I’ve recently had surgery and, while recuperating, have built up quite the backlog of comics to keep me entertained. Despite my piles of comics that are slowly taking over the living room, my brother handed me his copy of Watchmen and suggested I read it first. So I figure, I have all the time in the world right now. Sure, I’ll give it a try.
I didn’t like it. There wasn’t a single redeeming characteristic to any of the characters, I didn’t like any of the characters, and for over half the series, I wanted to toss the book across the room. The writing is fantastic. The art is great. The story is interesting and I like the crazy twist toward the end. But those characters all need to be punched in the face and toned down at least five notches.
Despite my strong dislike for every single character introduced in the series, I think Watchmen should be required reading. Add it to the list of canon literature that students read in high school. Read it alongside The Scarlet Letter and A Separate Peace. The questions raised throughout the overall story are huge and debatable and they force you to think:
Who is god?
Who plays god?
What does it mean to have limitless power at your fingertips?
What does it mean to know each way the future might turn?
Is predestination, predetermination, really what runs our lives?
Are some lives worth less, or more, than other lives?
Watchmen poses these questions from a staunchly atheistic standpoint. The assumption, by the end of the series, is that there is no higher power to step in and make things right, and that the power to end world war and bring about world peace rests in the hands of a smattering of people who are intellectually elite and therefore know what’s right for everyone.
The entire comic reeks of neoliberal theory and Calvinist thought.
But I still think everyone should read it. If nothing else, you will come away with it feeling extremely uncomfortable with life in general, and I think that’s one of the touchstones of literature: you can’t help thinking while you read it, and you come away from it feeling displaced somehow. Whether you love or hate Watchmen, or even just sort-of-don’t-really-like-it, talk about it. And I mean really talk about it. If you were in the same position as Ozymandius and Dr. Manhattan, what would you do?
The literary canon is full of works that ask those questions mentioned above, and they do so without pictures and with hundreds of pages and plenty of supplementary material instead of strictly dialogue. Watchmen does what literature strives to do in a 12-comic series that, were you to condense strictly the dialogue, may not be more than 50 to 100 pages. I’m all for adding this comic to the canon and making young adults read it. Because when it comes to the question of war and peace, when it comes to the question of mass genocide, shouldn’t the future generations have a lot to say about that?
