Week 13 - Reconsidering the Superhero

For this week, I decided to read Watchmen, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. This is one of the most celebrated graphic novels of our time. There's a feature film that was released over a decade ago and a new spinoff TV show that was just released on HBO, and I still have yet to read the book/see any of the visual adaptations, until now. I went down to the library, picked up a copy of the story, sat on my couch, and began reading. Now I can definitely see why this book is so universally loved by millions.

Comics and stories about superheroes have been around for nearly a century. They would normally be centered on one individual hero saving the world and stopping crime from dastardly villains. This book, however, goes far and beyond the traditional comic book feel. It seems like this was the story that put superheroes in a realistic setting before movies like The Dark Knight, Logan, and Joker.

The tone of the story is very serious and the world the characters inhabit is dark and dreary. It's stripped of pure spectacle and fun and instead focuses on the troubled and devastating backstories of a group of vigilantes. The plot is very layered and challenging, filled with complex/mature themes, memorable characters, and an explosive finale. It's so layered that I had to go back to multiple pages at the beginning and remind myself of plot points many times in order to fully understand it.

The illustrations effectively and simultaneously capture the aesthetic of noir/detective films and the grand scope of a superhero graphic novel/comic book. It has a very limited color palette (mostly of reds, purples, and yellows) to capture the darker tone of the world. While most comic books try to vary the format/placement of the panels, a good chunk of the pages in this book have nine panels (not exactly sure why; maybe to prevent it from being too flashy?)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 7 - Maus

The Holocaust is never an easy subject to depict in any form of media (books, films, comics, etc). It's always bound to make people uncomfortable with its gruesome imagery and terrifying stories. Of all the Holocaust stories and films I've witnessed, I read one this week that definitely ranks among the top based around the subject. Art Spiegelman's 1980 graphic novel Maus is undoubtedly a masterpiece. A deeply personal and powerful tale of survival and the hardships of family. It tells the story of Spiegelman's father, Vladek, and his experience in/surviving the Holocaust. The story is told in interview format, including Vladek's question responses/story at the bottom of almost every panel. The narrative also goes back and forth between Vladek's past and the present day when Art is interviewing him. This was a great way to pause Vladek's experience in Auschwitz before getting too intense and for the audience to learn more about Art and Vladek's strain
Read more

Week 15 - Stereotypes and Representation REDUX

For this week, I wanted to go back to a graphic novel that I read, and thoroughly enjoyed, in the middle of the year, My Friend Dahmer. I learned a whole lot more about Dahmer and had the chance to see the film for myself. I added a little further commentary on the story/polished it based on further findings. "This week I decided to read  My Friend Dahmer  by Derf Backderf, which I actually had no idea was a graphic novel before it became a film just a few years ago. The book tells the story of the author Derf throughout his last few years in high school and his "friendship" with classmate Jeffrey Dahmer, who later went on to become one of America's most notorious serial killers. Personally there's not a whole lot that stands out about the graphic novel visually. The drawings are fun/get pretty exaggerated at times and it's formatted like a normal graphic novel.  The drawings are rather flat and evoke the look of a bizarre television cartoon. However,  a
Read more