I've geeked out on Watchmen for too long now and I'm sure my handful of readers are sick of indulging me. I'll try to make this the last post on the subject.

I got the book back out tonight and looked through it again. It's really even better than I remembered. Seeing those panels and reading those words again really brought back how much I enjoyed that book the first time I read it a few years ago.

With all this focus on Alan Moore, I hadn't thought about the art of Dave Gibbons and how important it is to the impact of the book. Flipping through the book tonight I was struck by so many things I'd forgotten, like all the symmetry in the panels of the issue that focuses on Rorschach's origins. And how good Tales of the Black Freighter is. And I'd forgotten that, in the comic, Ozymandias seems like an authority figure instead of a nerd. Matthew Goode was all wrong for the role. They may as well have cast Macaulay Culkin as to case Goode.

While watching the film I'd had this vague impression that Rorschach's origins had been toned down and cleaned up for mass consumption, but I couldn't really put my finger on what was missing. I found it tonight. It's this speech, Rorschach's summary of his world view:

"The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reasons later. Born from oblivion, bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. Existence is random. Has no pattern, save what we imagine after staring ait it for too long. No meaning, save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children, not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us."

Yeah, that Rorschach ... always clowning around. God (or whatever) bless him. As bleak as he was in the movie, the real thing is so much bleaker. Gotta love it. And I gotta give Alan Moore his propers, too. Maybe he is a putz who takes himself too seriously and rains on everyone's parade ... but Watchmen really is absorbing and intense.

Labels: Books, Movies, Watchmen