Who watches the Watchmen?

I finally got Watchmen back from Jackii, so I can write a review on the best comic ever! (Well... you know... there's always Hellsing...)
But first: at the mall today, they had an old-fashioned metal lunchbox with Rorschach on the front. I thought it was kind of funny, so for whatever reason, I opened it--there was a thermos with him on it on the inside too! Awesome!

(Watchmen is a what-if deal if masked heroes from the '40's were real and fighting crime--it was briefly brought back in the mid-sixties, and the story is set in the eighties after the 'masked vigilantes' were outlawed--the story centers around those ex-heroes. Do I really need this here? Does anyone honestly not know about Watchmen?)

Anyways, let me say this. People love the V for Vendetta comic. (I bring this up because Alan Moore created them both.) Frankly, it left me a little cold. The movie, I could get behind, but the book... uh, why'd I buy that again? Cleaning out my room, it just apparently disappeared, and to be honest, I'm not heartbroken. But this... If someone stole my Watchmen comic I'd be pissed. This is a work of art. Everything exists for the story, for juxtaposition, nothing is just hanging there. Down to posters and tags on walls, what's playing on the TV (the clearest example is when [SPOILER!] Dreiberg and Laurie are having sex and the commercial of Veidt is playing in the background) what people are even doing, items in the room--it is all intertwined. To work everything so well and so finely is amazing, even if Alan Moore is a little... kooky. Honestly, while you read it try your best to pay attention to everything--and trust me, that's impossible. Fourteen times later, and you're still noticing new things. For one thing, I finally kind of understand that subplot with the missing author.

Anyways, I'm going to be the jerk who is like, "of course the book was better!" It really was. For one thing, there is not enough Rorschach. You get zero of his back story, which is some serious BS, because to be honest, he's my favorite. The Black Freighter is completely cut out. I don't think Hollis was murdered? And, of course, the squid is gone. But, to be fair, you'd have to be God Himself to make a movie level up at all to the book. God help 'em, the directors tried. Especially with trying to show how Jon views time. (Wonder if the Slaughterhouse-Five movie did it any better, or even attempted to?) I don't agree with--well, a lot of what was shuffled, but let's be honest, it would really be impossible, unless you enjoy movies that are even longer than Gone With the Wind. (Should that be in quotation marks or something?) And, as much as I love this, by hour seven I'd be ready to shoot myself. There's only so much you can take of anything, and the film seems too, for lack of a better word, gaudy, to be able to be coped with for hardly longer than the three it is already. I was ready to jump out by the last half hour. Vidro was getting annoyed because I kept on jiggling my legs and squirming around in my chair in efforts to stave off insanity. Okay, okay, don't add the squid or whatever, just film Rorschach's back story and give it to me. Oh, wait, do change the scene where he kills the guy who stole a little girl and fed her to his dogs. That scene was unnecessary to change.

Problems With Character Changes in Movie
Dreiberg--He was not fat enough. This is honestly the number one complaint among fans. Where was his pot belly? BS, guys.
Veidt--Instead of having Ken-doll good looks, he looked like an odd little Swedish man. You know who he reminds me of? That white-haired guy in the Venture Brothers, the one with the New York accent and wears the white shirt, and he's basically always the short guy with the eye patch? Yeaaah. Definitely. The phrase 'odd bird' comes to mind. Also, his outfit change really annoyed me. I don't know why, but I got PO'd like hell.
Rorschach--Not ugly enough. Everything else was fine, but he just wasn't ugly enough. And, as upset as the end with him made me when I read the book; no matter how hard I tried, I just didn't care in the movie.

Oh, and now that I think of it, the Hiroshima Lovers. Man, I was trying to be fair, but now I just can't stop...

Anyways, things in the book.

If I were to write everything worth mentioning, I'd basically be rewriting the book only without the part where it's good.
Well, the book opens with the murder of Edward Blake, aka The Comedian, ex-'hero'. Anyways. "'Jeez, y'know, that felt good. There don't seem to be many laughs around these days.' 'Well, what do you expect? The Comedian is dead.'" It's not particularly important, but there are a hundred and a million little lines like that that just stick--to me, at least. This isn't Journalism class. I don't have to be objective. : ) Be glad I'm only cutting it down to a few...

"'Somebody has to do it, don't you see? Somebody has to save the world...'" Ah, the line that unintentionally inspired Veidt to do what he did. Again, aside from that, I just like the line. Somebody does have to, but who knows if they exist. Who knows if it can be.

Oh, the scene where Eddie Blake breaks into Moloch's house drunk. You know how up there I said you still notice and realize new things every time you read it, no matter how many times you read it? I get this now. I don't think this was brought up in the movie either, though at this point the only things I remember are how weird Veidt looked and that scene where they shoot the hippie girl in the opening. Oh, and when they implied the Comedian killed JFK. But anyways, warning, book spoiler ahead: Maybe I'm stupid not to have realized this sooner, but Eddie discovered the 'squid'--that's why he got drunk. That's why he was killed. Like, I got that Veidt killed him because he swam onto his secret island or whatever, but it never occurred to me that Veidt killed Eddie because Eddie found out about the squid and what it was for.

