Watchmen - Alan Moore

Watchmen is Alan Moore's 12 episode comic series captured into one graphic novel. It has been rated as one of the best of all time by Time Magazine, and is generally considered a masterpiece in the realm of graphic novels. I came across it only by dint of it being made into a film, which I watched and thoroughly. However, reading a number of reviews, I realised that the film couldn't quite capture what the comic book offered, and that certain elements were left out. I managed to get hold of a copy of Moore's Watchmen, and have just finished reading it. The first thing you notice is the artwork. Moore collaborated with Dave Gibbons on the creation of Watchmen, ...  Read the complete review

Alan Moore is one of the most famous and acclaimed writers in comic book history. His work includes classic books such as V For Vendetta and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen volumes I & II. His most famous piece of work though is Watchmen, a groundbreaking comic/graphic novel first published in 1986 which Moore wrote and Dave Gibbons illustrated. Watchmen is a huge and complex deconstruction of the superhero genre and set in 1985 in a cold war world on the brink of nuclear war. It depicts a universe where costumed superheroes are real but outlawed by a government act - except for a select few the government maintains to work for them. The ...  Read the complete review

Imagine an alternate 1980s, one where Nixon is still president (after some careful renegotiating of the laws regarding number of terms), one where America won the war in Vietnam. One where the threat of global nuclear war is partly held in check by the presence of a deity like individual who works for the American government. Where the comic book explosion of the 1930s created a rash of real masked heroes, who dressed up as costumed vigilantes, desperate to bring crime under control. Who were banned by government legislation after a Police strike made them unpopular and caused rioting. This is the world in which Alan Moore sets his epic twelve part series ...  Read the complete review

Watchmen was recommended to me by a friend who had his hair cut into pointy horns and sported a very long, very dodgy goatee, I’m clearly mixing with the right people. Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” is probably about the most important comic ever released, it changed the way people view comics as an art form and as literature. I think it’s one of the few comics that actually deserve that awful 80’s term, Graphic Novel. The reason that the Watchmen works so well is that it works on so many levels, it has the intellectual clout of a genuine novel using flashbacks, themes and very serious issues. It has the accessibility of a comic ...  Read the complete review

First Impressions ************** I’ve never really been into comic books or graphic novels, whichever title you choose to give them - if you do indeed believe that the two are separate. Sure, when I was a kid, I enjoyed the occasional Spiderman comic but the adventures were continuous things and you had to wait a week to see what would happen next after being given possibly five pages of a particular adventure. When you consider the size of each frame in comic, five pages isn’t a hell of a lot. I was around about 14 when a friend recommended a book called Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons, in fact he was so enthused about the book, he ...  Read the complete review