I probably shouldn't be commenting on this, because I haven't seen the Watchmen TV series yet. (I've only been able to catch one episode so far, on a week when my wife and daughter were out of town. But having a baby around the house does not lend itself to regular TV viewing. So I won't be watching the whole series anytime soon.)
But I found this video fascinating. For one thing, it's a good exploration of the themes in the comic book. (I was a johnny-come-lately to the comic book. I didn't actually bother purchasing and reading it until 2009 when there was all the hype surrounding the movie coming out. But being a geek, once I got into it, I really got into it. And I read quite a bit about the history behind the characters, and about what Alan Moore was trying to deconstruct, and I found the whole thing fascinating.)
Secondly, I find this video interesting because it gets at the whole toxic anti-SJW fanboy culture now which seems to pervade everything geek related (Star Wars, Marvel, etc). People are always complaining about how liberals are ruining their favorite franchise by making it woke, and this guy points out how ridiculous that complaint has become when it's about Watchmen.
...p.s., for my review of the 2009 Watchmen movie, see HERE.
6 comments:
Cool video, Joel -- thanks for sharing. This show was not at all in my sphere of interest, as I was only a middling fan of the comic book. But the guy makes it sound super interesting. Not quite interesting enough for me to abandon my "I'll see it when it's finished" policy, but still pretty interesting.
It's fascinating to hear younger fans of the comic go on about it. Having read the series as it unfolded in real time, the comic's pervasive mood of doom is deeply associated with surviving the Reagan years. Kinda cool to see how the creators of the show are riffing off that history in unexpected ways (though I can see why Moore is still cool toward these improvisations).
Re: the comic book...
Have we talked about Watchmen before? I don't remember if we did. You read it in "real time" ? Meaning purchasing all the monthly comics as they came out? How did it catch your attention? Did you buy the whole set, or just dabble back in the day?
Secondly...Just a middling fan? I suppose you know this faint enthusiasm is not in line with the usual nerd praise. I was a johnny-come-lately (as I said above). But once I got into it, I really got into it. I found it worked on several levels--a deconstruction of Superheroes in general, but it was even more interesting once I started learning more about Steve Ditko, and then I learned what Alan Moore was making fun of.
Re: the show...
So, I've only seen one episode, and that was the 4th episode. (Just because it was what happened to be on TV last week). It's hard to recommend based on that one episode. There were a lot of things being set-up, but absolutely no pay-off. But I guess this is serialized TV now, isn't it? The pay-off will presumably come at the end of the season. Your "I'll see it when it's finished policy" is probably more appropriate here than ever.
Re: the fans...
So strange, isn't it? How could anyone possible miss the politics of the original?
I spend probably more time on Youtube than is good for me, and I've seen the anti-SJW backlash against several nostalgic franchises now: Star Wars, Marvel, X-men, Ghostbusters, etc. There's a certain entitled fan who feels ownership of these nostalgic properties, and feels like the SJWs are always ruining their childhood. But they forget that this stuff never existed in a vacuum anyway. A lot of this stuff was always slightly political.
This finally reaches self-parody with people complaining that someone introduced politics to Watchmen.
I also wonder... that Zack Snyder movie is 10 years old now. It's old enough to be nostalgic for people in their 20s now. I wonder if young people are just more familiar with the movie than the comic book.
Well ... "in real time" overstates the reality, actually -- I apologize. But the omnibus I have is the first print-run of the first release, which I bought while individual issues of The Watchmen were still available on the rack -- late-summer of '87, I think (yup -- wiki). I'd leafed through the individual issues and was not a fan of Dave Gibbons' art, which I touch on here. But I was reading Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns as well as Daredevil: Born Again (that one was in real time -- the four weeks between issues were painful) and I was super-keen on the new "mature" comics making an appearance among the men-in-tights, so Watchmen seemed to be required reading and I duly did my duty.
I was 22 in '87, and needless to say the world was not out of the thermonuclear woods yet -- we still had two more years of Reagan, plus four of his veep, to endure with held breath. So the brinksmanship that Moore attaches his narrative to was a deeply felt reality for this particular reader. Come to think of it, Miller played with it too, and really freaked me out. Anyway, I liked Watchmen enough that I bought V for Vendetta issue by issue when DC published it on this side of the pond.
Re: outraged fans -- I can't understand where these people are coming from. If you don't want a comic book property that was launched by a SJW, you'll have nothing but Archie Digests on your shelf! And Snyder's movie -- how can anyone be nostalgic about that turd?? Yeesh...
How old were you when you first read Watchmen? What year would that have been?
Ah, yes, thanks for the links. I do now remember some of this discussion. Sorry, the memory fades over time.
I didn't read Watchmen until a couple months before the movie came out. In the months leading up to the movie's release, everyone online was talking non-stop about the comic book, and curiosity finally got the better of me and I ordered it off of Amazon.
I think I remember vaguely hearing about in the 1990s... maybe. But before the Internet and Wikipedia, it was a lot harder to be a nerd. Nowadays it's so easy just to research this. Back then, unless you were plugged into a comic book store community (and I wasn't) it was a lot harder to know your comic book history, and a lot harder to see connections between comic books. (Although, mind you, that was also part of the fun back in the day. Buying loads of old comic books from the discounted bin, and gradually trying to piece together the story.)
Most of the comic books I read in the 1990s were from the post-crisis era. (The discounted bin had a lot of stuff from the 1980s, but nothing much before then.) So I knew of Captain Atom, the Question, and Blue Beetle, but I only knew of them as DC characters. I had no idea of their history in Charleston Comics.
Wikipedia helped me to learn the history of these characters, which helped me appreciate Watchmen more.
Also, around the same time, I saw that BBC documentary on Steve Ditko, and his work at Charleston Comics, and this also helped me to understand Watchmen more.
So, I got into it late. But once I got into it, I found the whole backstory to it fascinating.
Moore really packed in the incidental material, didn't he? I've probably recommended Grant Morrison's history of comics -- Supergods -- to you already, but it's worth another plug. If you ever got your hands on a copy I think you'd really dig it.
I just googled it now. I agree, it does sound like the kind of thing I would really dig. And it also does sound familiar. (Perhaps you have recommended it to me before?) I'll keep my eyes open for it.
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