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Pedro Cruz
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 03 January 2006
Posts: 417
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| Posted: 17 March 2009 at 4:57am | IP Logged | 1
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Victor,
I really pondered if I should reply to someone who resorts to name-calling and agressivenes, but here goes a more detailed reson why Watchmen is superior to Squadron Supreme anyway:
Even if one doesn't enjoy Watchmen, for a matter of taste,they should at least acknowledge the level of technical achievement it really is. The overall design from the covers to every little detail, the sustained cold art, coloring and lay-outs never ever deviating from its self-imposed structure - not an easy thing to maintian throughout 12 issues contrary to what fans may think - the complexity, the layered aspects, the parallellisms. Gibbons and Moore really give you this very rich, very involved tapestry that had NEVER been seen in american comics before (or since?). Also a plus is that this is non-continuity and it's a closed story without any sequels or prequels, making it a unique experience. People don't have to go grab JLA#24 to find out about some obscure reference. The excerpts from imaginary books and articles also try and expand the whole experience. Watchmen is a comic that tries to be more than a comic. It may have its faults, it may not even achieve what it wants, but it tries and it tries spectacularly. Squadron Supreme doesn't.
Finally, there are no Paul Ryan "haters" here. The only person responding with "hate" around here I can see is you. Paul Ryan certainly is a competent artist but he's no Dave Gibbons. I'd bet even John Byrne, who certainly is a more accomplished artist than Paul Ryan, would acknowledge Dave Gibbons is capable of things he, as an artist, would have a hard time doing!
At the end of the day, Watchmen HAS garnered more critical appraise than Squadron Supreme.
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
Robotmod
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 35941
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| Posted: 17 March 2009 at 8:20am | IP Logged | 2
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Pedro, everything you write above is obvious opinion. It's your opinion, and certainly an educated one, but an opinion nonetheless. If someone else thinks SQUADRON SUPREME is superior to WATCHMEN, ultimately it is to them. No amount of telling someone that your opinion is fact will change that. It's really a pointless exercise.
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Ed Love
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 05 October 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2712
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| Posted: 17 March 2009 at 8:29am | IP Logged | 3
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I would say that Paul Ryan, at his skill level today if he was doing Watchmen, it would still have been phenomenal. This is not a slam on Gibbons, but Moore was very, very specific about each and every panel and what it contained. As long as you had an artist that could render almost everything under the sun including a variety of human emotions and real faces and body types. One thing Gibbons was able to do that many artists aren't, the various costumes are individualistic and do not look like they were all designed by the same artist.
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JT Molloy
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 February 2008
Posts: 2092
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| Posted: 17 March 2009 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | 4
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So I finally read Watchmen just this weekend.
It was hard to put down and I enjoyed it on some level, but here's a few things I noticed:
---SPOILERS just in case---
- The cold war fears definitely date it really badly.
- The back stories and timeline were quite intricate, especially in those afterward segments, but I STILL didn't get a sense of these people being anything other than 2 dimensional caricatures.
- I don't get how everyone is THAT bleak and morally bankrupt. They kept talking about the old days of their super heroics, and Adrian's "Nostalgia" was everywhere, but I didn't get that from any of the characters at all. It seems like there wasn't even a fraction of an instant in their whole career that they were having a good time. Even when Nite Owl and Spectre were saving those people from the burning building they were shouting "asshole" at them. I get the fascist overtones (if you even want to consider something so hammer-to-the-face-obvious an overtone) but geez, there was never a single moment of sunshine in these people's lives. How can you get a sense of the passage of time if they were still grizzled 50 year olds at 20?
-I'm not knocking Dave Gibbons' art, as I'm sure it was more the writer dictating this, but why was everything so damn localized? It's like New York in the Watchmen's world was 3 blocks. That teleporting alien squid thing supposedly killed half of New York. Seems to me the thing killed 60 people tops.
-That Pirate thing dragged on and on and on, and no, I'm not reading it a second or seventh time to pick up on some extra piece of allegory I didn't already uncover.
-Also, so it was Ozymandias all along eh? Where the hell was he in the rest of the story?! He got shot at once and Rorschach visited him in the beginning. By the time we got to Antarctica and his scheme, all I could think of was "Oh it was him? Who cares?". Maybe if Moore didn't spend entire issues on Rorschach past or Dr. Manhatten's Mars ponderings, we could've had more time to give a shit about the actual mystery at hand.
Edited by JT Molloy on 17 March 2009 at 12:41pm
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Victor Rodgers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 December 2004
Posts: 3508
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| Posted: 17 March 2009 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | 5
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Watchmen is a comic that tries to be more than a comic. It may have its faults, it may not even achieve what it wants, but it tries and it tries spectacularly. Squadron Supreme doesn't.
*****
So what? Squadron Supreme wanted to be a great comic and it was. Dave Gibbons is a fantastic artist, Nobody has argued against that. I would put him above Paul Ryan. But you have people in this thread calling him terrible. Watchmen itself is a great comic. But in the end its just a comic and a pretty overrated one. I read it recently and I loved it. Its a great story with some great characters. But so is Squadron Supreme.
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Steven Myers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5680
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| Posted: 17 March 2009 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | 6
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Is Ozymandias supposed to be smart or stupid? It seems obvious that he's united the world for about 2 seconds...then we'll get back to disagreeing and fighting. About something new, or the same old stuff.
Again, I liked V for Vendetta much better.
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Andrew W. Farago
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 July 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4079
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| Posted: 17 March 2009 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | 7
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Has anyone in this thread called Paul Ryan "terrible"? "Not as good as Dave
Gibbons" is hardly an insult...
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Victor Rodgers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 December 2004
Posts: 3508
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| Posted: 17 March 2009 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | 8
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Andrew look back a few pages and you will see both him and Bob Hall called Terrible.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133318
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| Posted: 17 March 2009 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | 9
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Watchmen is a comic that tries to be more than a comic. It may have its
faults, it may not even achieve what it wants, but it tries and it tries
spectacularly.
••
Oh, Lord, could you pile on the self-loathing any higher?
"A comic that tires to be more than a comic." So it is the very form that
is flawed? Comics themselves are hopeless unless we try to escape from
them being comics?
Would you say "It's a movie that tries to be more than a movie" or would you
say "It's a really great movie"? Or "It's a movie that is everything a movie
should be"?
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Steven Myers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5680
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| Posted: 17 March 2009 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | 10
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A thread that tries to be more than a thread on a forum that tries to be more than a forum on an Internet...
Ah, whatever.
It does Moore more credit to say he just wanted to tell a good story.
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Eric Smearman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 02 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 5823
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| Posted: 17 March 2009 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | 11
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So what?
Again, these are opinions. Some people seem unable to express them as such, unfortunately.
I don't think either Paul Ryan or Bob Hall are terrible. However, I wouldn't hold up Squadron Supreme as an example of either's best work. I would point to Watchmen as some of Gibbons' best.
Edited by Eric Smearman on 17 March 2009 at 7:33pm
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133318
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| Posted: 17 March 2009 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | 12
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It does Moore more credit to say he just wanted to tell a good story.
••
Unfortunately, while it has been used to describe some good stories, that
"reason" has also be used to justify some truly appalling drek.
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