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Originally Posted by Rob Instigator
it matters WHEN things are experienced.
I read Watchmen when it came out. It was the densest, most re-readable comic I ever saw. The marriage between the insane art of gibbons, and the dense, literary writing of Moore blew me away and still does. There is nothing better.
I read Dark KNight Returns when it came out. That shit scared me. It has now infiltrated mass consciousness to the point where the pop view of Batman is the one presented by frank miller, which is beside the point of the whole Dark Knight Returns.
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Yes, and yes.
Dark Knight Returns is shit as a Batman summary. It’s awesome as a *possible* future that may or may not ever come to pass.
Anyway, you’re totally right about Watchmen. I read it in my early 20s — after years and years and years of reading Batman and Superman and loving the shit out of both, and loving the escapism of comics. Still, they were a childhood thing (they’re not really anymore), so Watchmen scared me. More than Dark Knight Returns did. Watchmen seemed so bleak and nihilistic (it kind of is!) that I actually gave up on it a couple times before reading it in full, and even then, while I recognized it was good literature, I wasn’t sure I *liked* it.
And I’d been reading “adult” comics — little bit of Sandman, some underground stuff and Moore’s Swamp Thing and V for Vendetta — for a while by this point. But Watchmen unnerved me.
I’ve re-read it twice since then (actually, maybe more than that), and each time it leaves a bigger impression. I don’t think it’s the best graphic novel ever, but I think it’s essential reading, and I actually have some mild affection for some of the characters at this point. Like Veidt, actually, and even Alt-Right vigilante Rorschach, (though he shouldn’t have killed those dogs... that was fucked up).