a Batman he would be a sociopath." But they also came up with conclusions like, "If there was a nuclear war coming, how much would superheroes really be able to help? Why do you need so much firepower to catch petty criminals? Wouldn't the police resent their presence?" It's not really about going for shock value, but more about deconstructing the medium and creating a work of art out of it.
Re: Dark and Gritty. Yes, Watchmen, like DKR (which I haven't read yet) is credited with starting the grim and gritty trend, but it's one of those works that may have STARTED a trend but aren't necessarily part of that trend. You know how Halloween is credited with starting the slasher film genre but actually has minimal blood? Or how Saw was the start of the "torture porn" genre but only has one super-brutal scene of violence and no women are killed? It's kind of like that.
The book can be violent, and some of its heroic characters do un-heroic things. (There's an almost-rape scene. Rorschach also kills criminals.) I've heard people say if Nite Owl, who perhaps best fits our traditional view of a "superhero," wasn't in the book, they wouldn't have enjoyed it. But the book doesn't glory in its violence. Any character that does anything bad is usually condemned by another character.
But Dark and Gritty is sort of a mis-label, there are moments of great beauty in the book, too. There's this one chapter where Dr. Manhattan, who is a Quantum superhero so he experiences all time at once, sits on Mars and looks back on his life, except to him he's not really looking back because everything is happening to him at the same time, and we're privy to this knowledge that while he has this incredible power he also has basically no way to make his own life better ... moments like those you really can't call "Dark and Gritty."
Speaking of Dr. Manhattan, the characters in Watchmen are really amazing. Every one of the six main characters (Rorschach, Nite Owl II, Silk Spectre II, Dr. Manhattan, The Comedian and Ozymandias) has multiple, complex facets to their character and their own detailed history that Moore & Gibbons nevertheless manage to cram into 12 issues. And, like any great piece of literature, there are times when you HATE the characters and the next scene you feel sorry for them and then you go back to hating them. Or maybe on a second or third reading your view of a character changes or you notice something new about them.
Heck, I've done maybe two straight readings of the book, and I've read my favorite scenes multiple times, and I usually notice something new every time I read it. As a sort of small example, Dr. Manhattan has two girlfriends in succession, and he gives the first one these earrings. And then on the second reading I realized his second girlfriend was wearing the first girlfriend's earrings. And then when the second girlfriend started fighting with him she stopped wearing them. It's not something the characters mention at all, but it's something neat you notice on multiple readings.