Sorry folks for forgetting to update this as I should. I know, I know...your lives just aren't complete without my book reviews. I shall try to do better in the future. To make up for my lack of reviewing here, I'll post a review every day for the next few days.
Since it's on everyone's mind, I'll add my review of Watchmen as well. Warning: some spoilers.
The Watchmen by Alan Moore and David Gibbons, reviewed by N. Vivian on 3/6/2009.
Watchmen is a comic about superheroes, but it isn't a superhero comic. Instead, it is Moore's playing with the genre to the point of awesome. Picture New York City 1980's; a New York where people really did (at one point) dress up in wacky costumes and fight crime. A New York (and a world) where superhero comics don't exist, because who wants to read comics about real life (people read pirate comics instead)? Of all the costumed crimefighters, only one is actually parahuman: Dr. Manhattan. Created by a scientific experiment gone horribly wrong (betcha never heard that origin story before, eh?), Dr. Manhattan exists outside of time, and can change the physical world on an atomic level simply by will and thought alone. America is using him to hold the pinko commie bastards Russia in check ("the superman exists and he is American"), leading America to behave like a spoiled brat who is always threatening to take his ball home if other kids countries don't play by their rules, and who keeps talking about his big brother who'll beat everyone up if they don't do what he says.
Yeah, I know, it's an America that defies belief.
The comic opens with the murder of Edward Blake, the alter ego of the superhero "The Comedian," one of the two superheroes who works with government sanction. The other, is, of course, Dr. Manhattan; the rest were forced into retirement back in '77 after the passing of the "Keene Act" which basically just said no to vigilantism. The one costumed crimefighter (a more accurate term [though I use them pretty much interchangeably] than superhero since none of them have powers save Dr. Manhattan) who did not go gentle into that good night is Rorschach. Rorschach is, by my thinking anyway, the most interesting character in Watchmen. First of all, his moral code is awesome. On the one hand, he truly believes that the ends justify the means; breaking the fingers of a small time crook to get information is completely okay, but at the same time, he freaks out on another character for having an unlicensed gun. Rorschach never compromises; his entire outlook is purely black or white, right or wrong. If something is wrong, it must be persecuted to the fullest extent (and not necessarily by the law). Like his mask, which is a never-ending swirl of black and white, his views never mix into a neutral gray. Much like Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias, Rorschach never questions his actions or his motives--he is action, pure and simple. In order to find a missing girl, he tortures fifteen people for information; upon finding she has been murdered, dismembered, and fed to dogs, he kills the dogs, handcuffs the kidnapper, sets the house on fire, then hands the man a hacksaw and says, "Shouldn't bother trying to saw through handcuffs. Never make it in time." Brutal, man, but chillingly effective. His response to the Keene Act? To murder a serial rapist and dump his body in front of the police station, with a sign that says "Never!" pinned to the corpse.
Rorschach believes himself to be Rorschach; he refers to his mask as his 'face' and sees his alter-ego (who is not revealed for several chapters, but you can pretty much guess his identity right off) as the not-real him. This psychological break occurs during the the kidnapping scene, though it builds on several decades of fucked-uppedness: "It was Kovacs who said 'mother' then, muffled under Latex. It was Kovacs who closed his eyes. It was Rorschach who opened them again....Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose...It is not God who kills the children. Not Fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us....Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach." Seriously, his psychology is amazing, and that's before we get into the crazy that was his childhood.
The whole comic book is a deconstructionist text (if there's one thing I can honestly say I've learned at Clark, it's lit. theory. Still don't like it, but at least I [sorta] understand it now), looking at the worth and value of superheroes. First, it looks at the kind of people who would become costumed crimefighters in a modern, fairly realistic setting, at the dark psychology behind such a drive and motivation. It's one thing for Superman and Spiderman to do so--they've got special powers that creates within them a special responsibility. Batman, however? Plain, mortal Batman? Screwed up in the head. It warns of the danger of having a weapon that we place all our hopes and power in because when it goes, or becomes obsolete, we have nothing left and our enemies swarm around us and our newfound (or even newly perceived) weakness. Lastly, this is also a cautionary tale; Moore is warning us about putting all our hopes and trust into powerful beings, either political or paranormal. By doing so, we absolve ourselves of all responsibility and agency. First we give them the power to do as they please, and remove from ourselves the power to protest against them, and then we follow them down into moral decay since, freed from any notion of personal responsibility, we feel empowered to do as we please.
