The Watchmen: Classic, duh!

Does he lie about killing them? this must be researched.

-- Jordan (j0rdanc0h3...), May 25th, 2004.

...but didn't anyone notice that at the very end of the comic book, in the last panel, seymour the new frontiersman office assistant guy is fumbling his hands through the papers in the 'crank file', indicating that he eventually may find Rorshach's Journal.?

and remember, it is Rorschach's journal which contains the trail leading to Ozymandias's plans, which if uncovered could threaten the world peace Veidt created.

hence the symbolism of the ketchup stain landing on seymour smiley face shirt, forming the bloodied comedian logo, implying the comedian (and the war-centric worldview to which he belongs) will have the last laugh.

I don't think the bloody smiley is a symbol for The Comedian, rather than for the whole comic (remember, the blood stain implies the death of Comedian). But Moore hints elsewhere what he thinks will happen after the ending. The sailor in the pirate stroy is obviously Ozymandias' alter ego; Ozymandias even tells he sometimes dreams of swimming towards a great ship. In the pirate story the sailor tries to save the ones he loves, but his attempt is misguided, and he fails horribly. So Moore is implying Ozymandias will eventually loose. In the end, Moore the anarchist thinks people's freedom to decide is more important than anything else. This is the biggest irony of Watchmen: in the final chapter, Rorschach the fascist becomes the hero, whereas Ozymandias the left-wing vegetarian is the villain. No matter how much we (and Moore, no doubt) revile Rorschach's ideological views, we have to sympathize with him for refusing to accept Ozymandias totalitarian plan.

From another viewpoint, Moore is saying that Ozymandias has already lost.

I agree, but that's sort of the whole theme of the comic. Imperfect perfections. Like the whole symmetry/mirror image thing - I guess most of you have noticed that chapter five has a symmetrical structure; each panel has a corresponding mirror image panel. So the fist panel of the chapter corresponds with the last panel on the first row of the final page, etc. And the two middle pages form a symmetrical image - Ozymandias hitting a guy with statue, so that they're bodies form an big "X". (X is kinda like the symbol of the whole story, just like V was that of V for Vendetta - in V the direction of the story is linear, down and up, whereas Watchmen is all about choices, crossroads, open endings. Seymour can either pick the book or not.) But for the whole story to be symmetrical the mirror image should be between chapters 6 and 7 (because the whole story has 12 chapters), not in chapter 5. So it's a broken symmetry, just like with the bloody smiley, just like with Comedian's face. Imperfect perfection.

Note: I didn't come up with these ideas by myself. If you have lots of spare time, I'd suggest visiting this excellent Watchmen site.

Or maybe Moore just didn't know shit about computers in 1986.

WATCHMEN

Variety (subscription required) is reporting that the Alan Moore property has been placed in "turnaround," meaning that the studio has effectively pulled the plug on any movie through Paramount. The producers, Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin are taking the movie to other studios, hoping to get re-signed. Thanks to Michael Dunne for the heads up on that.

easy to crack computers were a real staple of 1980s fiction - viz. Wargames.

I think, though, that it's possible Alan Moore just knew dick about computer systems. See how easy it was for V to hack into Fate in V For Vendetta.

yes, especially if they were alternately red and green panels where the lights from a nearby hotel sign were flashing on and off. 8)

the computer system told him the password was almost right and would he like to add something to it, the II in Rameses II iirc. real computers would never do this but it was necessary for the plot (pointing out that Ozy associated more with RII ("Rameses The Great") rather than RI who only reigned for a couple of years - more of his 'latent narcissism')

is that a superhero emoticon?

Maybe the password scene would've worked better if it was "shot" from behind the monitor?

I'M POSTING THIS AGAIN BCUZ NOBODY SAID SHIT ABOUT IT LAST TIME AND I'M POUTING.

Stir and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with isotopes.

I had a funny conversation yesterday with a guy who is discovering "graphic novels", and was interested in reading Watchmen becuae he has seen it showing up in lists of best books of the 20th century and stuff. The great thing was that he seemed to basically have never heard of superheroes, so he was saying "I've looked at it in shops, and it seems to be about, you know, crime fighters and stuff, but it is meant to be very good".

It would be great to have never heard of superheroes... it would be so exciting to then discover them.

I'm not sure you could deal with superheros, without that childhood grounding.

if you have no previous, then watchmen has nothing to subvert.

I think the whole subversion angle is a bit overstated. For a lot of people, Watchmen would have been the first comic they ever read, and they still love it.

Yeah, strip it of all the deconstructive post-modernism and it's still a cracking mystery-cum-science-fiction story.

For real!

I'm the only person who hated Watchmen I guess. And not in an iconoclastic, "ain't I a rebel" way either. A friend gave me Watchmen and Transmet at the same time (when I was starting college and getting back into college for the first time since grade school). Transmet was amazing and I fell in love with comics again because of it. Watchmen felt boring, self-indulgent and way pretentious. The pages of text? The ridiculous pirate comics? Ugh. I still can't stand it today.

