Watchmen

Who watches the watchmen?

For the record:

• Writer : Alan Moore


• Illustrator : Dave Gibbons

A colleague has lent me that "graphical novel", supposedly one of the best, at least a cornerstone, graphical novel of the american comics history. So I've put my current book aside (Emma), and read this one.
The very first thing that comes through my mind is this : "Who watches the watchmen?": I've seen this sentence several times in my life (The first time, that was in the game "Gryzor", on my CPC 6128: does anyone remember that or am I the only old geek around?), and never connected it with anything. Now, that sentence will be connected with this comic.

My impressions about this book are ambiguous:

• On one end, I can see that this book tries to achieve some grand scheme, introducing many characters, placing them in a history too big for them, with a global situation on the brink of bursting; it tries to tackle the subject of human super-heroes from more than one viewpoint; graphically, it is littered with recurrent schemes, gimmicks, there is a comic inside the comic, and additionnal material (book extract, police files...) is added between the chapters
• and, on the other end, it is somewhat difficult to read (alternating on several pages a panel of the main story and a panel of the pirate story, with text intertwined... come on...), over-abundance of symbols kills the effect, you do not really get to relate to the characters (the big one, Adrian Veidt, is never really focused on before the end), and the end comes so unexpectedly it's puzzling... I'm coming out of this reading with the sensation that the plot has not been controlled from the beginning; and the first thing I read is a story!

On the minus side, I didn't like the style but then, I am more a manga person than a comic one, so I won't count this one.

Overall, I expected more from such a prized book, and I think too much expectations kinda killed it for me. Reading it is sometimes painful, and it shouldn't. I feel like if I read it another time, I would enjoy it much, understanding the cross-references hidden everywhere but, as I wrote, too much is too much, and I do not have the courage. Pity. Back to Jane Austen's "Emma" now.