Saturday, February 14, 2009

Who Watches the Watchmen

As March approaches I'm eagerly looking forward to Watchmen.



Watchmen was a very important comic book series from the 80s that helped comics gain acceptance as being acceptable entertainment for adults.

The comic book is set in a dystopian world in which there is a single superhuman, the god-like Dr. Manhattan.



In this world, superheroes have been outlawed as dangerous vigilantes.



The comic opens with the last remaining mask, Rorschach, investigating a man's murder only to discover that the murdered man was the Comedian, a fellow hero and member of the Watchmen.

There has been some concern about translating the comic to the big screen. I think the concern is justifiable. The comic was a piece of art. A lot of thought went into it's creation. Not just into the story but the artwork, the back up feature, even the layout of the panels. It will be interesting to see how good of a job Zack Snyder has done turning that into a movie.

Those not familiar with the comic book should be aware that many issues, as was common with many comics, featured a "back-up" comic called Tales of the Black Freighter. This pirate comic at first appeared to have nothing to do with the Watchmen story but as things progressed it actually proved to be fairly important. This story won't be included in the movie but will be released separately on DVD on March 24th.



You probably don't need to see it to enjoy Watchmen, otherwise they wouldn't release it two weeks after the movie, but if you enjoy the movie you might want to check it out. Though I may wait until Watchmen comes out on DVD to see if they include Tales of the Black Freighter as a special feature.

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