Watchmen

Watchmen. Click it. I might cut you otherwise.
Ha! You can't look inside! I wasted your time!
Really, I should have used another picture...

Ok then, Watchmen. Arguably Alan Moore's most famous work, Watchmen helped redefine the graphic novel medium. In 1988, Watchmen received a Hugo award. Not interested in Sci-Fi awards? Ok then, in 2005, Time magazine named it on their "hundred best novels" list. Still not impressed? Very well, I give you my last piece of proof: It inspired the creation of the comic sans font. Actually, that's less of an accolade. But let's move on, and find some talented reviewers Time magazine should really have employed. Warning, there'll be a lot of spoilers. Here. We. Go:

Moore's original burst of inspiration was to take a form of children's literature (Little patronising? Make you feel big? )- the super-hero comic book - and fuse it with the Hemingway-derived melodrama of the hard-boiled school of crime and detective fiction (What? Seriously, what the fuck? You've just taken two completely different things and tried to correlate them. Do you even know who Hemingway was?). Teenagers, poorly-read and possessing malnourished tastes in prose, were predictably awestruck by the results. (Actually, I was a decently well-read teenager when I read Watchmen for the first time, and I liked it. I've read every Calvin and Hobbes cartoon there is, for one thing. Furthermore, I refer you to the awards. I wrote about them earlier - don't you read this blog in the past, before you write reviews?)They thought it was 'realistic'; they thought this was 'great literature'. (Are those quotes? You've marked them like they are. Well, sir, you have defeated me with un-cited, one-word long quotes! To the gallows I go, for my crimes against literature...) Overall, I found this review annoying enough to actually review it myself:

Pretentious, melodramatic writing.
By Paul Blanchard
This review is from: Corny, melodramatic writing by "Oscar Wilde" (I have doubts) (Amazon review)
Wilde's original burst of inspiration was to take a form of children's literature - the Amazon review- and fuse it with the pretentious spoutings of a man who wants other people to think he's well-read. By combing the phrase "Hemingway-derived melodrama" with the concept of the "hard-boiled school of crime and detective fiction", he tries to create a new genre of fiction to look really smart.. Teenagers, poorly-read and possessing malnourished tastes in prose, were still able to recognize a terrible review. They thought it was 'stupid'; they thought this was 'bad literature'. Really, that's a terrible line to end on, you arrogant fuck.

But I digress, have another review fair reader:

Wake Up This Is Pure Statist Propaganda !!! (Damn. I was asleep as well)
Look beneath the surface (Well, yea. That's how you open a book)! What is being espoused is dangerous and hateful Orwellian doublespeak (As Captain Kirk, "ORWELLLL!). It is a classic example of the ends justify the means philosophy that has emboldened dictators for ages (Actually, it is a branch of moral philosophy called Consequentialism. This philosophy asserts that the morally correct actions are those that have the right consequences, not those carried out with good intentions. The most famous form of Consequentialism is Utilitarianism, supported by John Stuart Mill. Since I assume you are one of those stereotypical American nut-jobs, I would point out that Mill is also the father of classic liberalism and libertarianism you're always going on about. Mill was not a dictator. Indeed, it's not just dictators that believe the end justifies the means, everyone does. That's why you pay taxes, go to war, eat babies. Actually, scrap the last one. There're only certain situations that's applicable, and they're pretty rare.). Consider:


1. Rapists/rape can be OK if the product (Silk Specter) is something good. No. No-one said rape is actually all right. What was actually shown was something good coming out of something terrible. The idea you're confusing is that the first Silk Spectre wouldn't have changed anything. This doesn't mean rape is ok, it means she loves her daughter.


2. The smartest human (Ozymandias) devises a plan for stability at the price of millions being murdered. Yes, he did do that. Firstly, no-one said he was right. The other 'heroes' didn't do anything because it was too late - the plan had already been carried out, and seemed to be working. They weren't happy about it, clearly.


3. A "good guy" can murder the mother of his unborn child w/out repercussion. What? That wasn't shown as a morally praiseworthy act. And the Comedian is not really a "good guy", that's the point. That scene was meant to reinforce the point that the comedian's public image as a government agent and hero clashed with the fact he was actually a bastard, and also to show that Manhattan was becoming further removed from mankind - observing rather than helping.


4. False-flag terrorists attacks are a legitimate way to affect change. Ok, I don't actually know what that means. I assume you mean people committing terrorism while impersonating other people, so I think you must be referring to the ending. Right: firstly, fake aliens aren't people. But that's not the point.


5. Massive existential lies are acceptable depending upon the result. Do you know what existentialism is? And yes, massive lies are acceptable depending on the result. For all you know, it could be happening all the time. Besides, the point was to show the extent people can go to trying to make the world a better place.

6. The person who holds truth as an ideal must be insane and destroyed (Rorschach). No. What is shown here is Rorschach going against what is deemed best for society. His actions threaten to destroy a world created with great sacrifice, which cannot be allowed to happen. This echoes the real world, where people who oppose the status quo are silenced through a variety of means.

This is dangerous mass-brainwashing to accept terrorism, death and a NWO. Read between the lines--don't be fooled--this goes beyond a mere comic. You see, the mistake you made here is reading a piece of fiction and thinking it was an instruction manual. This is a story. A good story, yes. But it doesn't actually follow that when you finish it, you must go out, create a fake alien, and teleport it into a city. Did you read the Lord of the Rings and force midgets to follow you to volcanoes? Alan Moore doesn't actually tell us how to judge the characters, and if you feel you need someone to explicitly explain what concepts are good and bad for you, maybe you shouldn't read anything. Ever.