Why I'm Keeping Watchmen on My Island
I don’t have the complete Scene rules and regs book in front of me, but I’m pretty sure the TAS bylaws require that I respond to this, by Noah:
The Watchmen, by Alan Moore. I should probably put this in the same category as Kundera, and just say this is a phase some boys have to go through, and leave it at that. And I’ll admit, it holds your attention. When the movie came out recently, instead of going to see it, I re-read the graphic novel. And I was certainly able to read through it – it was a breeze. I wasn’t bored. But trash isn’t generally boring. And that’s the problem: this is trash dressed up as something more. And the sensibility behind the book is not actually one that you want anybody taking seriously.
A few points:
1. Noah should consider himself clever and lucky that he chose to reread the book rather than watch the movie. The more I think about Snyder’s adaptation, the less I like it. The sensibility behind it is puerile in the extreme. Say what you will about Moore and his book, at least he had a story to tell and something to say. Snyder, on the other hand, just had something to repeat. Watching his movie bears no small resemblance to being harangued about Objectivism by an obnoxious sophomore who’s recently spent far too much spare time memorizing passages in Atlas Shrugged.
2. It appears as if the problem, for Noah, is that he views Watchmen as aspiring to be meaningful and important in ways that it’s not. I’ll grant that it’s a bit overwrought, but I think this misses the point, as does his criticism that its sensibility is not one you’d want anyone taking seriously. I actually agree, with one possible caveat.* But as Noah admits, it’s highly readable, even gripping; it rather expertly holds your attention all the way through. And that, I think, is actually in stark contrast to most comic books, which tease you with the notion that they’ll serve up memorable, gripping-but-trashy thrills, but tend to deliver incoherent, unreadable, juvenile bullshit. What Watchmen does — the reason I think it’s so enjoyable and successful — is fulfill the promise of comic books to be really excellent trash. It’s pulp, yeah, but it’s really good pulp — a complete, genuinely intriguing, mostly coherent story with a few obvious, just-ambiguous-enough themes and a handful of well-crafted genre types as characters. There’s action and romance and betrayal and historical sweep and the fate of the world and, really, what else do you need? Or expect? We’re talking about a comic book.
Of course, most superhero comics have a tough time delivering dialog that isn’t cringe-worthy, much less anything like a surprising twist or a memorable character. You’d think the medium would be spilling over with terribly enjoyable trash, stuff that didn’t exactly insult your intelligence but also allows for plenty of souped-up, spandexy fantasy. Not so. As with video games, comic books are pretty awesome in theory, but the bulk of them are worthless. And that’s what’s so great about Watchmen. It’s not that it’s some transcendent work of culture-transforming genius, it’s that it’s a perfectly executed piece of cynical middlebrow pop. Not anything more — but that’s all it needs to be.
*Who would you want taking the Watchmen sensibility seriously? Well, not most people, I think, but most comic-book writers who are not Grant Morrison could probably stand to insert more ponderous claptrap and overly grand socio-political gobbledeygook into their work. At least aim for sweep and complexity and ideas and resolution, even if it leads to self-importance, rather than soap-opera teases and endless built-up non-events and situational stasis.
I’ve been a bit uncharitable to Watchmen in the past, and I’m guilty (as I often am) of letting other critical opinions affect my own. I still don’t believe that it deserves its reputation. However, I think it’s a work that really needs to be situated in its proper context, the Reagan ’80s and the threat of nuclear holocaust. I think it works a lot better in that context than it does in the context of the movie, which I think tried to create a weird nostalgic ’80s vibe that made the story into a kind of kitsch. (Witness, for example, all the groan-inducing moments when the backing songs were telegraphing really obvious emotional cues.)
It’s really a period piece. (Actually, it really reminds me of London Fields, for my money Martin Amis’s best work, damn funny but losing relevance every day.) For some reason, people act like calling a novel a period piece is a damning criticism, but I’ve never understood why. I think a book that perfectly captures a particular era and then loses relevance over time is still a triumph, and I think those kinds of novels are as necessary for a healthy literature as are truly timeless novels.
