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JT Molloy
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 February 2008
Posts: 2092
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| Posted: 18 March 2009 at 10:36am | IP Logged | 1
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Otherwise, why waste your money buying it?
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I've been across the internet a time or two and I'm always running across people who have this huge pull list, go get all their comics, and complain about 90% of them. At some point, you just have to stop.
Also, my biggest beef was with the catchphrase "to tell a good story" which is the most vague, stupid thing I've ever heard from the promoters. Most of the time when they're saying it, they actually mean "Tell whatever interesting story we want at the expense of the characters." or sometimes even just "boring.".
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JT Molloy
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 February 2008
Posts: 2092
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| Posted: 18 March 2009 at 10:38am | IP Logged | 2
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Personally, I think the destruction in New York was that much more effective *because* we knew the victims.
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True. A little more scope couldn't hurt though.
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Andrew W. Farago
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 July 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 4079
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| Posted: 18 March 2009 at 11:52am | IP Logged | 3
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The difference, of course, is the world view. In WATCHMEN it's
decidedly cynical. None of the superheroes are altruistic. None of them
work for the common good.
Both Nite-Owls got into crimefighting without any particular "origin"
event, and seemed to be in it to help the little guy as much as anything
else. And I'm sure that Rorschach and Ozymandias both see themselves
as working for the common good. It's all about perspective.
True. A little more scope couldn't hurt though.
Is that a comment about my breath?
Seriously, though, I think that the scope is provided as Ozymandias
surveys all of his television monitors and all of the news reports start
filtering in. The news reduces New York's destruction to just a set of
statistics (and that's how Ozymandias sees them), but *we* know that
among the millions were a news vendor and his customers, a
psychologist and his wife, a squabbling couple, some dedicated cops...
I'm not sure that having Gibbons draw a satellite photo of New York City
full of corpses would have had the same impact.
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
Robotmod
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 35941
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| Posted: 18 March 2009 at 12:05pm | IP Logged | 4
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Andrew W.l Farago wrote:
Both Nite-Owls got into crimefighting without any particular "origin"
event, and seemed to be in it to help the little guy as much as anything
else. And I'm sure that Rorschach and Ozymandias both see themselves
as working for the common good. It's all about perspective. |
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Doesn't really matter to me how they got into it. The perspective of the series is where they are now. Everyone, including Nite-Owl, is cynical. Quite a few are self-loathing. None of them are heroic. An argument may be made for Rorschach, but I don't think he's a hero in the traditional sense.
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Wayde Murray
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 October 2005
Location: Canada
Posts: 3115
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| Posted: 18 March 2009 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | 5
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Matt wrote:
The difference, of course, is the world view. In WATCHMEN it's
decidedly cynical. None of the superheroes are altruistic. None of them
work for the common good.
Andrew wrote:
Both Nite-Owls got into crimefighting without any particular "origin"
event, and seemed to be in it to help the little guy as much as anything
else. And I'm sure that Rorschach and Ozymandias both see themselves
as working for the common good. It's all about perspective.
But the perspective is horribly skewed. Hooded Justice is shown to be a sadist, who likely got into the business to beat up villains like the masochistic Captain Carnage. Comedian is a rapist who kills his pregnant girlfriend in a fit of rage. Ozymandias is willing to kill millions on a hunch that the world will become better as a result. Rorchach is willing to break bones in the hopes that useful information might be obtained as a result. Silk Spectre II allows herself to be pimped out by the government to keep Dr Manhattan placated, giving up any life of her own that she might have hoped to have. Dan Dreiberg is impotent, but Nite Owl is vilile...
As Matt said, the cynicism is laid on so thick that it smothers anything that might have been there first. None of these characters work toward the common good, regardless of how they perceive themselves or their own motivation. The only reason these characters interact with each other is that they are all so botched psychologically while pretending to be okay that they think their comrades in arms are normal too.
There's not a single active hero in the whole story.
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Eric Smearman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 02 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 5823
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| Posted: 18 March 2009 at 1:46pm | IP Logged | 6
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Agreed. Which, I think, was Moore's point. None of them are heroes. Not in the sense that we traditionally define them in the super-hero comic context.
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Rick Senger
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 9690
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| Posted: 18 March 2009 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | 7
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They're both certainly worth a read, but at a gut level, "Watchmen" is a much cooler and more cinematic sounding name than "Squadron Supreme," which screams "comic book." It's a dumb reason, but I can tell you in Hollywood that a title perceived as bad can easily be dissuading.
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Ed Aycock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 05 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 1004
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| Posted: 18 March 2009 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | 8
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I was collecting and reading back in 1986 when Watchmen first appeared and people were talking about it. Yet I never actually read it until a few weeks ago. (For some reason, I kept reading the first issue every few years but never got any further.)
The devastation at the end, I remember how united everybody felt in the days after 9-11 and how that all went to hell. A crisis like that has consequences that in the end can divide more than united. Of course, Moore never says that Veidt's plan would work in the long run.
I found the book a little hard to read. That cinematic visual telling was slow at times, jarring in others. I had the same problem with "Bone" which too often repeated panels over and over with maybe a tiny bit of movement each time.
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Simon Bucher-Jones
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 May 2004
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 835
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| Posted: 18 March 2009 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | 9
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Wayde Murray...
Do you think anyone whose family are hurt by a criminal should hate the police? The Government for not instigating a military clamp down house by house search for illegal activity?
Superman's not infallible.
Simon BJ
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Jason Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2473
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| Posted: 18 March 2009 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | 10
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I don't think that cynicism is the proper word to use regarding Watchmen. It's angry and gloomy, to be sure, but it's not cynical in the usual sense of that word (i.e. "everyone sucks"). It's political, to be sure, and if you don't like the politics, I suppose you won't like the comic.
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Wayde Murray
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 October 2005
Location: Canada
Posts: 3115
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| Posted: 18 March 2009 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | 11
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Simon, Superman has been shown to fly faster than light, to move the planet by pushing hard against it, and so on, and so on, and so on. He's shown the citizens of Metropolis that he'll always be there for Lois Lane, no matter what else is going on, and he'll even drop everything when Jimmy activates his watch. If I lived in Metropolis (remember, that was a stipulation in my earlier post) I think I'd probably expect Superman to care as much about my loved ones as he does for his own. Is that being unfair to him as a person? Absolutely. But the people living in Metropolis are unlikely to think of Superman as a person: they would expect him to do everything he could to help and/or protect them.
That's only if Superman were treated in the same fashion as Watchmen or Squadron Supreme, however. The "real world" implications of a superhero in our midst change the dynamics of how Superman would be viewed by those around him. I have no problem with the citizenry of Metropolis NOT expecting Superman to always be there, and I have no problem with them not blaming him for not preventing their misfortune.
So, I guess the answer to your question is "no", but mostly because I don't live in a comic book world, and because comic book heroes don't live in mine.
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Anthony Frail
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 09 October 2007
Posts: 960
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| Posted: 18 March 2009 at 4:18pm | IP Logged | 12
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I think I read that Alan Moore's whole reasoning behind the Watchmen was
that he thought the concept of heroes is a dangerous one. That there are
only people, that do some good and some bad things throughout their lives,
and to put any perosn on a pedestal and "hero-worship" them is a bad idea.
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