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John Mietus
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 9704
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| Posted: 23 October 2005 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | 1
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Thomas Mets wrote:
Nothing wrong with a dark and gritty superhero tale,
is there now? Just as long as they are not all dark and gritty. |
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I agree, but only to the extent that said "dark and gritty," "grim," or
otherwise "glum" stories are not told using previously-established
characters marketed for general audiences. I have no problem with
Watchmen being "dark." I do have a problem with DKR being dark
because of Watchmen, and all the subsequent massmarket characters
who suddenly became dark unnecessarily.
As I said before -- tell your dark and gritty superhero stories all you want,
just not with characters who were created for mass market appeal.
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John Mietus
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 9704
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| Posted: 23 October 2005 at 7:12pm | IP Logged | 2
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I wrote:
I think that Gibbons quote about how Watchmen was intended to
broaden the market, not narrow it further, was incredibly telling. |
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To which...
John Byrne wrote:
Dave is also the one who gave us the cogent observation
that the books are not "grim and gritty", they are just glum. |
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Well, I didn't exactly say what I thought was told by the quote. What I
think it revealed was the naïvité of the creators involved.
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Rich Abreu
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 537
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| Posted: 23 October 2005 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | 3
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Watchmen?
Overrated.
I bought the trade a few years ago because of all the hype of being "the greatest comic work in history" and I didn't get past the second or third chapter. It wasn't "dark" or "adult" or "sophisticated", it was shock entertainment in a decade where that kind of thing was prevalent. It was "genius" in the same sense that Madonna diddling herself on stage and a painting of someone pissing on a cross is genius, and anyone that doesn't agree "just doesn't get it". Well, I do get it, it was a comic targeted at people who hate superheroes. It is those people that got on board this bandwagon that "don't get it".
Anything Moore was trying to do in this book has been done better before and since, whether it was "dark" comics or the idea of heroes hated by society. Even JB has done "dark" or "adult" stories in a way that wasn't totally tasteless.
Watchmen and that other piece of genius/trash Killing Joke has totally turned me off to Alan Moore forever.
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Mike Tishman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 July 2005
Posts: 229
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| Posted: 23 October 2005 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | 4
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John Mietus wrote:
I agree, but only to the extent that said "dark and gritty," "grim," or
otherwise "glum" stories are not told using previously-established
characters marketed for general audiences. I have no problem with
Watchmen being "dark." I do have a problem with DKR being dark
because of Watchmen, and all the subsequent massmarket characters
who suddenly became dark unnecessarily. |
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I don't think there's anything wrong with "dark" characters being
marketed to general audiences, but I totally agree that a lot of mass
market characters became dark unnecessarily. It's still happening, too.
The biggest problem I had with Identity Crisis (and boy, did I
have problems with that series) was the choice of victims. I mean, what
on Earth made anyone think Sue and Ralph Dibny needed to be made
darker? They're basically upbeat characters, and they work like that.
Why on Earth would you take two characters who are fun and different
and try as hard as you can to shove them in the same mold they've
shoved everybody else into?
And, you know, Ted Kord, Booster Gold... it goes on.
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Jason Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2473
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| Posted: 23 October 2005 at 9:44pm | IP Logged | 5
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Alex...you think a work as complex as Watchmen was "shock entertainment"? Yikes. Really, talking about it as if it were just about "dark superheroes" really misses the point.
Some good comments from various people on the Comics Journal board:
---
Watchmen is about a lot of
things, a self-conscious examination of super-hero genre conventions
being one of them, but its main theme is that of the different kinds of
moral motivation and how none of them are unproblematic psychologically
and philosophically. There's very little "action" in it for it to be
primarily a dissection of the typical superhero comic; it's very
uncommonly character-driven for its genre. The examination of why the
vigilantes choose to do what they do is more memorable than any fight
sequence in the book, with the possible exception of Rorschach's
jailbreak.
