Rereading Watchmen

A few weeks ago I reread volume 1 of Promethea, which had been on my nightstand for some time. It was great, and led me to look up what Alan Moore's been doing lately. I read The Great When, his latest book, and the first in a series. The Great When was thoroughly enjoyable, and I'll look forward to the upcoming volumes, but it also reminded me I hadn't read Watchmen in a while.

I first read Watchmen as a teenager. I skipped the prose sections, gobbled up the violence, and didn't really understand the ending. (Basically the way I imagine the director of the Watchmen film read it.) I read it again in my twenties and I was blown away. Watchmen and Scott McCloud's Making Comics convinced me it was worthwhile to keep reading comics into adulthood, and even to try my hand at making 'em. Watchmen was so utterly, amazingly, astoundingly good that I read it almost annually for the next decade, or so, and I always found some new layer, some clever allusion I'd missed, some overlooked detail. Now it had been a few years, and I wondered if it would still hold up, if it could possibly serve up any new facets. Honestly, I was pretty doubtful. I went into the reread with the familiar sinking feeling that I was about to discover that something that had been important to me didn't hold up to scrutiny, now that I was older -- and I couldn't have been more wrong. Within the first few pages I spotted a newspaper headline mentioning that Vietnam had become the 51st state. A small detail, but one which enriches an already rich, fully imagined world. The story drew me in and I was hooked. Below are a few things that made this reread so thoroughly enjoyable.

Look how neatly these two images, which show the same scene from different angles, mirror each other? I actually don't love Dave Gibbons's art, but he was the perfect artist for this book.

---

I spotted loads of things like that (I think it helped that I was reading the "absolute" edition, with extra large pages), lots of details of characters entering or leaving the scene in the background, lots of examples of the extraordinary clarity of the book's geography.

What may have surprised me most of all was the book's humor.

(As Rorschach checks his letter-drop in the background.)
Or this one:

It's always fun to spot all the repetitions of the motif of the smiley pin with the streak of blood over its eye. I only just noticed how the moon becomes the yellow circle of the smiley pin in the one below, on the right, as I was cropping the image. That's what makes talking and writing about these things worthwhile, I think -- you discover stuff along the way.

---

Some, like the ones above, are obviously intentional, but once you're on the lookout you see it everywhere, and the question arises whether it was intentional or not. What do you think of that oddly-shaped, broken piling in front of the eye of the owl-ship, below?

Below is an example of a wonderful detail I never before noticed: the way Jon and Laurie's disappearance from the scene reveals the haunting graffiti silhouette of a couple kissing (that was spray-painted on the wall earlier in the book). I don't know what it means, but it makes my heart ache. To me, this is comics at its best, conveying something ineffable with pure imagery. In the wake of the destruction of the neighborhood it seems to suggest something about war, and the grim shadows of obliterated people left on the walls of Hiroshima, but also hint at something poignant and heartbreaking in the end of Jon and Laurie's long romantic relationship. So few comics reward slow reading and close examination, but this one -- wow. 

In praise of the book's amazing visual storytelling I have to draw attention to this superbly chilling "dolly-in" on Rorschach, as everyone's gradually coming to the conclusion they'll have to side with Adrian in order that all the killing won't have been in vain.

---

But perhaps the biggest surprise to me was how one character with a fairly small role grew in my esteem. I always thought Dr Malcolm Long, Rorschach's prison therapist, was a fatuous character, who gets his comeuppance when his pampered, superficial naivete is ripped away from him and he gradually awakens to the fact that life is far stranger and darker than he's ever imagined. What I didn't remember was how his character arc ended. It wasn't till now -- when I'm 45, divorced, and have had a taste of heartbreak and hardship -- that I was able to fully grasp the nobility he displays by making the choice to help, to choose kindness, in spite of everything, and at the imminent risk of losing everything. On this reread, for me, he went from being a secondary character to perhaps the heart of the book.

Dr Malcolm Long: actual, honest-to-goodness hero.

That's all I've got to say, till I read the book again in six months or a year. My hat's off to Mr Moore and Mr Gibbons, and everyone who worked on the book. (I actually wrote a fan letter to Mr Moore, something I've always meant to do. I don't expect to hear back from him, but I hope he'll read it.)
​I'll leave you with this: Look how weird early designs were for Rorschach's costume! (From the "absolute" edition.)