Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and John Higgins. Watchmen. 1986; New York: DC Comics, 2008. Print.

Watchmen, originally released in 1986 as a series of twelve comic books, is a literate graphic novel. In some ways it had a stock comic book story line, viz., a deluded genius is trying to destroy New York City. Only a few costumed weirdoes and one guy with actual superpowers can thwart him. Only they don’t.

There is also a story line first developed by Stan Lee and Marvel, a kind of subplot involving the psychology of costumed vigilantes. How did they become what they are? How do they relate to other people and to each other?

Some of this is self-conscious satire, satire of the comic “superhero” genre and satire of the American media in general. At the same time Moore and Gibbons develop a mythos about the people who were once “masked adventurers.”

The first generation of adventurers called themselves the Minutemen. As the main tale is set in 1985, some of the original Minutemen have died, and the story opens with the apparent murder of one known as the Comedian. This group of about eight people were all inspired by the Superman comics which first appeared in 1938. By the time that World War II was underway, they had formed the Minuteman alliance.

Much of the comic develops the backstory of the adventurers. All were mere mortals with some kind of athletic ability or skill. A few were killed in action, but most survived and eventually retired. At least one retiree would let his masked persona, the Nite Owl, be carried on by the next generation. One female adventurer and single mother brought up her daughter to be a costumed vigilante as well.

The next generation also formed an alliance calling themselves the Watchmen. Two Watchmen stood out. One, called Dr. Manhattan, actually had superpowers resulting from a nuclear reactor accident. (Nuclear radiation seems to have made more super mutants than anything else…) Indeed, he had become godlike. He could disassemble and reassemble his body like the transporters on Star Trek to travel instantaneously or to change his size. He was aware of faraway activity (even in other galaxies) and also of atomic and subatomic changes. Taking a somewhat Newtonian spin on things, this awareness of subatomic actions gave him the ability to predict the future to some degree. He could also reconfigure molecules to create or dismantle objects. The United States won the Vietnam War thanks to his superpowers.

The Comedian also fought in Vietnam and still celebrated VVN Day, analogous to VE Day and VJ Day in World War II.

The 1985 of Watchmen is different in other ways. Richard Nixon is still President because the term limits were repealed. Gerald Ford is still Vice-President. We are told that Robert Redford is reported to be thinking of running for the office in 1988. Yes, there is alternate history.

Dr. Manhattan has some personal issues—he seems bored on earth. He leaves for Mars with ultimate plans of going to a different galaxy. Since America has lost its super-weapon, the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan and is poised to invade Pakistan.

What sets Watchmen apart and adds to the mythos are the inserts between the “chapters.” (Each chapter represents an issue of the original 1986 comic). These contribute a lot of perspective on the comic tale. A couple are excerpts from the autobiography of one of the retired Minutemen. A few are articles from newspapers and magazines. There is a psychiatric report and a police report on one of the Watchmen who has been arrested and put under observation. Together with the comic, the presentation is creative, perhaps reminiscent of the storytelling techniques of Emily Brontë or Wilkie Collins.

Much of the tale is set in New York City, a much drearier New York than the reality. We get a view of both current events and the popular comics form the perspective of a hawker at a newsstand. Often there is a newsstand patron reading the latest installment of a grisly pirate comic that parallels or foreshadows some of the action of the “real world” of the Watchmen.

Certain images appear which suggest the passage of time, or lack of it, besides Dr. Manhattan’s various superpowers. From time to time we see the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ latest setting on its nuclear Doomsday Clock—how close the world appears to be to nuclear war. Two theaters near the newsstand feature distinctive shows with prophetic titles. One theater is the Utopia which shows film classics and they are advertising The Day the Earth Stood Still. Meanwhile, Madison Square Garden is hosting two eighties headbanger groups: Pale Horse and Krystalnacht. One of the retired Watchmen has made a fortune in perfumes, especially one called Nostalgia. Now he is beginning to market a new one named Millennium.

Anyone who lived through the seventies and eighties might get a little nostalgic at some of the quotations interspersed. There are some from the Bible, some from Bob Dylan, even one from Pink Floyd. One of the costumed crusaders tells a friend that he became a masked vigilante because he had known Kitty Genovese, a New York woman whose murder was witnessed by nearly forty people but no one intervened in any way. That reminded me of some lines from Phil Ochs:

Oh, look outside the window there’s a woman being grabbed;
They’ve dragged her to the bushes, and now she’s being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain,
But Monopoly is so much fun I’d hate to blow the game.

There is also a brief reference in a 1979 review about a new style of music that was a hybrid of reggae and electronic music. The article has no name for this new genre. (For the uninitiated, this humorous reference to the music, first performed at parties in New York City in 1979, describes what would become known as hip-hop or rap.)

As in the Batman and Spiderman comics, a lot of people do not like these vigilantes. As organized crime becomes more sophisticated and then when the police actually go on strike, a Federal law is passed in 1977 outlawing costumed vigilantes. That pretty much puts an end to the Watchmen except for a few occasional appearances. Some like the handsome perfume manufacturer parlay their previous roles into current celebrity. But most simply try to mix in with the rest of the world. Obviously, Dr. Manhattan cannot, so he is kept in a kind of house arrest at a large government research center accompanied by the former Silk Spectre. She is free to come and go since she is otherwise a normal human, but being the only child of one of the original Minutemen, the superhero life is the only one she knows.

This is a wild, clever story with many details, both written and visual, that contribute to its overall effect. It does have, uh, comic book violence and some sex. If it were a film, it would rate at least PG-13 or probably R.

Starting in New York in 1985, Watchmen takes the reader back to 1923 with many stops in between. Geographically, it goes to Washington, Nevada, the Caribbean, Mars, Antarctica, and it is a wild and entertaining ride all the way. Have fun connecting the dots…