---
While Watchmen is more
'realistic' than most superhero stories, it is STILL a superhero story
populated by characters who are exceptional. And Rorschach is hardly
'run-of-the-mill'. He's a superheroic vigilante who happens to be a
reactionary, misanthropic, criminal freak. Who nevertheless lives by a
serious moral code. He represents the first honest look at the comic
book vigilante's likely politics and mental state, and as such he was
an important innovation. Especially because while he may partially be a
comment on Batman (even though he was originally written as an
interpretation of Charlton Comics' The Question), he is also a fully
realized character who is not totally unsympathetic.
The problem with the decade of
'dark' imitators is that they insisted on creating characters who were
just as violent as Rorschach, while romanticizing and justifying their
actions at every turn. How many 'dark' characters after Rorschach were
right-wing, smelly, ugly, and poverty stricken? Not many, I wager. You
could claim that Sin City's 'Marv' is much of the above, but while
Miller may CLAIM he's poor and alone, do we see him eating cold beans
and wearing a sandwichboard every day? I don't think so. And Miller's
world is so distorted from actual reality that 'ugliness' and other
social diseases fail to pack much of a punch.
---
Moore was honest enough to resist
the urge to demonize Rorschach though the character flew in the face of
Moore's own political and personal values. He found something human and
tragic in the character.
---
The central idea of Watchmen
is examining the moral motivations of not only super-heroes, but
everybody. Superheroes are just a good way to get at that, them being
moral crusaders and all. Great use of the "genre-mechanic" thing that
Moore had going. Making superheroes into "real" people was just a great
conceit for dealing with moral motivations. It gives Moore the
opportunity to explore the psychic details, and present the archetypes
with an apocalyptic situation they have to react to.
---
Of course I'm aware that Watchmen is a critque of superhero tropes. But it's a lot of other
things, as well...It's a critique, it's a meditation on cold-war anxiety, it's
an ensemble character piece, it's a formal experiment in narrative
structure. And I think it's resoundingly successful on several of these
levels.
---
As I never tire of saying
whenever Watchmen’s discussed, Dr. Manhattan’s omnipotent powers are
really those of the comics reader. He can flip backwards and forwards
in time, or even see different instances at once, just like we can.
And
then of course Moore screws with this. These formal devices may have
been new (for the time), but superhero fans had always wanted a
clockwork, ordered universe where the Hulk was exactly three points
stronger than the Thing etc. Moore pulls the rug from under this. Turns
out we really don’t know what time it is.
[...]Also, a lot of the arguments about
Watchmen seem to be about whether Moore is pro or anti superhero. I
think that it’s actually based around Moore having a love/hate
relationship to the superhero. I remember Dave Gibbons saying at a UK
convention at the time they were partly inspired by that JLA excitement
of “all your favourite heroes in one book”! The book then grows around
this paradox that niggles in Moore’s mind like an oyster’s pearl round
a niggling grain of salt. Had Moore ignored this and made a book that
was just pro or just anti it would have been much more one-dimensional
and we probably wouldn’t be talking about it now. I’d compare it to the
way Godard used Hollywood icons like Bogart in his early films.
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Jason Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 July 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 2473
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| Posted: 23 October 2005 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | 6
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FYI -- Moore comments on Watchmen:
"And also,
there did seem to be a rash of quite heavy, frankly depressing and
overtly pretentious super-hero comics that came out in the wake of
Watchmen, and I felt to some degree responsible for bringing in a
fairly morbid Dark Age. Perhaps I over-burdened the super-hero, made
it carry a lot more meaning than the form was ever designed for. So,
for a while, I went off to do stuff that was very non-super-hero,
and going into other areas I was interested in.
The super-heroes I'm doing now are not carrying strong political
messages, and that's intentional. They're entertainment,
and I think there are very few genres actually as entertaining as
the super-hero genre. And entertainment can be emotionally affecting
and intelligent, but I don't really want to lecture in the same
away I did when I was younger. I'm not trying to break or transcend
the boundaries of mainstream comics, because mainstream comics is
in pieces, you know?"
