Watchmen - Softcover

Moore, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1401245250 ISBN 13: 9781401245252

Publisher: DC Comics, 2014

Synopsis

A new TV series based on Watchmen will debut on HBO in 2019 by the creator of Lost, Damon Lindelof

A murder mystery-turned-nationwide conspiracy, WATCHMEN examines the lives of the eponymous superhero team as they seem to decay alongside the ever-darkening America around them. Rorschach, Nite Owl, the Silk Spectre, Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias reunite to investigate who's behind a teammate's murder, but find that the truth may be even more grim than the world they seek to protect.

One of the most influential graphic novels of all time and a perennial bestseller, WATCHMEN is considered a gateway title to the entire graphic storytelling medium. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' seminal story is the benchmark against which all other graphic novels and comic books are judged with an incredible story that chronicles the fall from grace of a group of super-heroes plagued by all-too-human failings.

This edition of WATCHMEN, the groundbreaking series from Alan Moore, the award-winning writer of V FOR VENDETTA and BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE, and Dave Gibbons, the artist of GREEN LANTERN, features the high-quality, recolored pages found in WATCHMEN: THE ABSOLUTE EDITION with sketches, never-before-seen extra bonus materials and a new introduction by Dave Gibbons.

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." --Time Magazine

"Watchmen is peerless." --Rolling Stone

"Remarkable ... the would-be heroes of WATCHMEN have staggeringly complex psychological profiles." --New York Times Book Review

"Groundbreaking." --USA Today

"A masterwork representing the apex of artistry." --Entertainment Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: DC Comics
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1401245250
• ISBN 13: 9781401245252
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448
• Illustrator: Gibbons Dave