Watchmen

Like everyone else and their brother, I too went looking for the Watchmen novel after I saw the preview during The Dark Knight. Unfortunately for me I had to wait a week for any of our bookstores to have it in stock. (Damn you other shoppers!)

I'm not gonna lie, this one took me a bit to get into. It's a graphic novel, not a regular novel, and as such requires a slower read and a little more patience.

But it is SO worth it.

I actually didn't realize this until I visited the Watchmen movie blog, but the artist used a different color palette than is normal for a graphic novel. Usually it's primary colors like red, blue, yellow. This artist used a lot of purples, greens, and browns. It was very pleasing to the eye. The art was excellent. Detailed, richly drawn, and just real.

The random text excerpts from confidential files, character-published books, interviews, and private letters were a pleasant surprise. I don't read a lot of comics but it's something I've personally never seen in a graphic novel, and it worked really well. It complimented the already awesome character and plot development.

And the plot is ossim, BTW. Expertly woven, really makes you think. This novel reminded me of why I became a writer in the first place. Not only was I entertained but I came away from it feeling like I'd somehow improved myself just by reading the thing.

On the characters themselves:

The depth of the entire cast blew me away. These were not your traditional super heroes, not even your traditional characters, period. They were complicated beings with histories so interesting and conflicted they were like honest to God real people. And the fact that this guy did it in only one novel is impressive beyond words. It seriously challenged my views of typical characters in any medium, and it's something I now plan to play with in my own writing.

I'm not going to go character by character, mostly because I'm lazy and also you should just go read it for yourself, but I will say that Rorschach is a head trip. I'm loosely dubbing him an anti-hero, but he really needs his own archtype. I will also say that Sally Jupiter rocks my socks off.

Anyway, I can't stress to you enough the urgency with which you need to get yourself to a bookstore. BUY. IT. I've started pestering my friends to read it. Hell, if it was a few bucks cheaper I'd just buy it for them myself so they won't have any excuses.

Also, keep checking back to this site for movie updates. They post new things on the 6th of each month. The videos are especially good (though I had to view them in QuickTime, because for some reason they kept blipping on me in Windows Media Player). And, once you've read the novel, you can *squee!* with me at how they took scenes directly from the novel and put them in the movie! To quote a random YouTube reviewer, "I'm so excited I could just pee."

Quote of the day:

(Cursed)
Joanie: I'm not going to kill her. I'm just gonna rip her to shreds and let her choke on her own blood... and then maybe I'll eat her.


~Sass~