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zeppomarksIn the early eighties when I started reading comics regularly I was very "girlish" about it. Let me clarify, comics that appeal generally to females have a certain flavor about them. They are either extremely fantastical or very introspective and personal. Sometimes they are both. The standard dude in tights rushing in to save innocent bystanders only appealed to me in theory plus I was completely in love with the art which could be distracting since the stories rarely spoke to me. It was easy for me to breeze through a superhero comic and even though I had read it, I couldn't tell you what it was about but I could tell you what the characters were wearing and what expression or explosion was the rendered in a way that I dug. I couldn't make it very far into Spiderman, or Superman or even Wonder Woman for that matter. The exception was Batman because he was just an ordinary human, impossibly flawed and neurotic and THAT was the perfect sand for me to get stuck in. The rest of the time I was either knee deep in the torment of Love and Rockets or being mindless with Peter Bagge's Neat Stuff.
Then I married Paul who lives and breathes comics and instead of insisting that I simply 'try again' with the superheroes instead put Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" into my hands and before I even got to the end I felt myself slipping down that slope with no hope of regaining my former skeptical attitude.
Then when I was ripe for the transformation he handed me "Watchmen."
I recall him describing that it wasn't really about superheroes, but more about the world if there were Superheroes actually living in it. I finished the entire graphic novel in one sitting.
It was complex but easy to read, it was delicious in its over arching implications about the nature of humans beings, it was gorgeous and it scared the living shit out of me. For the first time I lay awake thinking about a comic book feeling as if I had finished a remarkable novel, not just read a comic book with caped crusaders and incidental bystanders. I read it again and again. I have bought so many copies for friends hoping that just one of them will also have the Kool-Aid experience that I have long lost count.
Since the mid nineties rumors have spun out again and again about them making a movie of Watchmen. I was nervous about the prospect. Could they make me feel like I did reading it the first time, like I was an omniscient being hovering over a spectacle and at the same time feeling my heart in my throat, like I was running for my life down a smoke filled street? Each time the project fell through I felt disappointed and yet relieved that they did not destroy something on film that was so very precious to me.
When I heard Zach Snyder took the project and started to run with it I was cautiously optimistic. He had done a brilliant job directing "300" although it wasn't complex like Watchmen. They were going to have to create the visual punch of 300 but stack the layers of suspicion and sex and politicos and history and pop culture all into this impossible pie. They were going to have to draw me in and make me forget and then the second the mystery starts to unravel it is far too late and like Cassandra you are helpless in watching the inevitable end.
This is what they have so far and if you have never read a comic in your life, read "Watchmen" because it is simply a really great book and like all the best books - you won't be quite the same after.
Who watches the Watchmen?
Then I married Paul who lives and breathes comics and instead of insisting that I simply 'try again' with the superheroes instead put Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" into my hands and before I even got to the end I felt myself slipping down that slope with no hope of regaining my former skeptical attitude.
Then when I was ripe for the transformation he handed me "Watchmen."
I recall him describing that it wasn't really about superheroes, but more about the world if there were Superheroes actually living in it. I finished the entire graphic novel in one sitting.
It was complex but easy to read, it was delicious in its over arching implications about the nature of humans beings, it was gorgeous and it scared the living shit out of me. For the first time I lay awake thinking about a comic book feeling as if I had finished a remarkable novel, not just read a comic book with caped crusaders and incidental bystanders. I read it again and again. I have bought so many copies for friends hoping that just one of them will also have the Kool-Aid experience that I have long lost count.
Since the mid nineties rumors have spun out again and again about them making a movie of Watchmen. I was nervous about the prospect. Could they make me feel like I did reading it the first time, like I was an omniscient being hovering over a spectacle and at the same time feeling my heart in my throat, like I was running for my life down a smoke filled street? Each time the project fell through I felt disappointed and yet relieved that they did not destroy something on film that was so very precious to me.
When I heard Zach Snyder took the project and started to run with it I was cautiously optimistic. He had done a brilliant job directing "300" although it wasn't complex like Watchmen. They were going to have to create the visual punch of 300 but stack the layers of suspicion and sex and politicos and history and pop culture all into this impossible pie. They were going to have to draw me in and make me forget and then the second the mystery starts to unravel it is far too late and like Cassandra you are helpless in watching the inevitable end.
This is what they have so far and if you have never read a comic in your life, read "Watchmen" because it is simply a really great book and like all the best books - you won't be quite the same after.
Who watches the Watchmen?
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Date: 2008-11-20 03:21 pm (UTC)Watching the Watchmen: The Definitive Companion to the Ultimate Graphic Novel (http://www.bookmarksmagazine.com/book-review/watching-watchmen/david-gibbons) by David Gibbons.
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Date: 2008-11-20 06:08 pm (UTC)