SMAX... that blue guy in TOP 10, right?

[Doc Nebula]

I was surprised.  Leading up to the movie, I saw the guy who was supposed to play Ozymandius and found him completely unconvincing.  But in the film itself, I thought he nailed the part.

I didn't mind the slo mo fight scenes.  I thought they worked pretty well.  Although we seem to have lost track somewhere of the fact that the characters have no super strength and shouldn't be punching holes in stone walls.

I wish they had let Dan be fat, though.   And I just wish they'd kept more of the source material.

The original ending to WATCHMEN is weak and contrived... when the series first came out, there was like six months between issue 11 and issue 12, and in that time, I speculated that what was going to happen was, Ozymandius' scheme was going to actually set off the global war he was trying to prevent (he's contrived to put America and Russia at each other's throats, one minute away from doomsday, and then he sets off a gigantic explosion in New York City?  Are you kidding me?  Tricky Dick is going to hit that button so fast he'll sprain his wrist). 

So I thought the way the book would end is, the only people left alive on the planet are the small group of superheroes gathered at Ozymandias retreat on the South Pole. 

Irony.

Moore's never been much for irony, though.

I hated the fact that the big scene where the group of artists from the island got blown up was left out. 
(Moore stole that scene, like he stole most of WATCHMEN's plot, from WILD CARD by Raymond Hawkey and Roger Bingham, although in WILD CARD it's a planeload of scientists getting shot down to protect the security of a secret government project to fake an alien attack.) 

And a bunch of other stuff.

But, you know, for what it was, it was okay.

[Buster's Uncle]

Hearty agreement with that last sentence.

Am I the only one who clocked Rorschach as the "End is Nigh" guy instantly?  I bet not.  I was looking for Ozzy to turn out to be the bad guy by the forth or fifth issue, too. 

It was a great comic, but hardly perfect, much as we all loved it, and still do.  Rubber costumes and matrix fights for the move, however, were decidedly not an improvement.

I read somewhere someone complaining about Rorschach's hacksaw scene being changed for the movie - as if they could have gotten away with using something Moore blatantly lifted from MAD MAX.

[Doc Nebula]

They could have.  Only you and remember MAD MAX or ROAD WARRIOR these days.  Sad but true.

It was an interesting comic with much to answer for.  It singlehandedly launched the entire "let's do comics that are mini movies" paradigm, and pretty much  heralded the death of expository captions and thought balloons.

Moore's plot was, first,  largely stolen, and second, where he patched it to fit superhero tropes instead of political thriller tropes, nonsensical.  The Keene Police Strike makes no sense in a world where there were never more than a half dozen superheroes at one time, and, when the Police Strike occurs, the only heroes active are Nightowl, Rorschach, and the second Silk Spectre.  But the Keene Police Strike is vital to the way that world unfolds, with its ongoing suspicion and  hatred of masked vigilantes.

I see what Moore was trying to do there, and it would have made sense in the Marvel or DC Universe (not so much in the Charlton Universe, which had much fewer supercharacters).  But Moore's decision to (a) get rid of super powers completely, so as to focus on the characters' humanity, and (b) limit the number of masked heroes drastically, to limit the scope of the comic... really undermined the points he was trying to make about superhero comics in general.

Mostly, though, what WATCHMEN proves is that you simply cannot do grown up superhero comics.  The superhero concept is intrinsically, inherently, essentially, and irretrievably childish... and that's not a bad thing.  For more on this, I refer you to my articles on this subject:

http://martianvision.blogspot.com/2006/07/hey-kids-comics-part-i.html

http://martianvision.blogspot.com/2006/07/hey-kids-comics-part-ii.html

http://martianvision.blogspot.com/2006/07/hey-kids-comics-part-iii.html

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah; are you familiar with The Hooded Utilitarian?  Those guy seem to all come from the Comics Journal school of criticism, and while they often have interesting insights, they, of course, really hate capes.  Within TCJ-approved areas like Kirby and Watchmen that it's okay to like in  those circles, there's some worthwhile reading.  Outside that, the bias is so ubiquitous that they often don't seem to know they're even doing it.