— Freddie · Jul 18, 09:49 AM · #
I’ve got no problem with matters of taste. Different strokes and all that. But wasn’t Watchmen praised because it wasn’t just a comic book? Wasn’t the sound and fury about how Watchmen that it revealed the soaring heights the medium could attain, that it forced us to acknowledge that ‘comic books’ could be high literature, too, and not just “really good pulp”?
At least, that’s a pretty good description of the the bill of goods I was sold. Plus, Noah’s comment was about the island, and departure therefrom.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 18, 12:25 PM · #
If we’re looking for a comic bok that really does aspire to the realm of literature, how about Neil Gaiman’s Sandman? It’s easily far better than Watchmen on all levels, except perhaps in the compactness of the plot.
And even if we’re only going for the maximum of ponderous Big Ideas with sweep and complexity, Sandman wins hands down. Whereas Watchmen has superheroes, Sandman’s main characters are anthropomorphic representations of cosmic forces, like Death, Desire, Despair, and — of course — Dream. The minor characters include William Shakespeare, Orpheus, Lucifer, the Furies, and that sort of thing.
If any work demonstrates the capabilities of mainstream comics — not just superhero comics, but the whole heroic graphic genre — it’s Sandman.
— Ethan C. · Jul 18, 02:04 PM · #
Lord save us from defenders of the medium who don’t really respect (or understand) the genre that well themselves. (See also Peter’s defense of video games without being familair with Braid or Shadow of the Colossus.)
That said, it’s virtually impossible to deal with Noah’s critique because it’s not actually a critique, just a sneering hand-wave that dismisses the book’s sensibility without defining what that sesibility actually is. But for my money, Moore manages the rather neat trick of delivering a scathing critique of the superhero genre (among other things) in the language of the superhero genre to the biggest fans of the superhero genre – and having them love him for it. It’s hard to imagine how he could do that without dealing with the “trashy” plots and settings that Noah distains.
As for Peter’s comment that “comic books are pretty awesome in theory, but the bulk of them are worthless,” welcome to the world of Sturgeon’s Law – 90% of everything is crap, including the pretentious, dull, intellectual-masturbation-passed-off-as-literature that Noah would presumably want to keep on the island.
— (some other) Chris · Jul 18, 03:39 PM · #
Ethan – I agree! Sand man is awesome, and legitimately smart, too.
Chris – I actually agree with you about Moore’s anti-comic comic trick. (I just wrote a squib about it for an upcoming issue of Reason that says just that.) But as much as I respect the book’s critique of the medium, I think it’s a sideshow. What makes Watchmen great and lasting is that it’s an incredibly satisfying piece of pulp — a well-told story that never fails to engage (or reengage).
And sure, I’m not a super comic geek. I spent some time with a few friends who seem to have nearly complete knowledge of all comics — it’s pretty impressive. But I’m not exactly a slouch — I’ve probably read 1200-1500 issues of various series in my lifetime, and I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on what the median quality of most of its material is.
— Peter Suderman · Jul 18, 04:33 PM · #
Peter-
I actually disagree about Watchmen – as pulp goes, it’s not particularly great. For one thing, it’s far too dense – I’ve loaned the book out to numerous people who’ve almost immediatley given it back as they haven’t wanted to wade through Rorschach’s opening narration, or the supplimental materials at the end of chapters, etc. Certainly it’s not as successful as, say, The Dark Night Returns or Busiek’s longer Astro City stories in that respect. At best, insofar as Watchmen is successful, it’s because it’s got a reasonably good pulp substrate on which to rest its more interesting intellectual ideas.
And as for not being a comics geek, that’s fine – I don’t have a closet full of poly-bagged back issues myself. But regardless of how crappy most superhero comics are, I still think it’s legitimate to note the distinction between the medium of comics and the superhero genre which dominates in the US, and not necessarily condemn the former because of the latter. (Of course, I didn’t keep said terminology entirely straight in my last comment, so that take me down a peg.)