Oh, and let me talk about Tales of the Black Freighter for a moment, Watchmen's comic within a comic. The reader gets to read the story "Marooned," during several points of the comic, as the events in that story coincide with the events in the actual story. "Marooned" is about a sailor who washes up on an island (along with the bodies of his dead comrades) after the Black Freighter (the eponymous ship of evil from the comic) attacks his ship. The sailor realizes that the Black Freighter will be sailing towards his undefended home, and will kill everyone in the town, including the sailor's own family. In order to make it home before the ship, the sailor starts doing the most insane things, slowly stripping away him humanity (and sanity!) in the process. He makes a raft out of the gas-bloated corpses of his friends, catches and eats a raw sea gull, kills and eats a shark that has been drawn to the smell of his raft, and then, once he gets home, begins murdering his friends and neighbors who he assumes are collaborating with the pirate...who never came.
This theme of sacrificing everything to achieve victory has a certain central importance in the main-comic, as you can see if you read the comic yourself (I'm pretty sure that if I spoil the ending, I will be placed on the hitlist of the Geek Mafia). It's not exactly like a Pyrrhic victory--it's more of a deliberate setting out to do insane and horrible things, in order to bring about a "happy ending."
Like Watchmen itself, Tales of the Black Freighter are aspects of the theater of the absurd. They illustrate that life is inherently without meaning, parodying reality, or using seeming absurdity to show the real absurdity that is everyday life (like a comic book about superheroes to hold up a mirror to Reagan-era politics, for example...) It's all about the tragicomedy, yo.
This is a very thought-provoking comic. On the one hand, the story is interesting, the characters multi-faceted, and the gimmicks (comic-within-a-comic, the text afterwords from the Watchmen universe, etc) both enrich and illuminate the story. On the other hand, this comic is a veritable treasure-trove of literary criticism. Two of my students last semester are writing their major papers about Watchmen; the first is looking at Watchmen and comparing it to the Theater of the Absurd, and the second is reading this and V for Vendetta and discussing the concept of 'masking.' It's not a surprise that Watchmen is considered a 'literary' graphic novel. You can peel this text apart like an onion.
4.75 stars
Showing posts with label graphic novels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label graphic novels. Show all posts
Friday, March 6, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Watchmen: "They" Require Supervision
The Watchmen by Alan Moore and David Gibbons, reviewed by Steve on 2/23/2009.
For those of you who do not know, The Watchmen is a graphic novel by Alan Moore, one of the most talented graphic novelists of the century. Indeed, TIME even picked it as one of the one hundred best English novels. The novel also won a Hugo in 1988, which is one of the coveted awards of excellence for works in sci-fi/fantasy. Other works by Alan Moore include: V For Vendetta, and From Hell, both of which were successfully adapted to film.
The story takes place in a parallel world set during the 80's in New York City. A man named Edward Blake has been murdered, but the police have no idea who might have committed the crime. Despite the Keene Act, which banned superheroes from taking action and threatened prosecution for transgressors, one superhero, Rorschach, begins investigating Blake's murder. He discovers that Blake was formerly known as The Comedian, one of the superheroes who used to work with Rorschach and four other superheroes. Immediately, Rorschach concludes that he has uncovered a conspiracy to kill off superheroes, and he warns the others: Silk Spectre II, Doctor Manhattan, Nite Owl II, and Ozymandias.
Initially, the other superheroes do not believe Rorschach, who continues his unorthodox investigation in the underground of New York. Meanwhile, Doctor Manhattan, who has become the symbol of American innovation and power, is accused on TV of causing cancer in his friends and co-workers. Doctor Manhattan is horrified, especially when the U.S. government suddenly turns on him, apparently taking the accusations to heart. He then flees--teleports would be the better word--to Mars, leaving behind humans and their politics. Suddenly, Rorschach's assertions that a conspiracy exists to discredit or kill off former superheroes seems to be true, especially when Adrian Veidt (a.k.a. Ozymandias) narrowly escapes an assassination attempt.
Rorscach continues his investigation and gets caught by the police, who arrest him and throw him in jail. With Doctor Manhattan in self-exile, and Ozymandias preoccupied with his business, Dan Dreiberg (a.k.a. Nite Owl II) and Laurie Juspeczyk (a.k.a. Silk Spectre II) decide to don their costumes once more to save Rorschach and find out who is behind the conspiracy, before it is too late.
The Watchmen was the first graphic novel I have ever read, and was recommended to me by my friend, Matt. I was initially reluctant and uncertain about the graphic novel genre: it seemed to me that half of the fun I get from reading is in imagining the setting and characters as I mentally watch the story unfold. I thought that with a graphic novel, that half is more or less done for you; you have an artist's rendition of everything, leaving the reader with nothing to imagine. In some senses I was right, but my prediction that I would not enjoy it could not have been more wrong. I loved it.