I wonder how those jokers would like something like a really good Indiana Jones comic - all the high adventure and improbable stuff, none of the spandex and superpower fantasies...  They've never talked, that I've seen, about Zot!, which strikes me as a lot closer to Indy than supers, even though it superficially LOOKS like a superhero comic.  I wonder what that circle thinks.

Of course superheroes are infantile - I love 'em anyway.

Internet connection is driving crazy today.

[Doc Nebula]

Short drive.  Interesting scenery.

[Buster's Uncle]

Doing typpoes hurts my driving, too.

[Vishniac]

The superhero concept is intrinsically, inherently, essentially, and irretrievably childish...

No!

Of course superheroes are infantile

No!

(yes, I love peremptory and definitive judgements too)

[Buster's Uncle]

I want to be Superman.  -Or at least for Superman to be real.  Reasonable people can disagree about whether that's a mature fantasy, but it seems obvious.

[JarlWolf]

I want to be Superman.  -Or at least for Superman to be real.  Reasonable people can disagree about whether that's a mature fantasy, but it seems obvious.

I'd rather he not be real and here is why.

He's Kryptonian and a super being that is only countered by Krypton, which is apparently a VERY rare mineral.

And why is this an issue? Superman's costume is Clark Kent. Superman's identity is Superman, his costume, Clark Kent is him trying to fit into humankind and blend. It also represents his opinion of humanity; Clark Kent is a weak, near useless, cowardly individual. And give enough time Superman could become very corrupt: And when that happens and he goes mad with his power what keeps him from conquering Earth and ruling it with an iron fist? And note, there would be people who'd support him to. There is those who would want a god emperor to rule over them. Superman would be too dangerous for the world methinks.

[Buster's Uncle]

Google Superman: Red Son.  Someone tried to write a Superman story for you, though along different lines...

[JarlWolf]

I think a comic that pulled off a "superhuman/superhero" style thing in a mature fashion was V for Vendetta: While it doesn't have magic imbued super hero marvel nonsense, the main character, V, was subject to many horrific genetic experiments and chemical/drug enhancements that basically made him a superhuman in his endurance, strength and agility and he still retained quite an intellect to boot as well.

But V is certainly no hero, or at least not in the traditional sense. He tortures people, kills several people for his revenge (as well as using innocents to further his agenda) and he generally causes chaos and mayhem and instills anarchy. But he's not a villain either, just an anti-hero.

But even so you have a superhero/super anti hero who is in a dystopian fascist regime after a nuclear war, and the storyline deals with quite mature content.

[Buster's Uncle]

That one was good, but good despite me not believing in V, the world he was in, or what he was trying to accomplish.  I think a Russian has got to have a lot better idea than I do of the downside of bringing down the government, even an evil dictatorship, without a plan for how to replace them.  If you think of V as an action version of Yeltsin and speculate about the decade following the story, it kinda ruins the whole thing.

In, fact, forget this post.  It doesn't help to overthink some things.



Yeah; V for Vendetta was pretty great.

[JarlWolf]

I don't see V as a Yeltsin, I hardly see him as a Capitalist at all. But he's no Socialist either.

I am sternly against Fascism and the regime in V for Vendetta was going to collapse no matter what, and it was basically run by cut throat oligarchs and military leaders all out for themselves. The Union's fall was different, the Union wasn't a state run by greed for the most part, only in its last years. Sure it had huge inefficiencies and problems but it wasn't the horrid cesspit Yeltsin turned it into during the 90's.

I didn't mind V, and I think he is just something of the inevitable. I am not a supporter of anarchy though, as I've experienced raw Laissez Faire Capitalism and that's the closest thing you'll get to anarchy without total collapse of a society. I had to literally fight to survive during those years and while I was no innocent even before that time, if I was religious I certainly didn't earn no redemption during those years and if anything, I worsened the amount of stains credited towards me. Those years were horrifying to live in.

[Buster's Uncle]

That's exactly my point, though.  V was purely an anarchist, and no way was England a better place to live for a long time after the story.

A real hero would have had a plan to build something.  Maybe Evey was supposed to - though that would be a real hail mary, on V's part, to assume.

[Buster's Uncle]

Not to say that Mr. Susan and his cronies didn't need killin' - but there are worse things than oppression, and V (and Moore) didn't think that one through.