Wednesday, March 11, 2009

comic review: Reading the Watchmen

The Watchmen and me first made contact in 06. Its written by alan moore, some guy famous me thinks, think it shouldn’t suck that bad. And so I read it and it wasn’t mind blowing, it was mind BLASTING! On an epic scale, it was side by side with the “Dark Knight Returns” and that’s saying something from a batman fanboy. Saw the yellow smiley spine again in 08 where I merely flipped through it and realized again how awesome it was on a mature content level. And coming back to the present, I tried to avoid re-reading the book before the movie so i could have a fresh perspective. And since, I m done with the movie, I have once more completed reading the Watchmen for the second time. Of which, I must say, I enjoyed the book the most this time round.

The Graphic Novel


From the team of alan moore and dave gibbons, we are treated to a visual splendor of epic proportions! From alan moore, I have read the awesome and in my opinion, sandman comparable, swamp thing saga! Also, his more famous DC works like, the killing joke and across the DC universe. And from Dave gibbons, I have to admit to missing his 2000ad works only reading his originals graphic novel, which was alrigggghhttt I suppose.

Alan moore’s writing was really in the game. the black freighter, aka, the comic in the comic, was at times distracting and misleading with its narration being thrown with regular dialogue. However. Alan moore handled the dialogue exceptionally well and I simply loved how he used the scenes in the panels to further play up certain words. It really is no wonder how he gets his reputation as a master in the medium.

see the word/panel play here. isnt it adorable?

Dave gibbons art suited the 60s, 70s, 80s era to a T. the only thing I wasn’t satisfied was how he illustrated the action scenes. They looked abit stiffy and seemes like he could you use “how to draw comics the marvel way” by john buscema. And wassup with the SM mask for the comedian?

My fav scene outta it was when Rorschach was at the cemetery and was recounting on a joke he heard about a depressed clown.
“good joke. Everyone laughs. Roll on snare drums.
Curtains”
And the word “curtains” was on a flashback panel of the comedian going red on the sidewalk. AWESOME!

Fav gory scene would be rorschach’s jailbreak. And fav sex scene would Doc M and Silk Spectre II’s threesome? Somehow, the numbers just add up.

bet all you guys loved this right? GHUUCHH!



The book vs the movie.

With Zack snyder’s earlier work, 300, the director was given space to expand the coffee table book into a full length movie. When I read 300, I finished it within 30 minutes and was thinking to myself, that’s it? Note: I read the book after the movie. However, alan moore’s watchmen was chock filled to the brim of intricate details and plot twists and turns, that the director had to not only summarize the book but also edit it such that it would focus primarily on the main cast, the watchmen.

the carnage! in the comic, it was done by a freakish alien. in the movie, Dr M was the blame all.

There was this buzz on how the ending was change and people being concerned as to how the film would play out. However, zack brilliantly made subtle changes to exclude several not-watchmen details. For example, the fact that the group was originally called crimebusters, there, that wasn’t in the movie. However, having that in movie wouldn’t necessarily make it a better movie. Therefore, the changes that the director made were in relevance to the mainstream audience.

the watchmen vs

the crimebusters! see how captain metropolis was dropped in the movie version! who needs has-beens?!

Like the book, the film to is packed with details and its like reading a book and skipping a page, and you would be like, “holy harry potter! Avada kavada! Crucio! And they all lived happily ever after.” Yup yup. That wasn’t sposed to make sense. So if you were distracted for just a minute by the guy asking stupid questions, all would be lost.

here are some movie/comic comparisons for you. enjoy!