Watchmen by Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons

I admit. I picked up Watchmen because I saw the trailer for the film.

At The Dark Knight's premiere, one of the previews started with a familiar song--the Smashing Pumpkin's "The Beginning is the End is the Beginning". You may think that sounds familiar... that's because "The End is the Beginning is the End" was a single off the Batman & Robin soundtrack (it also won the Pumpkins a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance). Anyway, do you follow? "The Beginning" was the closing song on the soundtrack, and was a bit of a reprise of "The End."

Anyhow, both Watchmen and Batman are DC properties, so we'll pretend we didn't know that they recycled a Batman and Robin song for this movie's trailer. It's really quite OK—I love to see the Pumpkins get some love.

Ok, back to my point: I read Watchmen because there is a blockbuster film coming out next year based on it. Because of this fact, and that there is a fully naked character, I decided to read the graphic novel.

My friend Matt pointed out that I committed some sort of sacrilege because it took me so long to read it. Like, I picked it up 10 days ago and just finished it last night. Sorry, man, sometimes ya just don't feel like reading.

When I finished reading it last night, I tweeted "Finished Watchmen. Not sure she can write a review..."
It's not that I didn't spend time thinking while reading the novel. I don't know what it was, but I'm just not feeling the "gettin' all intellectual" business.
To help me write this review, last night I wrote on a notecard:
WTF just happened?
Life goes on!
Seems like a big deal. Impact.
But all resumes, regardless.

The ending of the comic was quite jarring. I guess too many superhero movies have led me to believe that everybody turns out good in the end. But in this one, it is very murky. You want to think Dr. Manhattan is a good guy, because he can control, like, everything, but look what he does to Rorschach! Of course, he had to, in order to keep the cover-up in place. But why was Adrian's plan correct? Because Adrian is the smartest self-made man?

Maybe those who plotted 9/11 were thinking along the same lines as Adrian. Except they used hijacked planes, not a terrifying monster. Or when the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki-we said murder 200,000 to save the world...
Anyway. I'm done thinking about it. I just can't wait to see if the book gets butchered when it's turn into a film.

I highly suggest reading it. Watchmen is extremely intelligent... and one of my favorite things to point out during reviews is relevance. And it is hella relevant!
It's a good thing for superheros—our Watchmen—to not be good through-and-through, I suppose. I shall read this again and maybe think about it a little more.

KK