Getting back into comics for the first time, I meant.

Def. I was just thinking I want to re-read it now that I've read a bunch of the Golden/Silver Age stuff to which it was a response.

that was an xp to the conversation above mordy

Watchmen felt boring, self-indulgent and way pretentious. The pages of text?

Haha, let me tell you about a little comic called Cerebus.

I just wanna say, before the inevitable onslaught (I don't think I've ever articulated this opinion without being yelled at) that I don't think there's anything wrong with liking Watchmen (or Cerebus for that matter). It just isn't my cup of tea and in general, I've had a hard time enjoying Moore's work. Which isn't to say I only like comics to be pulpy. I like Morrison, who I think is trying to do more that just write pulpy stories (I loved Animal Man, for one). There's just something about Moore that's a huge turnoff for me, and that is epitomized in Watchmen.

Sorry, didn't mean to be snipey. I don't think Watchmen's pretentious at all, the storytelling is tight as a drum, and all the subtexts ultimately come second place to that. It is a little smug perhaps, you can practically hear Moore rubbing his hands together in the background going 'Haha, I've fucking nailed this one,' but, you know, he has a point.

Cerebus on the other hand is monumentally pretentious and self-indulgent, but still completely extraordinary and at times stunningly brilliant.

Watchmen definitely has every Moore quirk in a crystallized form, which can be a good or a bad thing I guess. Sometimes I feel Watchmen is kinda too dense, too loaded with signifiers, but then again you simply gotta admire Moore and Gibbons for managing to pull it off. And there's stuff you'll probably discover after you've reread it more than once. Like all the little details that emphasize it's a alternate timeline, such as the weird pipes people smoke instead of cigarettes, or the blimps constantly hovering in the sky, etc. I must've readed Wathcmen like four times before I noticed the word balloons are differently shaped in different decades.

But I think it's also a good thing Moore has sorta loosened up his scripts and not really tried to do another Watchmen, I don't think he would've succeeded, and his "lighter" comics are equally enjoyable. Though I guess Promethea is an example of what can go wrong with Moore's grandiose, pompose scripts: it's an admirable effort, but also boring in all the ways Watchmen isn't.

I may be far, far too biased, in that I read the thing when it came out when i was 16-17 and thus thought "I can't read super hero comics again after this, since it negates the need for them and now can go get laid"…and it was SO eye-opening to me at the time…I give it to people as a gift from time to time…

But its hard for me to understand that anyone can regard the thing as purely a cold exercise in "deconstruction." Indeed, while its a precisely executed formal triumph, it has characters that breath, live and love. The whole thing has heart.

On another note: it is well known that Moore sez "fuck hollywood" re: the films made thus far of his shit. But my understanding is that the Watchmen film is being made with superhuman levels of fidelity to his vision. I bet he'll never see it on principle, but it seems to be going the extra mile to do everything he would approve of.

perhaps AM gave lindelof some pointers

Along with his blessing.

If Dr. Manhattan had just destroyed all nukes on earth, like the Star Child in 2001 or Superman in Superman IV, there wouldn't be a need for any of it.

that's not a quote from Alan Moore, it's a quote from Tuomas!

Wait...did no one ever tell you? Perhaps you should sit down for a moment.

alwayshasbeen.jpeg

morrisp you forgot Alfie O'Meagan from The Nth Man

I've never heard of that! (I specialize in Kubrick & Golan-Globus; I'm fuzzy on everything else.)

This is the I Love Comics board, what do you mean by coming over here with no knowledge of a series set completely outside the continuity of every other comic book in publication that only ran for 16 issues three decades ago

(did that sound like sic? if so please be assured I am only joking)

It totally did sound like sic! Lol

that's not a quote from Alan Moore, it's a quote from Tuomas!

― Piven After Midnight (The Yellow Kid),

so it is.
apologies.
thought he was referring to the AM interview linked above as opposed to quoting himself on a dead ilm board.

TBF, I'm sure many people who've read the comic have thought of Veidt's plan as being flawed in that way, Lindelof included.

If Dr. Manhattan had just destroyed all nukes on earth, like the Star Child in 2001 or Superman in Superman IV, there wouldn't be a need for any of it.

This is discussed in the comic, and Dr. Manhattan admits he probably couldn't destroy all the nukes in time before some of them hit their targets, so that option is off the table.

I don’t recall that, but not surprised it was addressed (why does he have to wait for their launch to be imminent, though? he can’t just teleport around the globe and vaporize them on the DL?)

(Tho I guess the nuclear powers could always just built more nukes... which is a variation on the continuous-squid problem being discussed. How do you truly end a cold war, etc.)