Recommendation

[andrewducker]

This is by far the best thing I've ever read about Watchmen.  While I don't, by any means, agree with all of it I still found it to be both well reasoned and written.  If you find criticism interesting and have any interest in comics then I strongly recommend it.

It is long - but it's well worth the journey.

(Oh - and follow the instructions on how to display it best - it definitely reads best that way on a wide-screen monitor.)

Comments

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

But PDF? My inner geek says if he knew anything about comics he'd have made it as a CBR.

[andrewducker]

For text? It would have been massive!

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Ah, but it's not a comic, it's a 'zine. Rilstone definitely knows his stuff about comics - he's written the best stuff about Cerebus I've ever read, and he's pretty good on Lee and Ditko too...

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I posted while it was still downloading...

[nmg.livejournal.com]

I often find myself disagreeing with minor aspects (emphasis on the minor) of Andy Rilstone's writings, but he's still a fan writer that I much admire.

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

I was wondering what you'd say about it. I don't have the contextt to judge it properly, but thought it was illuminating.

[meltie.livejournal.com]

Wow, crikey.

Completely shames me that I knew and saw none of this.

I like that though. I like little views of other worlds, and i'm agog that someone took the time to explain the workings.

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

I am not sure I can take seriously any such deconstruction of Watchmen that pays such loving attention to the contextual world of comics in which it was created, but completely divorces it from the sociological wider-world context (I mean, come on, not even a mention of the audacity of an author in 1986 writing a story that took as its lynchpin the Cold War and never mentioning Ronald Reagan except indirectly with one smartass joke at the end, something the film sadly made more blatant and direct) -- but it was an interesting read.

(I mean, yes, the contextualization of the Comics Industry is important to understand what Moore was so deftly mocking. But the contextualization of history, and the detailed web of which bits and pieces change due to the intervention of the costumed hero fad, is a lot more important, especially looking back now. I get the sense that Rilstone's thesis is more aimed at those who have no comics background, and I can get why he wants to explain that part to n00bs -- but so much of the strength of Watchmen is its identity as an alternate history, and to not even mention that once in an analytical project of this scope seems a bit facile to me. Moore could not have made his points about the superhero genre without that backdrop; to fail to mention this makes the rest of the analysis hollow.)