Watchmen Review

I recently finished book #9 on my 1000 books list.  I really enjoyed Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.  I’d recommend that if any of you decided to read only one graphic novel in your whole live (which I don’t recommend) Watchmen would be the one.  The art is absolutely fantastic and I was fascinated by the story.  I actually saw the movie a couple years ago, and I was honestly impressed with how much better the graphic novel was.  To me, as many R rated movies do, the movie seemed unnecessarily violent and had an annoying amount of sex and gore.  Though the book had almost all the same plot points and violence, because it was so artistic and the dialogue so well written, I was hardly bothered at all.  Everything had a meaning, the blood was symbolic, and it was very deep.

This book is definitely a “thinking” book, and that was something I really liked about it.  There are a lot of really deeps points made within the story, such as all the dialogue about the meaning of life spouted by the emotionless Dr. Manhattan, the symbolic side story of the mad pirate in a comic book, and the last minute attempts of protecting complete strangers from an impending apocalypse.  Each gesture is pointed as is each ellipse.

I also liked this book because I am a huge fan of superheroes, and this book is a complete deconstruction of the typical hero story and comic book.  It shows that no one is truly beyond the failings of the human race and that the world will never be perfect regardless of whether there are costumed heroes roaming about.

All in all, I highly enjoyed reading this book, but I do warn, the final chapters can be a bit of a downer, so look out for that.  I give this book a 4/5 for my 1000 books reading list.  I’m moving on to the book  Love Among the Walnuts and I hope I enjoy it!