1) I agree with Jon that Watchmen foreshadows a HUGE amount of later storylines. I tend to think that this is because Watchmen was so different than the comics of the day that it truely inspired whole themes which have been mined to great effect.
2) One of the above mentioned themes that I particularly liked was the in-narrative recognition that from an objective standpoint, 'super heroics' are often at best silly and at worst, perverse.
The idea of playing dress-up in a wierd (and often revealing) costume and engaging in public fisticuffs with other men and women playing dress-up just isn't totally rational. It takes a lot of pre-existing conditions and understandings to make that a rational outcome.
However, I still like the idea of regular (and not-so-regular) citizens taking it upon themselves to act for the betterment of their society. I agree with the idea that we as citizens have the right to become involved in regulating and improving our society and are not just the passive recipients of government managed and dispensed services.
One of the legal problems we have with prosecuting violent criminals today, especially when it's drug related, is that you become a target by standing up to criminals. And not just you yourself but your family and property.
It almost starts to make sense why you would want to adopt an alter-ego when becoming involved as a citizen.
But the spandex is still a little wierd.
2) I found it intellectually interesting that Ozymandius was able to discern a pattern to societal behavior and then use that insight to make big money in the stock market. That's just a neat idea. The rest of it got totally crazy, but you can sort of see the logical path that he went down to get to the big bad stuff at the end.
3) I loved the frickin pirate story because it was slowly revealing the motivation and thinking of so many of the characters, but each character was at a different point of the pirate story.
The Comedian made it to the ship, so to speak. Ozymandius was swimming out to the ship. NightOwl was at the point in the story where he was desparately trying to get back to the colony. Rorshac, I'm not too sure of. I'd say that Rorshac figured the whole thing out and didn't get sucked into the pirate story. His boat wouldn't have been sunk and plundered by the pirates to begin with. :p
Mon, 02/04/2008 - 12:21pm
Some of my thoughts on Watchmen:
1) I agree with Jon that Watchmen foreshadows a HUGE amount of later storylines. I tend to think that this is because Watchmen was so different than the comics of the day that it truely inspired whole themes which have been mined to great effect.
2) One of the above mentioned themes that I particularly liked was the in-narrative recognition that from an objective standpoint, 'super heroics' are often at best silly and at worst, perverse.
The idea of playing dress-up in a wierd (and often revealing) costume and engaging in public fisticuffs with other men and women playing dress-up just isn't totally rational. It takes a lot of pre-existing conditions and understandings to make that a rational outcome.
However, I still like the idea of regular (and not-so-regular) citizens taking it upon themselves to act for the betterment of their society. I agree with the idea that we as citizens have the right to become involved in regulating and improving our society and are not just the passive recipients of government managed and dispensed services.
One of the legal problems we have with prosecuting violent criminals today, especially when it's drug related, is that you become a target by standing up to criminals. And not just you yourself but your family and property.
It almost starts to make sense why you would want to adopt an alter-ego when becoming involved as a citizen.
But the spandex is still a little wierd.
2) I found it intellectually interesting that Ozymandius was able to discern a pattern to societal behavior and then use that insight to make big money in the stock market. That's just a neat idea. The rest of it got totally crazy, but you can sort of see the logical path that he went down to get to the big bad stuff at the end.
3) I loved the frickin pirate story because it was slowly revealing the motivation and thinking of so many of the characters, but each character was at a different point of the pirate story.
The Comedian made it to the ship, so to speak. Ozymandius was swimming out to the ship. NightOwl was at the point in the story where he was desparately trying to get back to the colony. Rorshac, I'm not too sure of. I'd say that Rorshac figured the whole thing out and didn't get sucked into the pirate story. His boat wouldn't have been sunk and plundered by the pirates to begin with. :p
»