Watchmen

Reading watchmen right now in 2014, 27 years after it was published is still an amazing read, but I imagine it had a different kind of shock and awe that came with the virgin super anti hero audience from 1987.  These “heroes” in watchmen are much more gritty and take a much more realistic take on the idea of the superhero that took off in the earlier half of the 20^th century. It even uses the real history of the superhero as the background for characters in the comic.  The best way I like to describe watchmen is a gritty Film Noir

            Alan More when writing this is commentating on the concept of the superhero by depicting a reality with realistic superheroes that exist in the United States of America and how they behave in and with American society. Alan more repeatedly states in the story that anyone who is a “superhero” is probably, to some degree, “crazy.”  What I find most interesting is the ways that the story parallels and critiques the history of superheroes in comics. Historically superhero comics rose up around the same time the minutemen formed in Watchmen.  Superheroes in comics before watchmen where very pure and their behavior was unfortunately very much restricted due to rules instated by the United States Comics code, but Alan More wanted to revisit the superhero and provide the audience with, as he says, "Show a reality that was very different to the general public image of the super-hero."

            The most famous sentence from the comic, “Who watches the Watchmen”, is a perfect analogy for structure of this comic. The “superheroes” in this comic are not the heroes, maybe the protagonists, but not the heroes. They are the people who are in trouble they have found out that one of their own has been killed and there is a mystery that needs to be unraveled. Alan More takes the superhero convention and flips it on its head in a way that echoes though most all superhero comics today.