But I’ve read Maus and Tezuka’s Adolf and the rest of the handful of truly great comics that are out there, and the mere existence of Rob Liefeld and the like doesn’t stop me from expecting better of comic books. I’d hope you feel the same way, and write accordingly, which was the (probably overly rude) point of my last comment.
— (some other) Chris · Jul 18, 06:07 PM · #
“Watchmen” is too laborious. The author shows off on every page how hard he worked to introduce the maximum amount of symbolism, parallelism, and every other literary device known to mankind. It would be a good training device for students’ studying for the AP English Lit test because displays the mechanics of Lit-tra-choor in its most condensed, freeze-dried form.
— Steve Sailer · Jul 18, 09:02 PM · #
Steve Sailer has it exactly right. I’m excited by allusion and symbolism and metaphor in comics; I’m just disappointed, in Watchmen, that the use of such things has to be bashed over our heads so relentlessly, and is done in such a self-congratulatory way. I also am put off by what I see as a kind of teenaged sensibility towards tragedy, the misconception that anything that is bleak must necessarily be filled with depth or importance.
— Freddie · Jul 19, 09:27 AM · #
displays the mechanics of Lit-tra-choor in its most condensed, freeze-dried form
Another self-conscious demonstration of high mechanics: Synechdoche, New York, which I saw for the first time last night. Except — instead of pursuing something vulgar like, say, the deconstruction of something vulgar, Kaufman’s rococo existentialism almost justifies the film’s pretensions.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 19, 12:19 PM · #
I think Watchmen stands up as a fairly well-crafted piece of work from the technical viewpoint, if no masterpiece, and have certainly read quite a few clunkier novels and short stories otherwise praised by the critics. (I haven’t seen the movie, but that’s beside the point, isn’t it?)
While the subject matter may seem a bit garish, part of the point was surely to take a more mature look at the masked super hero. They turn out to be morally questionable; inhuman; aging, ineffective dreamers; and unpalatable weirdoes from the fringe. The altruistic caped vigilante crusaders of the comics would, had they existed, inevitably have been coopted into roles as government agents and intelligent weapons of mass destruction. Is that a too obvious point these days? Likewise the material consequences of superpowers, perhaps dated by referencing the cold war; but does it seem so very banal in this era to have individuals perform acts of mass destruction for the perceived greater good? Or that others, at least one of whom could have stopped it all, would hesitantly accept the validity of such violence? (Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns made similar points; perhaps that was why it too was praised at the time.)
So nyah. Watchmen uplifted its genre and is, in my opinion, good enough to compete.
— Thomas · Jul 19, 12:25 PM · #
Wait, wait, wait: the argument here is, I’m going to keep Sandmen on the list of Great Works because it doesn’t suck so badly as you’d have expected it to? That’s…um….
Suppose it’s a great read. So what? Look, nobody on the original list was saying, say, White Noise isn’t a great read: even if you (wrongly) don’t think it canonical, probably everyone thinks it’s a blast: I have been in too many real-world scenarios where Gladney’s horror of being dead in the simulation played out in front of me, or cases where the simulators were hastily collecting data during the possible emergency (swine flu, anyone?) If you don’t think White Noise is a Work For The Ages, OK, we can argue it. If you don’t think it’s a hell of a fun read, I don’t know what to tell you. That’s not what’s relevant with Watchmen.
You already addressed the subverting-the-genre issue here and the conclusion appears to’ve been, nothing special about that. And I still maintain that by that criterion Phantom Menace is an awe inspiring piece of Art.
Science fiction of course belongs on the deserted island in great numbers because it’s one real contribution to writing is the one which will presumably be most in demand: you’ll run out of ways to describe nice boobs.
— Sanjay · Jul 19, 07:42 PM · #
Kind of off-topic but related: What other comic book series might be considered “good enough” to rise into a canon of necessary reading? Not just “necessary as a comic book fan” but for actual modern literature?
I would submit, as Ethan does above, that Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” series rises to that level. I would also include Warren Ellis’s “Transmetropolitan” and — though it is at times very uneven — Garth Ennis’s “Preacher.”
— Erik Vanderhoff · Jul 20, 12:50 PM · #