Summary

It's no secret that I really really hate the Watchmen comic book. Jason Moses, a good friend, introduced it to me my freshmen year of college and I just didn't like it. Yes, I may be in the minority on this, but regardless. It left me cold, not in the sense that it was Moore's intentions to leave me cold, but that the story deteriorated in on itself, that it got lost within its own ambitions and couldn't find a way out so it pulled the fastest punch it could think of (though this ending was obvious, the clues toward it were sprinkled in later and sometimes felt out of place). The characters want to be rounded, but were flattened in their Technicolor conventions; Moore's desire of vengence and undergrad politcal sprouts overruled any real message that they had; and it just went on and on and on and on and on and on and on, seeming to glorify the fascisim contained within more than the actual questions of watching the watchmen or whatever.

As everyone knows, there's a movie coming out at like the end of this week, and the New Yorker put out a nice little review of it, featuring a passage that ultimatley describes my feelings toward the comic book:

“Watchmen,” like “V for Vendetta,” harbors ambitions of political satire, and,
to be fair, it should meet the needs of any leering nineteen-year-old who
believes that America is ruled by the military-industrial complex, and whose
deepest fear—deeper even than that of meeting a woman who requests intelligent
conversation—is that the Warren Commission may have been right all along. The
problem is that Snyder, following Moore, is so insanely aroused by the look of
vengeance, and by the stylized application of physical power, that the film ends
up twice as fascistic as the forces it wishes to lampoon.

For all I care, people can have their Watchmen, it seems to be the kind of story you love at a certain point unconditionally then outgrow (see: House of Leaves), but, come on, why read that when you have much fuller, much more impactful and important and wonderfully complete graphic novels and comic books like Maus and Blankets? In all, I still think that it's just a dreadful piece and hearing people talk about it incessently, freaking out about it as if it were to be the greatest thing this side of divinity, is getting old and silly.

Also at the New Yorker this week, a couple pieces about dear departed David Foster Wallace. There are plans, rumors brewing, that the segments and notes of his last, unfinished novel are going to be put out sometime next year, which is expected. I bet there's another short story collection in there too.