Everyone is writing about the Watchmen. Nerds everywhere are setting their keyboards ablaze. So why shouldn’t I get in on the action? First, a little background. When I was a little kid, back in the 70’s, I enjoyed comic books. I would even draw them. My favorites were the Star Wars comic books that Marvel put out right after the movie. They were weird, they had a giant green bunny-man (look it up), but they were Star Wars and before the age of DVD’s and such they were as good as it got. I remember all the comic books spread across the floor of the station wagon, getting stepped on, having the covers torn off. It was a simpler time.
In my grade school days, I kind of lost interest in comic books. My friends and I like cartoons about robots, movies, R rated HBO movies, VHS tapes, GI Joe, Transformers, prog-rock and heavy metal. Superhero comic books just weren’t that big a deal. They were very peripheral. I can’t remember being terribly interested in them in grade school.
Fast forward to high school (88). I was sitting in class and this kid— a year older than me, which meant he was kind of cool— was showing some other kid a comic book he brought to class. They were really interested in it and I got curious and asked what the big deal was. The guy said the comic was the coolest comic ever. It looked different from any comic I’d ever seen. It was thicker, shinier. It looked dark, subversive. The guy said it was comic book about how Batman, when he got old, made a suit of armor and kicked the shit out of Superman. I was totally intrigued and asked to read it. But the kid said no dice and slipped it back inside a special plastic bag he kept it protected in.
This brief encounter basically altered the course of my life. It wasn’t long before I was buying comics off the rack at the local Thrifty’s and then asking my mom to drop me off at the local comic book store where I’d spend all my paper route money.
I could really escape in those comics. Simple fantasies about power that made you feel powerful. Vivid freeze frame images that could capture my thoughts my imagination. It was like crack. I discovered Jim Lee and had to buy every comic he drew. Soon I had my first special box to hold my comic collection. And then I moved on to the Mylar bags. A collector was born.
One of the first purchases I made was “Havok & Wolverine: Meltdown”. This fully painted book opened my eyes to the more painted comic book art style. Soon I was asking for books by Muth, Bolton, Bolland, Sienkiewicz, McKean, BWS. I was looking for more artistic challenging fare.
I was becoming a comics snob. And then I saw it. A collected Watchmen. Not the trade-paperback, but all of the back issues stuffed into two taped together Mylar bags. No one at the shop had suggested I read it. It was just with all of the other collected mini-series in a bin. It wasn’t even marked up. It was cheap. There was something about the cover that looked cool. The blood. The happy face. At the time, I hadn’t even heard of Alan Moore.
The guy that owned the store was an ignorant silver age aficionado (who eventually hired troubled youths to burn down the store for insurance money). The other people who worked there just liked the popular stuff. I asked if the Watchmen was any good. “It’s alright”. I bought it anyway, seemed like a good deal. If it sucked, it sucked. Well, you know how the rest of the story goes. Alan Moore is a Genius. Watchmen is the Citizen Kane of superhero comics and all is well in the universe.
And now we have a movie.
