Cody is dazzled by Watchmen.
Watchmen may be the greatest comic book story ever written. It almost pains me to say this because the book was published by DC Comics rather than my beloved Marvel Comics, but… it just might be. This is something that has been said by many people before, so I’m certainly not breaking any new ground here, but it’s difficult to page through the twelve issues that make up Watchmen and not think it’s one of the greatest stories ever told.
Moore’s original idea would have resulted in something quite different. The pitch came about because Charlton Comics was on its way out and DC had just bought the publisher’s line-up of characters for $5000 per character. Moore envisioned his story being populated by Charlton Comics characters, with the inciting incident being the death of Peacemaker – who is, yes, the character who is, these days, being played in film and on television by John Cena. The title: Who Killed the Peacemaker? DC’s managing editor Dick Giordano liked the idea, but he didn’t want the Charlton Comics characters to be involved because Moore’s story would take them in directions that would leave them unusable for the foreseeable future. DC hadn’t just purchased these characters to immediately shelve them, and their main characters were heading for the massive Crisis on Infinite Earths event, so Giordano suggested that Moore create his own characters for the story. That’s how it evolved into what we know as Watchmen.
Moore also only came up with enough story to fill six issues, but DC ordered twelve, so he had to scramble to figure out how to double the count and primarily did so by including flashbacks to earlier points in the characters’ lives. He may have had to come up with filler, but nothing in the story truly comes off as filler – although many readers have wondered why moments from a pirate comic book called Tales of the Black Freighter (which is being read by a side character) are scattered throughout five of the issues. It’s an interesting sidenote, though, and was meant to “add subtext and allegory.”
Moore didn’t just need to create characters for Watchmen, he also built a world for it – and that world greatly resembles our own, aside from the fact that costumed superheroes actually existed, and their interventions changed the course of history. In the golden days, there were street-level heroes called the Minutemen, but things really got mind-blowing at the end of the ‘50s / start of the ‘60s, when scientist Jon Osterman was disintegrated in a lab conducting experiments on intrinsic fields. Over time, Osterman was able to re-integrate himself, his body reforming as a blue being with god-like powers. The U.S. government gives him the code name Doctor Manhattan and has them working for them – most notably in 1971, when they dropped him into the midst of the Vietnam War. The result: just two months after Manhattan’s arrival in Vietnam, America won the war, an event that allows President Richard Nixon to repeal the 22nd Amendment and serve up to five terms. Despite that victory, the public turned against their heroes soon after and superheroes were outlawed in 1977.
Nixon is still in the White House in October of 1985, when Edward Blake, who used to be the costumed vigilante The Comedian and also worked for the government (and even carried out the assassination of JFK), is murdered, thrown through the window of his high-rise apartment. The only fellow vigilante still in the field is Rorschach, whose mind was broken when he investigated a twisted kidnapping case years earlier. Rorschach investigates the death of the Comedian, and while doing so he gets in contact with other former associates: Doctor Manhattan; “the smartest man in the world” Adrian Veidt, who used to be the hero called Ozymandias; Doctor Manhattan's longtime partner Laurie Juspeczyk, who inherited the mantle of Silk Spectre from her mother (who fought alongside the Comedian decades earlier); and Daniel Dreiberg, a wealthy man who asked the original Nite Owl if he could take over for him. He’s basically Batman without the childhood trauma.
Things begin to fall apart for everybody once the Comedian has made his exit. Laurie breaks up with Doctor Manhattan, who experiences a disastrous interview soon after and seeks isolation on Mars. An assassin attempts to kill Veidt. Rorschach is framed for murder and imprisoned. Soviet forces are pushing into Pakistan and might attempt to invade Western Europe, putting the world on the edge of nuclear war. There’s suspicion that a “mask killer” is attempting to wipe out former masked vigilantes – but there could be a larger conspiracy at work here. Really, the only good experience any of the characters have comes when Laurie and Daniel start getting close to each other.
The way the mystery of the story plays out is fascinating, and along the way, Moore allows us to learn a great deal about these heroes he created. Aside from Doctor Manhattan, he reveals that they’re all basically regular human beings despite being costumed crime-busters… and none of them are squeaky clean symbols of perfection. Rorschach is insane and comes off like a costumed version of Robert De Niro’s character in Taxi Driver.
The Comedian was a cold-blooded scumbag who not only killed JFK, but also assaulted Laurie’s mother and murdered his pregnant Vietnamese lover right in front of Doctor Manhattan. Doctor Manhattan is essentially all-powerful, and yet he doesn’t intervene in events like the assassination of JFK or the murder of the Vietnamese woman. He says it doesn’t matter; everything is preordained, as all of time is happening at once and he’s experiencing it all at the same time. It doesn't help his case that Laurie was just 16-years-old and less than half his age when he first hooked up with her. Even gods are creeps in this world.
This is a book that was written for adult readers and even acknowledges the fact that Dan can’t get it up the first time he and Laurie attempt to have sex. The human traits of the characters and the fact that this is all happening in a world that we recognize to some degree make it feel all the more grounded and grimy, even when there are big superhero moments, like Dan and Laurie saving people from a building fire or Dan and Rorschach traveling to Antarctica to meet with Veidt at his hideaway there. And even though Doctor Manhattan is a god-like being, he’s still dealing with one of the most relatable issues there is: relationship troubles.
It all builds up to an intriguing moral quandary.
Watchmen is genius and one would be tempted to call it “The Great American Novel,” graphic or otherwise, if not for the fact that Moore and Gibbons are both British. It’s one of those things that should be considered an untouchable standalone work of art… but, of course, it has been touched, with other creative teams making film adaptations, follow-ups, prequels, etc. It’d be near impossible for anyone to try to reach the level of this original piece – but ill-advised expansions of the universe can’t tarnish the greatness of what Moore and Gibbons created back in 1986 – ‘87.
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