As I see it, part of the art of being a hero is knowing when you don't need to be one anymore.

Watchmen by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Watchmen is about a group of erstwhile superheroes who are targeted in a conspiracy by an unknown foe. We pick up the trail of a murdered superhero with Rorschach, the only one in the superhero crew who seems to still be out and about. He tries to rally the rest of the group and make them aware of the imminent danger, but he's mostly ignored or ridiculed by his former peers. The Comedian is the one who was murdered in the opening scene. Other superheroes in the group include Doctor Manhattan (aka Jon Osterman), Dan Dreiberg (formerly Nite Owl, version 2.0), Laurie Juspeczyk (second Silk Spectre), and Adrian Veidt (formerly Ozymandias). Only Doctor Manhattan has actual superpowers (garnered, of course, like all good super powers, from a lab accident). Some people love each other (Jon and Laurie, Laurie and Dan, Jon and Laurie again), some people are deeply ostracized and low-key brutalized (Rorschach) and some people turn out to be not so much super heros as super villains (ahem, looking at you Adrian). According to the interwebs, I was supposed to realize this was an alternate reality where we won the Vietnam War and Watergate never happened (I noticed one weird comment about 'winning the war' that I thought was odd but I did not feel this was clear). In the end, the rest of the crew finally wises up and listens to Rorschach, but they are too late to stop Adrian's evil/sort of not evil plan where he blows up like a gazillion people to distract the US and Russia from fighting and thereby "avoids" World War III.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

I wanted to like this book. 

I did not like this book. 

Again, I don't feel like I got a lot of what I was supposed to get. Some of that may have been temporal distance from when it was published (1986-1987) but I feel like some of it was just classic smart white guy "I'm gonna talk in this weird esoteric space and expect you to follow my line of thinking" nonsense. You know, Joyce-ian. Pynchon-ian. Vomitorious. 

Anyway, it was fun and a new experience for me to read a full-length graphic novel. Here's a list of things I liked (and ones I didn't): 

Liked
- That at least some (one) of the superheroes were ladies
- Rorschach's super cool and scary face (see right)
- The nuance of the storyline

Did not like
- That while it read as subversive or irreverent in places, it didn't stand up for things I think have clear moral 'right' and 'wrong'. (Ex - The Comedian tried to rape Laurie's mom back in the day, but eventually the storyline comes down in this place that's like, oh, but it's okay, it was a really long time ago, and maybe she wanted him to do it, a little bit. WHICH IS SO COMPLETELY NOT OKAY. Blame the victim narrative is never acceptable.)
- Graphic, depressing violence - it was just kind of brutal and hard to read. And it didn't feel like it was grounded in reason - I didn't see the necessity for it, it just felt arbitrary and extreme.
- Weird, "the world is awful and morally bankrupt" vibe from Rorschach, which felt like it was also what the author(s) felt. It had a real 'holier-than-thou' (and slightly racist) feel to me. (Ex: 

The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. charming, right? ;)

- The only female superhero still has a ridiculous body shape and preposterously sexified costume. 

Sooooo yeah. By all means, feel free to read and generate your own opinion - it would appear I am deeply in the minority in not having been wowed by this book TIME called "one of the best English language novels published since 1923". 

I'll leave you with one of the lines I did like, which is apparently a common translation of a quote from Juvenal - "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" or...

Who watches the watchmen? 

Moving on to more wonderful words! Here's hoping the next one resonates a bit more with me.