Yes, just like very other comic book podcast in existence, the Major Spoilers crew will take a look at one of the most important graphic novels to have ever been written: Ragedy Anne and Andy Go to Candy Land Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen.
Moore used the story as a means to reflect contemporary anxieties and to deconstruct the superhero concept. Watchmen takes place in an alternate history United States where the country is edging closer to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, freelance costumed vigilantes have been outlawed and most costumed superheroes are in retirement or working for the government. The story focuses on the personal development and struggles of the protagonists as an investigation into the murder of a government sponsored superhero pulls them out of retirement and eventually leads them to confront a plot by one of their own to stave off nuclear war by killing millions of innocent people.
As always, the Major Spoilers Podcast is nothing without comments from great readers and listeners like you. You can use the comment section below, drop us a voice mail by calling (785) 727-1939, or record your comments and send it as an MP3 file in an email to podcast@majorspoilers.com.
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7 Comments
i’m one of those guys you hear in stories. the one who asked to read something good, only to have this book handed to me before my sentence was over.
I handed it to my girlfriend, who reads comics but never read Watchmen, and she loved it. I handed it to my dad, who hasn’t read a comic book since Jerry Lewis #1 when he was a kid but enjoys the genre nonetheless, and he loved it. I handed it to my sister, who is fairly indiferent about what I’m into, and she loved it. I handed it to my mom, who… took one look at nekkid Dr. Manhattan, and said “no way.” She did like the movie trailer, though.
Watchmen is one of those works that goes beyond comics. It’s literature. Not many comics can do that.
I honestly do not understand why people love this book. I know I’m in the super minority, but I hated this book. Hated it!
And I completely understand all the themes and points the story was trying to make. I still hate it.
It’s full of sound and fury that ultimately signify that all but one of the characters is a complete jackass.
The first time I read Watchmen I didn’t care for it – I can’t say I hated it, but I sure didn’t like it a lot. Then during a very long and boring summer, I picked it up again, and reread it with the purpose of trying to figure out if there was some deeper meaning, of if I had missed something important. When I paid more attention to themes and metaphors, and the like, I came to like the story more and more. Watchmen is certainly not at the top of my list of the best comics of all time, but it is on the list. The same thing happened with me an ASBaR, but we’ve hashed that reasoning over many a time already. So don’t worry if you hate it Adam, it’s your opinion, and if you don’t like it, youdon’t have to follow the rest of the herd.
Watchmen is….. good. Come on every single positive thing that can been said about Watchmen has already been said and 99 percent of of it right on the money.
But that said Alan Moore sure can write characters and i find Watchmen to be very characterdriven.
So heres a question for you guys, which characters are your favorites and why?
Any characters from the book can be chosen from the originale Niteowl too the psychiatrist that resembles the fat cop from Die Hard. Maybe you even have one specific one that you find more interesting and unique than the others…
The comic’s very good, painfull to read sometimes because of the slow speed of things thou. I almost gave up a number of times and only read the “Tales of the Black Freighter”, the comic within a comic, because I was told it was important to understand Ozymandias’s state of mind.
It’s a great homage to the color grey, no one but Rorchach (the crazy one) lives in a black or white world. Which is the reason he has to die. Funny that the only “standard comic book hero/anti-hero” is insane, the main character trait of a hero/anti-hero is the fact that no matter the situation they’ll never compromise their values and he’s to only one to have that here.
The greatest grey character is the Comedian, he’s a rapist and a killer but when he says to Silk Spectre II “just one time” I really felt bad for him and could never bring myself to hate the guy.
By the way I had a horrible thought: we see Spectre and Owl get disentegrated by a nuke (in a Tv teaser) and we know there is no squid, so maybe in the Watchmen movie the good guys will actually stop Ozymandias. Kind of like the flip side of the comic, they win the fight but lose the world. Instead of loosing the fight and saving the world.
Hopefully the disentegration is just the part were Papa Smurf bitches and moan to Spectre that he has no stake in the World anymore.
I don’t want to tread on old ground so I’ll say the following:
1) Reading this at age 14 was an interesting experience to say the least.
2) The best outcome of this book was what it did to the Question in JLU. Where it was Ditko-era Question merged with Rorschach, and the result was awesome.
3) This would not have been the same book, with the same overarching effects if it had Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, etc. Just because DC would likely be trying to retcon this story into continuity.