WATCHMEN

Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons: OMG I loved this. I’m kind of embarrassed how much I loved it. It had been lying around our apartment ever since July, when we rescued it from A’s childhood bedroom at his house in Indiana, where it had been lying around for 10 years or so. With the movie adaptation imminent, I finally got around to picking it up and…wow. It actually became a problem for me, because I would read it in the morning while eating breakfast, get sucked in, and be late for work; then I’d read it at night before bed, get sucked in, and stay up too late. Sometimes the violence made me a little woozy, and I got a little weary of the pirate comic that serves as a counterpoint to the main plot, but I loved the story, I loved the writing, I even loved the scary, fucked-up characters. And then I saw the movie and loved that too. (Sure, there’s no way it could hold a candle to such a masterfully written book, and it certainly wasn’t perfect as a film—I didn’t like the way it unnecessarily jacked up the gore, which there was plenty of in the book already—but most of it was so spot-on perfect, especially Jackie Earl Haley’s amazing performance as Rorschach, and it took me right back into that world I’d been happily absorbed in while reading the book.) Even though I dig superheroes, I’d never been much of a comic-book reader before now; my linear brain clung stubbornly to traditional text-only books, and while I’ve been reluctantly addicted to the Buffy Season 8 comics, I secretly wish Joss Whedon and the cast could just reunite to act them out for me. But now The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is on my nightstand and I’m contemplating seeing Watchmen again, in IMAX this time. Apparently, I am suddenly a late-blooming fangirl.