Watchmen - Hardcover

Moore, Alan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1401219268 ISBN 13: 9781401219260

Publisher: DC Comics, 2008

Synopsis

Written by Alan Moore Art and cover by Dave Gibbons With a major motion picture in production for release spring 2009 from Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures and director Zack Snyder (300), this is DC Comics first-ever hardcover edition of the Hugo Award-winning epic from writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons, offered at DC s standard trim size. One of the most influential graphic novels of all time and a perennial bestseller, WATCHMEN has only grown in stature since its original publication. This volume features a new cover by Gibbons and contains the high-quality, recolored pages found in WATCHMEN: THE ABSOLUTE EDITION, which were restored by WildStorm FX and original series colorist John Higgins. Also included are selected bonus sketch materials. Advance-solicited; on sale November 12 436 pg, FC, $39.99 US

About this title

Review:

Has any comic been as lauded as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen? Possibly only Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns but Watchmen remains the critics' favourite. 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 recently 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 garner praise since.

The story concerns a group called the Crimebusters and a plot to kill and discredit them. Moore's characterisation 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 fine pace of the writing and its humanity mean that Watchmen more than stands up--it retains its crown as the best the genre has yet produced. --Mark Thwaite

Review:

"A work of ruthless psychological realism, it's a landmark in the graphic novel medium. It would be a masterpiece in any."
-TIME, TIME MAGAZINE's 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present --Time Magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: DC Comics
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1401219268
• ISBN 13: 9781401219260
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 436
• Illustrator: Gibbons Dave