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Product Reviews:
Watchmen |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: Excellent Excellent
Comments: This is a great story. The characters in this story are amazing. Each is compelling and there is no clear winner or loser. I love this story. |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: Mindblowing
Comments: I have never read a graphic novel before, however Watchmen certainly earned my praise. The interweaving plots and exceptional storyline succeeds at getting inside the readers head. It makes us question what we all believe about society. can not wait to read it again. |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: AMAZING!!!!!!
Comments: I have read this book a couple years ago and have recently re-reead it when I heard the movie was coming out. This book really might be the greatest story ever told in the graphic novel medium. AMAZING!!!!!! |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: Great graphic novel!!
Comments: Really a fantastic story that couldn't be told any other way than graphic novel format. I can not wait to see the movie!! |
Rating: 2 (out of 5)
Summary: Loses It Allure with Age & Multiple Readings
Comments: Okay, I realize that w/out Alan Moore, the road for a genius such as Neil Gaiman would have been more difficult. No doubt Moore helped pave the way for those who would take comic books to greater heights, exploring the medium's potential to its fullest.
I am not sure TIME MAGAZINE put THE best "graphic novel" on its list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. Without a doubt, the collected volumes of Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN would be more worthy of inclusion...same for Art Spiegelman's MAUS.
I have read all3(WATCHMEN, entire SANDMAN series & MAUS) an equal number of times. With SANDMAN and MAUS, I always discover something newly unknown and magical with each repeated reading. With WATCHMEN I tend to see more of its warts & flaws with each reading.
Gaiman and Spiegelman have an ear for poetic prose and dialogue. By comparison, though dense and laden with many words, Moore's style of writing is often so verbose, as though a lack of brevity will equal a profound statement. It doesn't. Often less is more...and this is a lesson that Moore, even after all these years, has yet to master.
Finally, when dealing with writers such as Neil Gaiman or Art Spiegleman (and there are dozens of others whom I could mention, however felt it simpler to limit comparisons to these2accomplished writers in comics),1feels that they often bring out the nightmarish and horrific in order to shine a light on what is, essentially, the better angels within humanity.
And both writers DO enter into dark & disturbing terrain.
By contrast,1gets the feeling that Moore sometimes pontificates on the importance of humanity as a cheap vehicle to go full guns into his disturbing mind and world. Acts of grace...when they occur in Moore's work...seem to exist only to remind his readers that the world is not entirely1of no god, no hope, no future. However, if given his way, I get the feeling that Moore would happily skip the better angels of humanity and would dwell entirely in the abyss.
After having lived with WATCHMEN for over20 years, it is a flawed, bloated and pompous work...more an exercise in histrionics rather than a work that sheds anything new on humans (be they costumed, with super-powers, or otherwise). It does not hold up nearly as well as the works of Gaiman or Spiegleman. TIME magazine purchased the wrong token graphic novel to include in its 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.
When I read MAUS, I wish that I had Spiegleman's knack for pathos and natural dialogue. When I read Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN (or just about any of Gaiman's work), I wish that I had Gaiman's extensive knowledge of myth, archtypes, religions, symbols and literature (as well as his eloquence in both narrative and dialogue). When I read Alan Moore (whether it's WATCHMEN or V FOR VENDETTA or LOST GIRLS)...I pretty much find myself forever grateful that I am not Alan Moore.
I do not mind that Moore tackles disturbing topics. More than anything, I resent when Moore...with all the people skills of a misanthrope...exploits tender human situations (which, in Moore's hands, feel completely void of any sincerity/empathy) for the sole purpose of making his bleak, nihilsitic vision all the more potent.
We get it, Alan...the world is a place where there be dragons. It's why you seldom leaves you small town in England (and will do your research through books rather than ever visit the settings with which he writes with the false authority of a self-appointed expert). Fine, Alan. Just leave the greatness and grace of humans out of your tomes. Humanity and grace serve a higher purpose than the way you exploit them...as a vessel to merely offer a dichotomy/diversion to the demons that drive you.
What's written above would also apply to Frank Miller...
Gaiman/Spiegleman and Moore/Miller...one may as well say "the sacred and the profane."
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