thursday, january 10, 2008
Watchmen - Alan Moore & David Gibbons
When Watchmen was first published in the mid-1980s it was in the middle of what turned out to be a great renaissance in comic books. A number of artists and writers were in the process of transforming the medium and everywhere you turned there was another book you just had to read.Watchmen, though, was something else entirely. Even in a time of giants it stood above the rest. It took the medium and did things with it never attempted before and never matched since. It begat a legion of deplorable copycats but it also fueled a new look at a long maligned artform.
In that respect it probably has more in common with the French New Wave cinema of the 60s which reached back into the 'low brow' films of a generation prior to create a new highbrow way of moviemaking. Author Alan Moore and artist David Gibbons are keenly aware of all the trashy superhero books that preceded them and Watchmen is as much a homage to them as a final nail in the coffin.
There are, if you think about it, several glaring problems with most superhero comic books that make them vastly incompatible with reality on any scale. One of the reasons that the medium has had such a difficult time evolving is the dominance of the superhero genre and the fact these shortcomings pose problems that can only be resolved by resigning things to escapist fantasy.
Incidents of major import are incredible this month but irrelevant next. Superheroes in their teens in the mid 1960s are still in their 20s today. The sense of history is deflated as fast as any sense of a future. The conflict itself is all that matters and the idea of addressing a basic problem in human nature or society that causes these issues has to be overlooked from the start.
Moore touched on these problems in his groundbreaking run on Miracle Man but with Watchmen he completely abandoned them and asked the difficult questions they had long clouded over. The first and most obvious way he went about it was by creating definitive timeline for the book. Superheroes that emerge in the 40s are pretty much retired by the 60s. A world-class athlete only has a reasonable 20-year career and, most likely, the end of that isn't going to be pretty.
The superheroes are not super except in the sense they are in good physical shape. They don't have powers, per se. Except one. And that's a vivid exception.
Because another shortcoming of the genre is that when we think of empowered individuals we consider them mundane. They can't have a huge impact because that would disrupt the continuity of the book. Watchmen carefully considers the question of what, exactly, would happen if a super-powered individual were to emerge. And the implications are somewhat breathtaking.
While this push to realism is what underpins the story, the art actually serves to reinforce it. And quite powerfully so. Basically, Watchmen exists in a static universe. Most comic books, being plot driven, only paid attention to the world it was set in as a backdrop for the painstaking art effort on the character. Watchmen turned that around treating the world as physical place the characters moved through.
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It is an idea taken from a medium that is about visual motion, film, and transferred to a medium that suggests visual motion, comic books. In Watchmen action lines and impact sound effects were completely discarded allowing the flow of the art and it's placement suggestion motion.
Often overlooked in this respect are the efforts of colorist John Higgins but the importance of his contribution can't be stressed enough. Color is used to suggest mood, place and time. In this example you see how the use of bright yellows and oranges indicate the flashing neon sign illuminating the scene. It not only moves your through the scene but also sets the noir-ish tone to the chapter.
Yet Watchmen's most interesting debt to cinema is one of the most subtle; the privacy of the characters thoughts and feelings. No thought balloons - pretty much a given at the time - meant the interior emotional states remained exactly that, interior.
What hits you upon revisiting the text is how much is said outside of the spoken words. Rather than rely on obvious dialogue, the ideas of the novel are slowly displayed through long expository visual passages. The strangely unproportioned figures that seemed so awkward in the first issue give way to brilliantly nuanced characters whose every detail is of import (including color).
It's hard to say if Gibbons simply became more comfortable with the story as it progressed or if he deliberately planned making the earlier issues seem more crude but, when you reach the final chapters the beauty of the artwork is breathtaking to behold.
Moore and Gibbons also work in curious concert making the dialogue refer to the action in the scenes being portrayed. A character comments that someone's attitude, "won't be sweetness and light" while cubes of sugar are shown falling to the floor and the headlights of a vehicle move through a tunnel.
The first few times you notice it just seems clever, when you realize these references are strewn throughout the whole work it's something else entirely - it makes you realize there is a higher power working to unify the storyline.
Of course the characters can't see that, but they - much like Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern - are beginning to suspect.
Moreover the book is filled with a particular iconography that further enforces this sense of an underlying plan. The most notable being the blood on the smiley face/hour hand to midnight symbol. It deftly integrates an ongoing reference to watching and being watched that extends to more general symbolism such as wrist watches, being observed, the oversight of authority and so much more.
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Gibbons constantly presents scenes where watching and being watched are subtly, but inescapably present. Night Owl's glasses watch the hero's owlship sitting in long-neglected underground lair but are being seen by Laurie Juspeczyk. The scene then becomes intricately self referential between the three and interlaced with the ever-present 'clock nigh upon midnight' iconography as well.
The book follows what has turned into Moore's formula. A multi-chaptered work that challenges its characters as much psychologically as physically. In fact, its notable the sheer lack of 'action' in this mid-80s comic book. Accompanying "source" materials, which further cement the 'realism' of the fictional world, are also a very common hallmark of the man's work.
But Watchmen introduced the finest "Moorian" trope of all and once that he's done much to match but never quite topped (Promethea came close though, damn close).
One key convention of the genre that Moore is intent on deflating - the grand plan of the mastermind. While the convention of the Republic-style serial villain unveiling his plan in the final act at the culmination of his battle (and defeat by) the heroes is a staple, Moore's contention is that by the mid-1980s it has become a canard. And Watchmen works to turn it completely inside-out.
Instead there is a significant suggestion that the individuals who make the decision to undertake this bizarre lifestyle of fighting - or waging - crime are motivated by sexual impulses. Every character - save one - has a notiable sexual aspect that infulenced the creation and decision to continue the practice of their costumed alter ego.
For Moore, this isn't a shortcut explanation for the behavior of these characters but an opportunity to explore their motivations. The approach allows him to examine the accepted aspects of the super hero genre in a realistic manner - the aspect of fantasy and role playint, the balance between empowerment and submission as well as the degree of havoc it can play on our lives if underestimated.
With that in mind, it's not a surprise that the book resolves itself with an epiphany in the truest sense of the word - cataclysmic occurrence that ends up preceding a massive shift in perception for the world which has spent the previous chapters spiraling downward to destruction. Salvation through a paradigm shift perhaps.
Reading Watchmen the first time I was swept away by its ambitious plot and it was a compulsion that was paid off in spades when I reached the final chapter. Rarely has Moore hit the payoff in his storylines so well as he does here. Be prepared to have to take a long long walk in the sunlight to shake off the impact of this one.
One of the reasons I chose to pen this essay on the book is because, before too long, it will be almost impossible to approach the book on its own terms. Almost a full quarter-century after the book was first published; a film based on the story is in production to be released in 2009.
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On the other hand, I think the famously cantankerous Moore has a point when he insists, "My book is a comic book. Not a movie, not a novel. A comic book. It's been made in a certain way, and designed to be read a certain way."
Because Watchmen is more than the acme of a maligned medium, it's a vivid bit of literature in and of itself. The pictures are not to 'help' illustrate the story being told - they are an essential part of the way the story is being told.
In the end, I feel it probably shall not matter. Great works of art eventually endure despite the best of efforts to dilute them and see them translated into other mediums. Watchmen is great art because in the end, it's not about itself or the particular genre it is set it, it's asking very basic questions about us as individuals and as a society.
Who watches the watchmen? Well, in the end, if you read the book... you do.
more: 52 films 26 books | Books
| comment posted by: John Wayne on april 17, 2008 @ 4:43 pm |
Loved the review. No need to feel torn about the movie. It will be its own art and judged accordingly. |
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