Watchmen

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• SOON TO BE A FEATURE FILM!
  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.
• In an alternate 1985, superheroes have existed for more than 30 years and have endured the gamut of public opinion--from acceptance to polite disdain to outright hostility. Now someone is killing the second generation of superheroes, and, as the threat of nuclear holocaust looms over a dystopic world, the killer must be found before it's too late. Originally published in 12 separate comic books, which are collected here along with some additional material, this book is perhaps the seminal graphic novel.
• "Rorschach's Journal. October 12th, 1985.: Dog carass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face."
• "A work of ruthless psychological realism, it's a landmark in the graphic novel medium. It would be a masterpiece in any."
• "It's tempting, and entirely possible, to appreciate WATCHMEN solely at a microscopic level, to lose oneself in Moore and Gibbons's multilayered narrative techniques or to unpack their allusions to everything from 'The Threepenny Opera' to the Book of Job to Bob Dylan's 'Desolation Row." But the story of WATCHMEN, carefully plotted and decidedly finite, deserves equally close attention, as its acuteness has not dulled with age."
• 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.
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  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, Amazon.com

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