Watchmen is arguably the most important comic book series ever published. There are a (small) number of other books that are (arguably) better, but Watchmen is the one that made the non comic book world stand up and take notice. Other books would not have gotten the notice they did if Watchmen hadn’t made people look. And in a industry where books a month old are forgotten and pretty much worthless, Watchmen has been a best seller for 25 years. Buy why should you own it?

If you started in comic book after Watchmen, it’s almost impossible to describe the industry beforehand. The entire industry was aimed at 12 year olds (even though it was mostly 20 somethings that read the books) and silly, almost forgettable stories ruled the day. There were pockets of brightness that popped up from time to time, but it wasn’t a great place to tell a story. Then Watchmen came along. The basic story came from Alan Moore, when he asked DC if he could do a story with the Charlton characters they had just bought. These characters (such as Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, The Question, etc.) were published for only a few years in the 1960s before poor sales doomed then. But Charlton editor (and now DC Comics executive) Dick Giordano thought they could play a part in DC comics. After hearing Moore’s pitch, DC recognized that the story would pretty much destroy any chance of bring the characters back into mainstream DC comics, so they told Moore to derive new characters and tell his story.

Not burdened by any back story or limitations of characters that had to continue existing, Moore went wild. Inspired by Harvey Kurtzman and Robert Mayer, Moore decides to rip apart the modern day superhero and show them as if they were real He and co-creator Dave Gibbons decided not to tell another big super fight, but to redefine what a superhero comic was. One of the first things you notice is the art work. Gibbons has nice clean technique and decided to simplify the storytelling. He used a basic 9 panel layout throughout the entire series. The restriction forced Gibbons to do more within the panels then with the panel layout and set the artistic tone for the entire series.

Moore then not only created new heroes, but a created a couple generations of heroes. A murder mystery starts off our story, as one of the original heroes is killed in his apartment (well technically he was killed when he hit the street outside his apartment). One of the few superheros still working starts investigating and his imagination leads him to believe that there is a larger conspiracy. Unknown to him, there is indeed a larger conspiracy that will save (or destroy) the world. There are plenty of people who have complaints about the basic plot (especially then ending), but Moore was never big on plot. He uses plot to pull apart his characters.

In the past, a group of superheros formed in the 1930s and after a brief heyday, petered out by the 1940s. As new heroes start popping up in the 1960s, a real super hero is created. His mere presence has changed the political (and social) world and many people believe that the current situation will lead to destruction. By the mid 1970s, police strikes have forced the government to ban superheros. All remaining heroes have either retired or are working for the government, except for Rorschach. Rorschach’s is an ultra-right wing detective who isn’t always sane or stable. His investigation wheels to be put into motion and the true conspiracies starts other wheels going. These two tracks lead to an Antarctic showdown where the fate of the world rests on a group of people who wanted nothing more than to put on spandex and beat up bad guys.

Alan Moore has dissected the superhero and laid him (and her) bare. He has shown the silliness and depravity that goes along with putting on a costume and beating up bad guys. We have several characters that have sexual elements to their powers. We have people who don’t want to grow up. We have people who don’t know what else to do. And we have people who are scared of the future and only know how to look back to the past.

And we must mention more about the art. While most superhero comics only show you what’s necessary, Moore and Gibbons have taken a page from Kurtzman’s Mad Magazine stories and overloaded the art with a bunch of background details that add to the story and make a much richer experience. Everytime I read the book, I find more and more things to view. This is not a book that can be read only once. This is a masterpiece that must be examined panel by panel and pulled apart to see how tightly it was put together.

Time Magazine listed Watchmen as the only comic in the top 100 novels and it’s easy to see why. Without Watchmen, many later works would not have existed or received the publicity or mainstream acceptance that they have. Highly Recommended.