The Watchmen comics, the 12-series book created by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore, isn’t your usual graphic novel. It’s not a rip-off of any of the flawless, virtuous superhero stories we’re used to reading. It’s dark, gloomy, pulp and deviant in every way.
Moore’s description of dystopia is intended to reflect today’s dilemmas. The background of the plot is an alternate history of the United States, where the country is on the verge of waging a nuclear war against the Soviet Union. Populating the pages are the highly humanized and flawed characters that Moore created. These characters reflect the very nature of humanity and the reality of existence. Each character possesses an ambivalent wave of emotions, despair, violence and moral bankruptcy. Also, the creators wanted to show readers what these characters are all about without sugarcoating them. In an interview, Moore said, “What we wanted to do was show all these people, warts and all. Show that even the worst had something going for them, and even the best had their flaws.”
Unlike all other heroes depicted in epics and other graphic novels, the characters in Watchmen, although in costume, have no superpowers except for Doctor Manhattan.
The characters are nothing like Superman. They are not friendly or stable enough to be trusted. They plan, they cheat, and they give in to the urgency of their own worldly needs. These characters are more of the deconstructed concept of a superman. This is one aspect of the comics that is firmly grounded in realism.
Moore and Gibbons intend to show the different facets of the human condition through their characters. Doctor Manhattan is a representation of a murderous mind; The Comedian is the Peacemaker; Nite Owl, the vigilante superhero; Ozymandias, the representation of goodness; Rorschack, a symbolism of the gray zone of life; and Silk Spectre, object of desire and lust.
In the graphic novel, five radically opposite world constructions are presented. Instead of dictating to readers the line of demarcation between the spheres of good and evil, the novel launches the audience into a moral debate. The creators allow readers to engage in an active discussion about what is black, white, or gray on the moral scale.
This comic is a marriage between fantasy and realism. The unique plot and even more humanized characters put all other comics to shame. Watchmen was not created to give readers a good read. Instead, it was intended to make them think about and accept the multi-level conflicts that human existence brings.
Watchmen not only boasts of a cleverly written plot. His artistic and visual depictions also highlight the strengths of mid to upper-rise comics.
The Watchmen comics have deconstructed the superman and have remained totally faithful to the reality of the human being. He has twisted and reinvented the comic book genre in feats never before seen. In a nutshell, he has dispelled the myth of the superman and shown that humans, even those we think of as perfect, have flaws.
