Watchmen discussion from 1988

I like it. Thanks for the link.

Thanks for posting the link, Dax. The more I read about Watchmen, I realize how many layers and nuances I've missed. I found it funny that Moore constantly shot down Whitaker's comments.

Until reading this I never thought that maybe Jon was saving Rorshach from the frenzy that is going to occur when his journal goes public.

The peace will be short lived once the New Frontiersman begins printing the journal, it is clearly identified as "Rorshachs" journal and the public now knows that Walter Kovacs is Rorshach.

Jon can see the future, present and past all at once. Perhaps he knows what is going to happen, leaves Veidt ambiguously "correct", removes Rorshach from the media fate that Jon underwent in the cancer allegations and understands Laurie and Dan will hide no matter what.

I found this thread while looking for a Watchmen GN thread. Do we have one?

This thread seems to address where I am heading with my post.

I think that's a wildly incorrect reading. Jon can only see his own future, and he's leaving Earth.

The mercy killing isn't to save Rorschach from the furor of the journal but from the pain of life. He lives in a black and white world, and the enormity of the grey in Adrian's actions is too much for him. It was the black and white world of good and evil that gave him what little comfort he had; without that he is truly 100% broken.

I guess he does have to be involved in the situation to see the events around it. OK.

So in a unified world, Rorshach has little purpose and the pain of that realization drives him to have Jon "do it"?

I don't think it's a unified world so much as a world created by a very "gray" decision made by a man that he knew he had already failed to stop and the pain of knowing that his failure may not have been the worst thing for the world was what lead to his mercy killing.

It's similar to what the Comedian went through earlier. He had a strict view of things, and the enormity of Ozy's plan made him rethink that view (give up on it, really)

That was an amazing roundtable...thanks for bumping this thread, TzuDohNihm.

My brother complained about the comic being a half-a__ comic that ripped off characters and stories from other comics. I don't know much about comics history but I haven't heard this complaint about the Watchmen before. Is it justifiable?

Your brother is a stupid person. I'm so sorry.

Only so far in the literal sense that the characters were based on specific characters from Charlton Comics.

Also, if he is your younger brother then explain to him that he is a half assed human being and his entire life is ripped off from yours. Then pistol whip him like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas.

So very sorry.

saying it's half-assed is just a lazy argument.

I know that the characters were based on other characters but they are really archetypes of heroes. And if one uses that complaint, then nearly every character in comics is a ripoff. I just can't figure out where he got off saying that it stole scenes from other comic books.

Well, there are a few hints here and there of ideas that would later turn up in Watchmen in the X-Men storyline "Days of Future Past" and the "Squadron Supreme" miniseries, among other comics, but as I say they're no more than half-formed ideas in comparison to what Moore and Gibbons created; absolutely nothing was "stolen" for use in Watchmen.

Call me a fucking moron, but this is one (of the many, I'm sure) things that I had never put together in my multiple readings of the book.

It's different though. The Japanese were perceived as literally evil due to the American propaganda machine during WWII. They were the enemies. Adrian killed however many millions of innocent people in order to avert a war that was only theoretical in nature -- meaning it hadn't happened yet, and since it didn't occur there is no guarantee that it ever would have.

It's certainly different, and they acknowledge as much further on in the discussion.

But it is a very deliberate move and a very interesting one.

Been re-reading a lot of Alan Moore because of the movie, and just got through his six volumes of Swamp Thing. In volume 5, Swamp Thing's body is destroyed, and he's blocked from entering the green, by the machinations of Lex Luthor. ST's consciousness is thus flung across the universe, and ends up on a (seemingly) barren world where he reforms himself out of blue corral.

The entire issue is his inner monologue as he creates a second Swamp Thing for companionship, then an entire town of his old friends. I couldn't help but feel that, seeing as this issue ("My Blue Heaven") was published in 1987, this picked up Dr. Manhattan's story where Watchmen left off. In fact, seeing as Alan Moore's run on ST started about 1-2 years before Watchmen was published, I can't help but think of Swamp Thing as a proto-Dr. Manhattan now.

As well, re-read Moore's Supreme run and am now reading Tom Strong for the first time. The Supreme stuff is All-Star Superman before Grant Morrison. It's provocative how Moore mentioned in an interview that he felt guilty for turning the superhero genre grim & gritty, and has been attempting to bring it back to its silver age roots since the mid-90s or so (aside from the occasional From Hell and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). I very much enjoy his America's Best Comics stuff, it's a lot of fun.

The old stuff, along with late 80's/early 90's Hellblazer, Books of Magic and Sandman makes me miss the days when Vertigo housed a small corner of the DCU that, although separate, would occasionally bleed over into the main whole. Moore's Swamp Thing has Constantine on the Monitor's space station during the Crisis! I liked outsider characters commenting on the silliness of the genre as a whole. These days Hellblazer is the only old tier Vertigo left, with nary a Zatanna or Phantom Stranger appearance in sight.

My understanding (and I have no "inside" info) is that Vertigo has been working over the past few years to harden the wall between itself and the core DCU, presumably to disassociate their "adult" product from regular old "superheroes", even ones that once helped keep Vertigo on its feet in the early days.

Moore's Swamp Thing run is so fucking good. It really deserves its own thread.