"'Was offered Swedish love and French love... but not American love. American love; like Coke in green glass bottles... They don't make it anymore.'" From Rorschach's journal, the love offered is, of course, from prostitutes. There's something I find very poignant about this line from his journal. It's sad, and maybe it's true. But. The very last lines of his journal on that page, too: "'Nothing is hopeless. Not while there's life.'" Sometimes I wonder if Rorschach is really sociopath, which he is must likely to be written off as, or just someone with an iron grip on their emotions. Because sociopaths can imitate feelings, and when he's just Kovacks, he doesn't even try--he's as wooden as the maple tree in the front yard. Cold as ice. Well, not always--when his 'face' is taken away, he becomes enraged and desperate--and as Rorschach, he's obviously feeling hope, and it's hard to imagine someone being deficit of every single emotion... Then, at the end, he is the most upset of them all. And I guess it's obvious he feels he doesn't really exist without his 'face'... So maybe he can only really be human at times when he distances himself most from humanity. Uhm, does that make sense, really? I'm trying my best, here. Man. Now I have 'Shores of California' stuck in my head.

"'Blake understood. Treated it like a joke, but he understood. He saw the cracks in society, saw the little men in masks trying to hold it together... He saw the true face of the twentieth century and chose to become a reflection, a parody of it. No one else saw the joke. That's why he was lonely.'" "'He suits the climate here: The madness, the pointless butchery... As I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such an understanding. Blake's different. He understands perfectly... and he doesn't care.'"

Ah, how Jon views time. I believe I alluded to this in my post about Slaughterhouse-Five. If not, it is exactly how the Tralfamadorians in that book view time. Everything is happening at the very same second forever and ever amen. Forever and ever is really just one second in eternity's great clock, really. Eternity is really that one second though, I guess, so all that proved really was that I suck at metaphors, huh? Uhm but yeah. The reason why that view so sticks with me is because of that British guy in Boston that first told that view of time to me--he said it was from the book Conversations With God. I've been meaning to read it since last October, but I always forget about it when I go to the library or B&N or where ever. So whenever books mention this, I always get excited. So far? Two. Two books have this theory. Haha.

"'I sat on the bed. I looked at the Rorschach blot. I tried to pretend it looked like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn't. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light. But even that is avoiding the real horror. The horror is this: in the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness. We are alone. There is nothing else.'" The Rorschach test becomes a metaphor for death for Rorschach's psychologist. Unsettling, upsetting, alone, but even more so that Kovacs is correct, in this strange way. Sick?

And, actually, as I reread the included pages after that chapter, the short essay entitled 'My Parents', 'written' by Kovacs, I found an interesting point--which, by the way, may lead into a spoiler, so you have been warned--Rorschach likes President Truman, and praises him highly at the very beginning of the book. Kovacs's mother told him as a child (it is written here) that she threw his Father out because he loved Truman, and she did not. But he ends this essay talking about Truman, saying "He dropped the atom bomb on Japan and saved millions of lives because if he hadn't of, then there would have been a lot more war than there was and more people would have been killed. I think it was a good thing to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.'" Ah? And keep in mind the ending of the book--so upset and in such despair that he had Jon kill him. I think maybe it's an idea that you can think and say you follow, but deep in your heart you know if it happens you could never believe in it, or put your entire stock in it, or when it does happen you hate it and are disgusted by it even. You know? Maybe?

"'"End of the world" does the concept no justice. The world's present would end. Its future, immeasurably vaster, would also vanish. Even our past would be cancelled. Our struggle from the primal ooze, every childbirth, every personal sacrifice rendered meaningless, leading only to dust, tossed on the void-winds. Save for Richard Nixon, whose name adorns a plaque on the moon, no human vestige would remain. Ruins become sand, sand blows away... All our richness and color and beauty would be lost... as if had never been.'"If I could count the times this sentiment has been spoken of, going all the way back to Animorphs... Well, it is truth. I guess this really would be of the 'no truer words have ever been spoken' category. It could also be considered end of time, I guess, since time and free will appear to be entirely human inventions. Oh dear, I've gone and depressed Emma...

"I did it thirty-five minutes ago."

....

"I did it. I did it!"
This scene described and the scene when the squid 'lands' and the aftermath is what sold me. Mookie talked quite extensively about it in a panel of his I attended at my second Connecticon... I think it was something like "Making memorable heroes and villains"? But yes. As sick as it is, those scenes were what drew me.

"'Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.'" Poor Rorschach.

"'Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.'"

The end makes me nervous, as I believe it was intended to do. Whenever I read a comic I find myself adopting patterns of speech and thought, and I guess it's true again. Guess.

Anyways, this is a damned good book. Much better than the V for Vendetta comic. Better than most 'real' books. Five out of five, Alan Moore's a genius.