A new mainstream
A new mainstream |
|
Page 9 of 23  the assembled Watchmen try to decide what to do ('Somebody's got to save the world...') Watchmen was also about superheroes coming out of retirement, but eschewed the essentially right-wing vision of Dark Knight in favour of a more liberal consideration of how society would function if such heroes really existed. Here, the Watchmen - a group best described as a sort of fortysomething X-Men - return to try to save an America on the brink of annihilation, but which few of them believe in anymore. Their powers may be just as potent as when they first donned their costumes, but their spirits are broken, and amid the often horrific action, there is much soul-searching and psychological trauma - in true Alan Moore fashion. The complexity of the structure of the story, in twelve parts, with each episode redefining the one previous, made for a compelling read. Although Moore has taken much credit for the story, the contribution of artist Dave Gibbons should not be underrated. His deceptively simple style was a testament to his unselfish attitude to his craft: for him, the narrative was everything, and there was no room for flashiness or for playing the old fan-game of'artist-as-star'. His disciplined approach to panel layouts worked perfectly: 'What we wanted to do with Watchmen', he said in an interview, 'was to make the story the paramount thing, and it seemed to me that if all the pictures were the same size, you'd get the same effect that you'd get in the theatre or at the cinema, or even watching TV. Because the frame or the proscenium arch is always the same, you block it out, and get sucked into the picture that much more quickly.' The success of these comics can be attributed to three factors. Firstly, their quality: both were extremely interesting works in their own way, better by far than most other titles on the shelves. Secondly, Batman was a character that was extremely well known to the general public already (not least through the 1960s TV series), and could be sold on the basis of his 'product awareness rating'. Thirdly, the two titles were repackaged from their original bit-part form into square-bound books, and then marketed as 'graphic novels'.  One of the team, looking a bit past it, tries on his old costume. |