Watchmen | 
 enlarge | Author: Alan Moore
Creator: Dave Gibbons
Publisher: DC Comics
Category: Book
List Price: $19.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  582 reviews
Sales Rank: 38
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 6.6 x 0.9
ISBN: 0930289234
Dewey Decimal Number: 741.5941
EAN: 9780930289232
ASIN: 0930289234
Publication Date: April 1, 1995
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Condition: Brand new from a factory sealed case. Check our rating! Guaranteed!
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Amazon.com Review
Has any comic been as acclaimed as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen? Possibly only Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, but Watchmen remains the critics' favorite. Why? Because Moore is a better writer, and Watchmen a more complex and dark and literate creation than Miller's fantastic, subversive take on the Batman myth. Moore, renowned for many other of the genre's finest creations (Saga of the Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, and From Hell, with Eddie Campbell) first put out Watchmen in 12 issues for DC in 1986-87. It won a comic award at the time (the 1987 Jack Kirby Comics Industry Awards for Best Writer/Artist combination) and has continued to gather praise since. The story concerns a group called the Crimebusters and a plot to kill and discredit them. Moore's characterization is as sophisticated as any novel's. Importantly the costumes do not get in the way of the storytelling; rather they allow Moore to investigate issues of power and control--indeed it was Watchmen, and to a lesser extent Dark Knight, that propelled the comic genre forward, making "adult" comics a reality. The artwork of Gibbons (best known for 2000AD's Rogue Trooper and DC's Green Lantern) is very fine too, echoing Moore's paranoid mood perfectly throughout. Packed with symbolism, some of the overlying themes (arms control, nuclear threat, vigilantes) have dated but the intelligent social and political commentary, the structure of the story itself, its intertextuality (chapters appended with excerpts from other "works" and "studies" on Moore's characters, or with excerpts from another comic book being read by a child within the story), the finepace of the writing and its humanity mean that Watchmen more than stands up--it keeps its crown as the best the genre has yet produced. --Mark Thwaite
Product Description
This Hugo Award-winning graphic novel chronicles the fall from grace of a group of super-heroes plagued by all-too-human failings. Along the way, the concept of the super-hero is dissected as the heroes are stalked by an unknown assassin.
One of the most influential graphic novels of all time and a perennial bestseller, WATCHMEN has been studied on college campuses across the nation and is considered a gateway title, leading readers to other graphic novels such as V FOR VENDETTA, BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and THE SANDMAN series.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 577 more reviews...
 Watchmen graphic novel October 9, 2008
Great story, great artwork. Alan Moore tells an excellent tale of superheros and the human condition. An adult storyline, not for young children.
 Watchman paperback review October 9, 2008
This book is a phenomenal read. I had a really hard time putting it down from the moment I got it and finished it in two days. I highly recommend this book, both for its graphic style and for its story. It's a little eerie how this cold war era book rings true today, many years later.
I think this book is a great read for both comic and graphic novel fans as well as the casual reader. If you're looking at getting a friend into graphic novels, this is the book to use to hook them in.
As good as storytelling gets October 8, 2008
I had heard quite a bit of the hype for Watchmen, particularly with the movie being announced. So I finally decided to give it a shot and see if it lived up to it.
It's so rare for any form of media to stand up to today's hype machine. Between the trailer for the movie, friends constantly talking it up, forums constantly talking it up. It's almost not fair to book, comics, games, music, etc. But this is one of the few things I've come across recently that lived up to - and shattered - all the hype. This is just plain phenomenal in every way.
If you're a fan of comics, if you're a fan of great artwork, if you're a fan of great storytelling. You'd be doing yourself a disservice by not reading this.
Get it! It's that simple!
Great Read!!! If you've never read a graphic read this! October 8, 2008
I have to say this was my first graphic novel and I couldn't put it down. After reading this I was immediately hooked on any type of comic, the DC Universe especially! The illustrations are vibrant, the characters are wonderfully depicted by the author, and the story line is riveting. This is a great hero comic diffferent from the rest that is essential to every comic book reader's collection.
Costumed vigilantes make tough moral choices October 6, 2008
Let's open by saying that if you're into comics at all, this is the first classic of the graphic novel genre, and you really need to read this book for the insights it gives into what might drive people to put on tights and fight crime, and where that choice might lead them. At the same time, this book is not for children - besides the (relatively) graphic violence and complex moral issues, there are sexual situations (no nudity, of course) that fall well beyond anything normally seen in comics. If you're a sci-fi/fantasy fan who's not really about comics, but willing to give it a chance, this review's for you.
Set in an alternate America of the 1980's, Moore paints a bleak picture of a world on the brink of nuclear holocaust, where the growing power of evil infects even the costumed vigilantes who have dedicated their lives to fighting it. The story takes a long hard look at what makes these "heroes" tick, and shows that the kind of people who take this path are certain to have their own demons - demons that cause them to at least occasionally, act demonically. The story opens with the brutal murder of a hero who calls himself "the Comedian". Brief, fragmented glimpses into his past show him taking down criminals, winning for Uncle Sam in Viet Nam, but also heartlessly shooting the Asian girl who claims she's pregnant with his child. The Comedian's murder is investigated by a hero called Rorschach, who has himself crossed the line by brutally disposing of the murderer of a six-year-old girl. Rorschach believes he has uncovered a plot to kill and discredit costumed heroes, but their true purpose remains a mystery. Ultimately, Moore asks us to decide who the real heroes and villains are, and suggests that perhaps even the best of us may feel the need to kill sometimes, for the greater good. But do the ends ever really justify the means?
Even aside from the content, this book is notable for some unusual techniques seldom seen in comics. Each of the twelve chapters ends with a page or three of text, supposedly excerpts from various documents that shed further light on the characters and situations described in the body of the story. Another unusual (although not as effective) technique is the interpolation of a "meta-comic" - an old-style pirate comic that a boy reads at the newsstand. More uses this comic as well as flashbacks in another interesting technique - that of showing us one scene while describing another, bleeding back and forth to help inform us of the characters' emotional states.
To be sure, the plot has some serious holes, and the ending isn't as satisfying as it might be (although it's certainly unexpected) but the intense dramatic situations and powerfully drawn (yet quite humanly flawed) characters more than make up for it. No, this isn't Dostoyevsky, but this is not your father's comic book, either.
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