![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It's early fun!
Nov. 27th, 2007 03:05 pmNormally, I would have saved this for Friday, but I'm betting I won't have time to post it then, so you get your fun today! This is a link that's gone around a lot, but I finally got around to checking it out today, so....
I'm sure many of you are familiar (by reputation, if nothing else) with a little drawn book put out in 1986-7 that went by the name of Watchmen, written by well-known Swamp Thing scribe Alan Moore and equally well-known Green Lantern, et al, artist Dave Gibbons. (Yes, the aforementioned was a bit of humor, but that's what they were mainly known in the US for at the time!) The book is a brilliant and intricate piece of work that fired a shot heard 'round the comics and pop culture world, one that still resonates today. (If you don't believe me, see the first season of Heroes. This year, of course, they're more intocribbingbeing influenced by O'Neil/Adams Batman stories. Good stuff.)
One of the remarkable things about the story was that, in addition to its main thrust, it contained a number of seemingly at best tangentially related stories, all of which wind up having either a direct bearing on the climax or thematically illuminating the larger story. The last is best exemplified by the "Tales From the Black Freighter," a comic book inside the world of the novel. (The idea being that since that world really did have superheroes, comics would look to other genres for inspiration--in this case, the very Mooreian "pirate" genre. In fact, the entire idea is pretty Mooreian.) Read by a minor character, bits and pieces of the story were doled out to us, with and without art, over the course of most of the chapters. An open question has been whether the Black Freighter story (which acquires much resonance from the larger climax of the novel) would read like a coherent comic book if put together in one piece. Well, someone's decided to do just that, and, after reading it, I am even more impressed with Moore's scripting. In fact, divorced from the greater context, a new thought occurs to me that he's actually parodying himself and his sometimes overly literary Swamp Thing (but well-loved) as well as just giving us a thematic parable. Hmm. Interesting.
Anyway, go, look! I will warn you that though there are no direct spoilers for the larger story of Watchmen therein, it's impossible to get away from the thematic ideas. If you haven't read the book (and you should, really) and you want to remain completely unspoiled, you might want to give it a miss. I...should also warn you that it might be slightly disturbing and is a bit gruesome. (Related: I read a rumor this morning that a TotBF short is being produced as a companion to the *shudder* Watchmen movie. Hmm.)
I'm sure many of you are familiar (by reputation, if nothing else) with a little drawn book put out in 1986-7 that went by the name of Watchmen, written by well-known Swamp Thing scribe Alan Moore and equally well-known Green Lantern, et al, artist Dave Gibbons. (Yes, the aforementioned was a bit of humor, but that's what they were mainly known in the US for at the time!) The book is a brilliant and intricate piece of work that fired a shot heard 'round the comics and pop culture world, one that still resonates today. (If you don't believe me, see the first season of Heroes. This year, of course, they're more into
One of the remarkable things about the story was that, in addition to its main thrust, it contained a number of seemingly at best tangentially related stories, all of which wind up having either a direct bearing on the climax or thematically illuminating the larger story. The last is best exemplified by the "Tales From the Black Freighter," a comic book inside the world of the novel. (The idea being that since that world really did have superheroes, comics would look to other genres for inspiration--in this case, the very Mooreian "pirate" genre. In fact, the entire idea is pretty Mooreian.) Read by a minor character, bits and pieces of the story were doled out to us, with and without art, over the course of most of the chapters. An open question has been whether the Black Freighter story (which acquires much resonance from the larger climax of the novel) would read like a coherent comic book if put together in one piece. Well, someone's decided to do just that, and, after reading it, I am even more impressed with Moore's scripting. In fact, divorced from the greater context, a new thought occurs to me that he's actually parodying himself and his sometimes overly literary Swamp Thing (but well-loved) as well as just giving us a thematic parable. Hmm. Interesting.
Anyway, go, look! I will warn you that though there are no direct spoilers for the larger story of Watchmen therein, it's impossible to get away from the thematic ideas. If you haven't read the book (and you should, really) and you want to remain completely unspoiled, you might want to give it a miss. I...should also warn you that it might be slightly disturbing and is a bit gruesome. (Related: I read a rumor this morning that a TotBF short is being produced as a companion to the *shudder* Watchmen movie. Hmm.)
