Comments on Invisible Lizard's Unusual Oranges: Watchmen

Interesting review. The guy can string together a...

2009-03-14T06:26:00.000-05:00

Interesting review. The guy can string together a pretty sentence, I'll give him that much. He's a good writer, which I can always appreciate. I might check out his fiction despite his bile-dribbling on a story I love and a film I enjoyed.

On that note: it's clear he either has not read the original graphic novel and/or is simply not a fan. Not every movie made is going to appeal to everybody who watches it, and this one is no exception. It will have its detractors, some of them better editorialists than others. But a couple lines in his treatise stand out as particularly preachy:

What =Watchmen= needed was a director who could reinvent the comic, not just transpose it...

Really? Was that what it needed? I don't think so. It's a tribute to the fans who love the comic while at the same time trying to reel in a demographic as-yet un-introduced. It's not a large demographic. Shepard probably hits that nail on the head, but I don't fault the film for trying to appeal to that group. Who else was it going to appeal to? Soccer moms? Retired baby boomers? Fantasy/Sci-Fi writers? Clearly not.

Despite a few scenes that work and some striking visuals, =Watchman= fails on almost every level...

Really? Almost every level? That's harsh, dude. Harsh. While I'll admit it has some failings, I think it succeeds on many more than not. However if you go in looking for failings, then perhaps that's all you'll see.

Your down-the-street neighbor/writer's opinions aside, I think you'd like the graphic novel, if you have any stomach for the medium at all. We never touched on the subject previously, so I don't know if you're a fan of that style of story-telling. Thus I say that with the requisite caveat emptor attached. If you know of a library nearby (ha ha) I might suggest you check it out.

Personally, I left actual "comic books" behind with puberty, but much later in life I've discovered a treasure-trove in the graphic novel form. Does that make me an "adult clinging to (my) adolescence"? I hardly think so. There are some very smart people doing very good work in this field. There are stories to be told that benefit from a visual additive, and there are some really good artists pairing up with good writers to tell them.

They aren't all superhero novels, either, by the way. Sure, the form evolved from its "Amazing Adventures of Super Wonder Person with Powers Beyond Belief!" ragtag cousins, but you don't have to look far and wide to find really serious stories told in drawn panels across a page. I don't consider Watchmen to be a superhero story, either. That's one of my few beefs with the movie, but I let it go and decided to enjoy it anyway.

I can't argue that Time Magazine was "throwing the geeks a bone" when it awarded this novel a place on its top 100 list - seems a conflict of interest as the parent company owned the rights, or thought they did - but they certainly chose a good representative of the form's growing artistry in a field dominated by simple print since the invention of paper. I seriously doubt you could find "a hundred better novels written by authors whose surnames start with the letter Z" but if you were close-minded to the medium you'd have no trouble at all cutting it from that top 100 list and finding something else equally grand to fill in.

The graphic novel gets short shrift by people who clearly think it's an inferior form of literature, probably not even worthy of being associated with real literature at all. It can't be etched out solo by a lonely guy with a typewriter (probably with a bottle of scotch somewhere in the poorly lit room where it's always raining), thus not worthy of serious attention.

But I like to keep a more open mind. There's more out there to discover than is dreamt of in a single philosophy (to paraphrase the bard) and I like to see what else is out there. As a graphic novel, Watchmen is superb. As a movie it works. I'll save my own bile-dribbling for movies that don't.

Well, not having seen the flick nor ever having re...

2009-03-13T22:02:00.000-05:00

Well, not having seen the flick nor ever having read the comic book, I can't judge it, but I did get a kick out of the writer Lucius Shepard's critique of it, which can be summed up in his one word comment, "Swatchmen."

To read the full review and ensuing commentary, check out the blog:
http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/454248.html

By the way, Shepard's one of my favorite writers. His latest novella - Vacancy - won this year's Shirley Jackson Award. It shipped to distributors a few days ago. I'm not sure if it's on the shelves yet, but if you're checking him out for the first time, I recommend The Best Of Lucius Shepard - especially for the story "The Jaguar Hunter." (He's also the guy who wrote Life During Wartime.)

And he lives right down the street from me!

Merci

PS - Apologies in advance if this posts twice - I'm having some Friday the 13th interference.

So true. He's a dick but an uncompromising genius...

2009-03-10T06:47:00.000-05:00

So true. He's a dick but an uncompromising genius, the Rorschach of the graphic novel community (if you will).

Miller, on the other hand, I can't even speculate on what he's thinking. Now he's a director?

Moore may be a dick, but I can respect where his p...

2009-03-09T22:42:00.000-05:00

Moore may be a dick, but I can respect where his principles lie. Unlike, say, Frank Miller...

Exactly. He removed the WTF? factor from t...

2009-03-08T06:24:00.000-05:00

Exactly. He removed the WTF? factor from the ending - which isn't a knock on the graphic novel but certainly something that might only work in the comic - and still stayed true to the central theme.

I've read that some people are pissed that he took the Black Freighter piece out. But that would have seriously detracted from the flow of the movie. In the comic, you can read two story lines at once and go back and forth between pages to recap where you were. You can't do that in a movie theater. It think filming it as a separate piece to be distributed alongside was the visual equivalent of that Moore did in the graphic novel.

I don't really think Snyder could have done much b...

2009-03-07T20:21:00.000-05:00

I don't really think Snyder could have done much better with adapting this. While there are a lot of people upset about the changes to the specifics of things at the end, they did a good job of making something far less confusing but still fitting what was needed. (Not exactly easy to discuss without spoiling anything for people who haven't seen or read yet, but you know what I'm trying to say...I hope.)