Some Watchmen Background

I had one commenter to this earlier Watchmen post request that I provide more details on what facets of the Watchmen comic series made it so great, and another ask about whether the "superheroes" in it actually do anything... well, heroic!

I can't really even imagine taking on that first challenge (although others have tried) but the question about the lack of heroism in the story is quite an interesting one. And maybe in tackling the one, I'll incidentally give at least an inkling of the other.

My take on the comic series has always been that writer Alan Moore set out to provide, in excruciating detail, what he thought "superheroes in the real world" might be like. One of the first things he did toward that end was to do away with many of the by-then standard conventions that allow superhero comic books to work. For example: most comic readers, once they reach a certain age, begin to ask, "What would I really do if I got superpowers?" Rarely is the answer, "I'd fight crime and never abuse my responsibility!" (Instead, we imagine using X-Ray Vision to see inside the girls' change room, or being able to read minds so that we could get perfect scores on all of our tests.) And yet, that nobility-of-intention is exactly what we have to accept about Superman, Spider-Man, Batman and the rest. It's a suspension of disbelief that's necessary if you're to buy into the concept of the genre itself.

Not so in Watchmen, though. Moore didn't supply idealized versions of humanity in the various costumes, but rather very ordinary folks. Some are in it for the kicks, some just because they like to beat the crap out of other people, and some because they felt like they had no choice (eg. Laurie giving in to her mother's ambitions for her, much like an offspring being pressured by a parent into pursuing a career in ballet or dentistry). Only Dr Manhattan has any superpowers whatsoever, and therefore his arrival on the scene eventually kills the costumed adventurer "gig" for most of them. But up until that point, it's just a cross section of human foibles under the masks, like you'd expect to get if real people decided to join that fraternity.

Therefore, while a few of the guys and gals in tights do some good, it's generally a very mixed bag in that regard. The Comedian is almost completely amoral, as you can probably tell even from his actions in the film version. Rorschach is at the other end of the spectrum, to the point where his skewed and somewhat super-charged morality overides any sense of balance or compassion in his assessments of those around him. Everyone else is somewhere in between those two extremes. The fact that Dr Manhattan thoughtlessly tosses Janey Slater aside as she gets older (while he remains unchanging in that regard) shows that, even as he increasingly loses touch with humanity, he's still imprinted with some of the failings that afflict us all. Ozymandias does what he does in the story for the noblest of reasons, however misguided they may be. Nite Owl's a good, honourable man, but is also unwilling to fight the good fight once it becomes too difficult. In other words, they're all just people.

When you look at the characters in Watchmen in that light, then you see that it's not your typical superhero drama, despite the familiar trappings of costumes, fist fights and gadgets. And that's a huge part of the appeal of the comic series, which has never been out of print in over 20 years now (there are probably no other 12-issue comic series that you could say that of). The events in Watchmen fly in the face of expectations, as well as being layered in a way that even many novelists will never achieve in their work. What we got in the film version was a reasonably good, well-intentioned slice of that genius... but to really experience and appreciate Watchmen, you need to read the original. Even there, though, you won't find many "heroes" doing the usual "heroic stuff" that we've all grown accustomed to reading about in comic book form.