The artwork itself is somewhat "dated," at least that's what I have been told and what I have heard from graphic novel connoisseurs. Nevertheless, I do think that the "dated" feel to the artwork is fitting. The story is supposed to be set in the 80's, in the middle of the Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which feels like a long time ago even if it was not in actuality. Additionally, I would like to re-phrase things a bit, and say that the artwork is not so much "dated" as it is "classic." Sure, it's not as current and edgy as some of the new artwork out there, but the art still draws you in, just as an older film can. To be sure, if you have predispositions against "old" things, whether movies, art, or any other media, then you probably will not be able to move past this.
While the story itself is fantastic, and does not so much "progress" as it does unfold before you, I had a hard time keeping things straight in the beginning, especially because there seems to be no central character whose perspective directs the story. Initially, it seemed like the main character was Rorschach, because the beginning followed his investigation, but this changes and the story continues as though nothing had changed, which made me feel as though no one was the central character. This is not really a flaw, it's just something unexpected and different.
I am very pleased to say that I honestly loved this book, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone. If you have not read a graphic novel yet, this is the one to try it out with. I give this 5 stars.
For those of you who do not know, The Watchmen is a graphic novel by Alan Moore, one of the most talented graphic novelists of the century. Indeed, TIME even picked it as one of the one hundred best English novels. The novel also won a Hugo in 1988, which is one of the coveted awards of excellence for works in sci-fi/fantasy. Other works by Alan Moore include: V For Vendetta, and From Hell, both of which were successfully adapted to film.
The story takes place in a parallel world set during the 80's in New York City. A man named Edward Blake has been murdered, but the police have no idea who might have committed the crime. Despite the Keene Act, which banned superheroes from taking action and threatened prosecution for transgressors, one superhero, Rorschach, begins investigating Blake's murder. He discovers that Blake was formerly known as The Comedian, one of the superheroes who used to work with Rorschach and four other superheroes. Immediately, Rorschach concludes that he has uncovered a conspiracy to kill off superheroes, and he warns the others: Silk Spectre II, Doctor Manhattan, Nite Owl II, and Ozymandias.
Initially, the other superheroes do not believe Rorschach, who continues his unorthodox investigation in the underground of New York. Meanwhile, Doctor Manhattan, who has become the symbol of American innovation and power, is accused on TV of causing cancer in his friends and co-workers. Doctor Manhattan is horrified, especially when the U.S. government suddenly turns on him, apparently taking the accusations to heart. He then flees--teleports would be the better word--to Mars, leaving behind humans and their politics. Suddenly, Rorschach's assertions that a conspiracy exists to discredit or kill off former superheroes seems to be true, especially when Adrian Veidt (a.k.a. Ozymandias) narrowly escapes an assassination attempt.
Rorscach continues his investigation and gets caught by the police, who arrest him and throw him in jail. With Doctor Manhattan in self-exile, and Ozymandias preoccupied with his business, Dan Dreiberg (a.k.a. Nite Owl II) and Laurie Juspeczyk (a.k.a. Silk Spectre II) decide to don their costumes once more to save Rorschach and find out who is behind the conspiracy, before it is too late.
The Watchmen was the first graphic novel I have ever read, and was recommended to me by my friend, Matt. I was initially reluctant and uncertain about the graphic novel genre: it seemed to me that half of the fun I get from reading is in imagining the setting and characters as I mentally watch the story unfold. I thought that with a graphic novel, that half is more or less done for you; you have an artist's rendition of everything, leaving the reader with nothing to imagine. In some senses I was right, but my prediction that I would not enjoy it could not have been more wrong. I loved it.
The artwork itself is somewhat "dated," at least that's what I have been told and what I have heard from graphic novel connoisseurs. Nevertheless, I do think that the "dated" feel to the artwork is fitting. The story is supposed to be set in the 80's, in the middle of the Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which feels like a long time ago even if it was not in actuality. Additionally, I would like to re-phrase things a bit, and say that the artwork is not so much "dated" as it is "classic." Sure, it's not as current and edgy as some of the new artwork out there, but the art still draws you in, just as an older film can. To be sure, if you have predispositions against "old" things, whether movies, art, or any other media, then you probably will not be able to move past this.
While the story itself is fantastic, and does not so much "progress" as it does unfold before you, I had a hard time keeping things straight in the beginning, especially because there seems to be no central character whose perspective directs the story. Initially, it seemed like the main character was Rorschach, because the beginning followed his investigation, but this changes and the story continues as though nothing had changed, which made me feel as though no one was the central character. This is not really a flaw, it's just something unexpected and different.
I am very pleased to say that I honestly loved this book, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone. If you have not read a graphic novel yet, this is the one to try it out with. I give this 5 stars.
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