Just so we can avoid painful misunderstandings in the light of the coming media blitz...

[fpb]

...I was there when Watchmen first came out. I regard it as one of the biggest disappointments of my entire life and probably the worst thing Alan Moore ever did. Yes, so in real life people who went out in funny costumes with the idea of fighting crime would probably turn out to be brutes, rapists or inadequates. So what? Thirty years after we all agreed that superheroes were modern mythology, we really have to be so surprised by the fact that they are not realistic? Why, Stan Lee was smarter than this!

Comments

[izhilzha.livejournal.com]

You are entitled to your opinion. I love Watchmen, not so much for what it says (I agree with you that we need the mythology, not the deconstruction of it; and anyway, we get both in heroes like the Batman) but for how it's done: with a great deal of human truth, and with stark artistic talent.

(For what it's worth: I'm not an Alan Moore fan. Except in this instance.)

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

I just read it recently, and I'll admit to being somewhat underwhelmed. For instance, I thought The Tick did most of this postmodern-hero stuff better and funnier (although I suppose it's moot if the Tick would have been born without Watchmen preceding him). I did like some of the technical stuff (like the way the pirate comics the newstand freeloader was reading paralleled what was happening in the main plotlines), and I did like the relationship between Nite Owl (II) and the Silk Spectre (II), right down to the way they served refreshments to the people they rescued.

One of those things that probably only bother me and you: quis custodiet custodes is routinely mistranslated as a present tense, not as a future tense. Arrgh.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I am pretty sure The Tick predated Watchmen.

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

I think the copyrights on my trade-paperback collection of the original Tick issues are from a year or two after Watchmen first appeared. But I might be wrong about that: I can't seem to find the volume at the moment.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

In that case, we have a difference in taste. I love and admire most Alan Moore; Watchmen is one of the main exceptions. I am also extremely unhappy about Moore's politics, which revealed themselves in this period: http://fpb.livejournal.com/216352.html

[fpb.livejournal.com]

BTW, have you read my article about Moore's politics? It has something to say, in passing, about his po-mo attitude: http://fpb.livejournal.com/216352.html.

[xinjinmeng.livejournal.com]

I suspect you will find this parody, where Watchmen's dialog is replaced with text in the style of Mr. Lee's, to be worthy of interest.