I’ve never really been into comics. I recently saw The Dark Knight, and it was awesome. I used to watch the Batman cartoon when I was a young and have always been really into him. Before The Dark Knight began one of the trailers which was shown was for Watchmen. Before then I had only really heard of Watchmen in passing a couple of times from friends. The trailer for the film looked really cool, if only for the special effects (trailers don’t really tell you much about the story). I ended up borrowing the Watchmen graphic novel from a friend, and tonight I just finished reading it.
I think what made me enjoy the graphic novel so much was the writing and plot. I’m still not that much a fan of the illustration even though there were some really clever touches to it. I just found the plot to be fantastic and ridiculous - events in the book could never really happen in real life. The loved the way the politics and war were portrayed, and how the characters were never simply good or bad, but doing what they did for their own reasons. And the ending was just superb…
This next paragraph contains plot spoilers…
… But I find it difficult to believe the movie ending will remain as it is in the book. I don’t know if American audiences will want to see a New York that’s been bombed (by a huge fake alien!) and with 3 million people dead. Even if the movie is good it will never be able to live up to the graphic novel. I’ll still go and watch it though.
I’ve never really read comics before and when I started reading Watchmen I disliked having pictures with the words. I used to read a lot of novels so the dialogue driven method of story telling felt weird and unfamiliar to me. It took me a little while to get over that aspect of it. However, now that I think about it a little bit, it occurs to me that Tarantino films are pretty much entirely dialogue driven too, and I like those a lot too.
I don’t think I will all of a sudden start reading comics as a result of reading Watchmen, but it’s given me an appreciation of graphic novels as a medium. They bridge the gap between novels and films, but have a unique feel of their own.