Watchmen

"Dog carcass in alley this morning. Tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face."

Released in 1986, written by Alan Moore, and designed by Dave Gibbons, the graphic novel pushed the boundaries of what many would have dismissed as standard brainless reactionary comics, and presented a thoughtful, bleak and frankly terrifying alternate world, in which superheroes and villains are a standard affair (despite their eventual decline in popularity, leaving the public branding them as nothing more than masked criminals), the Vietnam War was won by the United States, and the Cold War is dangerously close to escalating into nuclear exchange.

The story takes place in 1985, and follows a group of outcast superheroes known as the Watchmen, and their struggle to prevent the US going to war with the Soviet Union, as well as investigating the sudden uprising of "mask-killers", following the supposed murder of their colleague, Edward Blake.

The structure of the novel is broken into segments in which exposition on the characters and this alternate history is detailed; for example, we learn about how the superhero craze began with the first Nite Owl and the Minutemen. Whilst it fleshes out the story rather effectively, it can be jarring to be suddenly taken out of the main plot line and forced to read more back story, or in some cases, The Tales of the Black Freighter, a pirate comic which was actually a story Moore and Gibbons wanted to work on, but thought of integrating it with Watchmen instead. I have to note that the art style in the Black Freighter sections is fantastically lurid and reminiscent of the older colouring style of comics, mainly half tone patterns.

The main graphic novel's style is typical 1980s DC fashion, with large areas filled with a singular colour, "flats", as they are often known as. The colourist, John Higgins, did a brilliant job in keeping the colours subtle yet complimentary to each other, so there is no gaudy clashing with tones.

Overall, I think that this graphic novel may be one of the most important and innovative of its kind, and paved the way for sequential art and story telling for many years to come. It truly is a work of art, and I highly recommend you pick it up.

Oh and also, the Zack Snyder film? It has nothing at all on this.