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Business Stationary Mart - Watchmen
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List Price: $19.99
Our Price: $10.29
Your Save: $ 9.70 ( 49% )
Availability:
Manufacturer: DC Comics
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780930289232
ISBN: 0930289234
Label: DC Comics
Manufacturer: DC Comics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: 1995-04-01
Publisher: DC Comics
Release Date: 1995-04-01
Studio: DC Comics
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good
Comment: This book needs to be read twice. The story is good, full of sad but true axioms, drawings are damn good, but more than that the story is not breath-taking, in my point of view. It can great movie though (2 parts feature...).
Customer Rating:
Summary: One of the greats
Comment: So there are only a few stories in comic book history that have a real lasting impact to the genre as an art form and this is one of them. The writing is amazing, the visuals are pretty darn good as well.
This is not just a comic book superhero story. In fact, it is really not about superheroes at all, but normal people trying to do good in the world.
If you are a fan of comic books, you have to know the classics, just the same as if you are a fan of English literature, you have to have read some Charles Dickens and Mark Twain.
This book is well priced, a good read, and decently put together in this little compilation.
Also, the movie is coming out soon so you better read the book if you want to know what you are talking about here. It is being directed by the guy that did 300, and this story was once said to be "unfilmable" by the great Terry Gilliam, so I am looking forward to how this turns out.
Check it out, if you don't like it, you are only out about the price of a few issues, so come on here.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Countdown
Comment: As a reader still new to the comic book scene, I believe that comic aficionados can't refer to themselves as such without first checking out the works of the genre's most influential creators. With this mindset, I read Alan Moore's "Watchmen"--featuring artwork by Dave Gibbons--the critically-acclaimed graphic novel set in 1980's New York. In a world where superheroes are real, the government has stepped in and forced costumed crimefighters to hang up their capes for good. Now a team of former heroes reunite when someone starts bumping them off. The stories of Rorschach, a masked vigilate similar to the Question; the Comedian, a military war hero; Dr. Manhattan, an omnipotent being; and others are told as they search for their "masked killer" while racing to avert World War III.
Moore's main story seems to not only visualize the superhero's lot in the real world, but also the world that we're becoming, all in a raw, uncompromising manner (since I admit that some instances in the story hit pretty close to home).Excerpts from fictional columns, journals, novels, and even comics take the reader deeper into the Watchmen's world. It just goes to show how much comics have grown in terms of social commentary and clashing ideals. So as not to overlook the novel's illustrations, Gibbons' work speaks of the old gritty comic art style that I grew up without. So in an effort not to regurgitate what is said in other reviews, you could say this comic is just what Dr. Manhattan ordered.
This comic is unrated: Graphic Violence, Nudity, Adult Language, Adult Situations.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ambitious and Addled
Comment: People told me that this would be the ultimate graphic novel experience and it was in a way, but dated Cold War elements have made this one a little topheavy. I wonder how the forthcoming movie version will play, or if the nuclear threat plot has been toned down or something? Time, or AICN, will tell, I suppose, but at the end of the day I found myself thinking, when the ridiculously contrived superplot was revealed, that how was this supposed to actually alter the course of history? At any moment any number of its complicated twists and turns might have gone wrong. Just like the Roger Moore Bond films, the villain brags on and on for hours at the end, detailing every move he made for otherwise we would never be able to grasp the extent of his skullduggery. Well, this "bragging" scene happens in every action show or novel now, but Moore disappointed me, I thought he was above such showboating.
The storyline is great for the most part (till the last 3 or 4 comics) with the triangle of Silk Spectre, Nite Owl, Dr Manhattan tantalizingly slow to resolve itself--though how did Laurie deal with that little blue nub of Dr. Manhattan's, bobbling above that ponderous sack ofballs, that nubby nothing which looks so huge in the scenes where he stalks the earth as a giant? No wonder she fled to Dan's more normal size masculinity, even though he's fortyish and his body nothing much.
The minor characters are uniformly perverse, unsympathetic, nasty and brutish--made it hard to care about the world's possible destruction. And Laurie crying about the pink and yellow rice spilled on the bodies of the scattered New Yorkers--it was an inspired and risky choice that just doesn't cut it, if you ask me. But for many the scene is probably one of the most wrenching and powerful in the whole of literature, so don't go by me. Same with the "Tales of the Black Freighter"--rigorously plotted allegorical masterpiece, or confusing sub Knut Hamsun junk? Eye of the beholder, brother.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A strong book but has weaknesses
Comment: First things first what I liked about this book is it touches themes about humanity, and how certain events comparable to the shooting of Arch-Duke Ferdinand or how Germany invaded France could trigger a global world. This is what I liked about this book it still echos sentiment about the present now if it dealt with human pandemics like AIDS it would have been more then a book it would have been a prophecy. The end page about Tandoori Chicken now was really comical as well but if you want me to explain what I am talking about you should read the book. In this book Nixon is still President and the Soviet Union invading Afghanistan would have triggered a World War if certain events which have not played out at the end would have clinched it. This book is over 20 years old and was and is ahead of its time so it is no coincidence it is Time Magazine's 100 best novels.
Now I will talk about what I don't like that is why I love writing reviews what I didn't like was I did not feel any strong attachments to any of the minor characters since the novel was focused on telling a story now that is not totally a bad thing but for me I would like to feel some bond to some characters and knowing more about these minor characters who were briefly mentioned would have even been more compelling.
The only character that I felt any strong sentiment dies at the end and his name is Rorshach a character who has an unending crusade to find the truth dies because the other heroes did not want him to tell the truth was heartbreaking because there is no opportunity for a sequel since it is 23 years later and Moore hasn't written anything to follow up this book. This is even compounded by the fact that the movie that is coming out next year will not have a sequel as evidenced by online reviews.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Has any comic been as acclaimed as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen? Possibly only Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, but Watchmen remains the critics' favorite. Why? Because Moore is a better writer, and Watchmen a more complex and dark and literate creation than Miller's fantastic, subversive take on the Batman myth. Moore, renowned for many other of the genre's finest creations (Saga of the Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, and From Hell, with Eddie Campbell) first put out Watchmen in 12 issues for DC in 1986-87. It won a comic award at the time (the 1987 Jack Kirby Comics Industry Awards for Best Writer/Artist combination) and has continued to gather praise since. The story concerns a group called the Crimebusters and a plot to kill and discredit them. Moore's characterization is as sophisticated as any novel's. Importantly the costumes do not get in the way of the storytelling; rather they allow Moore to investigate issues of power and control--indeed it was Watchmen, and to a lesser extent Dark Knight, that propelled the comic genre forward, making "adult" comics a reality. The artwork of Gibbons (best known for 2000AD's Rogue Trooper and DC's Green Lantern) is very fine too, echoing Moore's paranoid mood perfectly throughout. Packed with symbolism, some of the overlying themes (arms control, nuclear threat, vigilantes) have dated but the intelligent social and political commentary, the structure of the story itself, its intertextuality (chapters appended with excerpts from other "works" and "studies" on Moore's characters, or with excerpts from another comic book being read by a child within the story), the finepace of the writing and its humanity mean that Watchmen more than stands up--it keeps its crown as the best the genre has yet produced. --Mark Thwaite
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