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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6585
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| Posted: 23 October 2005 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | 7
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anonymous quote:"[Rorschach] represents the first honest look at the comic
book vigilante's likely politics and mental state, and as such he was
an important innovation. Especially because while he may partially be a
comment on Batman (even though he was originally written as an
interpretation of Charlton Comics' The Question), he is also a fully
realized character who is not totally unsympathetic."
***
Exactly the kind of praise that has made me hate Watchmen. "First honest look?" "Likely Mental State?"
He is a paper thin swipe at the objectivist creation of an objectivist cartoonist. The idea of taking the Question and turning him up to "11" would be a great Hembeck one-pager. But as half of the heart of the single greatest comic book of all time and the first honest look at the likely mental state of superheroes etc. etc. barf barf barf he's a paper thin swipe at Ditko.
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Paul Greer
Byrne Robotics Security
Joined: 18 August 2004
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| Posted: 23 October 2005 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | 8
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I bought Watchmen when it first came out. I bought the book because I liked Dave Gibbons work on Green Lantern, and I was really curious by DC's "Who watches the Watchmen?" ads. I was totally hooked after the first issue. I was extremely drawn in by how Moore wrote the story. After reading that book I discovered Swamp Thing, Miracleman, and started looking for anything Alan Moore. I also have it in trade and have the Absolute Watchmen on order and it will be shipped later this month. I usually sit down every couple of years and read it. It is without a doubt one of my top three favorite comics of all time. Dark Knight Returns and Next Men round out the top three. It depends on which one I've read last that decides which I consider my favorite of all time.
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John Benson
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Joined: 06 May 2004
Location: United States
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| Posted: 23 October 2005 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | 9
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I've read it, enjoyed it for what it was. I don't see that the worldview of the series is appropriate for every other comic out there (or ANY other comic). I enjoy LOST but would hate it every other TV series was a LOST clone.
Avengers Disassembled and Identity Crisis seem to be attempts at copying the world view of Watchmen. They don't work, in fact those two stories have been the most wretched ever written. Alan Moore broke his toys but at least they were his toys to begin with. AD and IC was the managment of Marvel and DC breaking our toys.
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Mike Tishman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 July 2005
Posts: 229
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| Posted: 23 October 2005 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | 10
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Mark Haslett wrote:
Exactly the kind of praise that has made me hate Watchmen. "First honest look?" "Likely Mental State?"
He
is a paper thin swipe at the objectivist creation of an objectivist
cartoonist. The idea of taking the Question and turning him up to "11"
would be a great Hembeck one-pager. But as half of the heart of the
single greatest comic book of all time and the first honest look at the
likely mental state of superheroes etc. etc. barf barf barf he's a
paper thin swipe at Ditko. |
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No, he's not. Rorschach is based primarily on the Question, but he's really
meant to stand in for the non-powered crimefighting vigilante in
general - Batman, the Question, the Punisher, etc.
Edited by Mike Tishman on 23 October 2005 at 11:07pm
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Mark Haslett
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| Posted: 23 October 2005 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | 11
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How does an anagram of the Question turned up to "11" stand for Batman or the Punisher? The only other heroes he brings to mind are Ditko creations like "Mr. A".
Punisher at the time was a villain. Batman was not even in DKR yet -- he was nothing like Rorschach.
Rorschach as a "creation" comments on no other characters except the ones he derived from. If you find insight into Batman or the Punisher there, a) you brought it with you and b) it isn't very deep.
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
Robotmod
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| Posted: 24 October 2005 at 12:06am | IP Logged | 12
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FYI Jason, I think we'd rather just supply a link and have people read posts on other sites if they are so inclined as opposed to posting them wholesale here. Rules and regs at the JBF ask that people don't cut and paste posts from this site elsewhere, so I think we can only ask the same of our members regarding posting things here.
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