Watchmen, or, Why I hate Hyper-Realism in Comics

Comics are such a huge media to cover that even I let things slip past me sometimes, especially when you’re talking about the shows and movies that are coming out on a fairly consistent basis. That being said, It has not escaped my attention that 2 properties that I don’t necessarily care for have received shows this year : Watchmen and The Boys. The former isn’t out until late October and I have to clarify that I haven’t watched any of The Boys on Amazon. In fact; this article is to explain why I most likely won’t be watching them unless someone asks me to for the website. This article is to ultimately explain why I don’t care for The Watchmen graphic novel and why I pretty much detest everything about The Boys comics.

The year was 1985, Alan Moore had been doing different books for DC and wanted to do a book starring the Charleston characters.(The Question, Blue Beetle and Captain Atom, primarily.) DC said no and so Moore created his own characters for the story he wanted to tell. The book he wrote was The Watchmen. You’ve probably heard of it, even people who don’t know anything about Comics know about this one. Here’s the main cover that everyone knows :

I mean, if you don’t know this one then you honestly should go read it. If nothing else than from a historical standpoint. It’s been on the Time’s top 100, it’s still considered by many to be the Greatest Graphic Novel of all time. It’s the one that put comics on the map!

And I basically hate it.

Now, I don’t say that lightly, I know that I’m of the minority on this discussion and I would like to clarify something very important before I continue : I’m not trying to sway you on your thoughts about the different comics that I’m about to talk about but I did just want to give a reasoning as to why I don’t like them. I’ve always been the outlier on this subject but I truly believe that comics are a media that should be viewed as an art form. Comics are typically 5 different people coming together to bring you a fantastical story about heroes and villains and the world’s troubles. I just think that there are better options than Watchmen if you’re trying to make that declaration.

Watchmen was basically Alan Moore asking three questions :

“What if our heroes were as broken as we are?”

“What would they do in a real crisis/how would the world react to them?”

“What if the most superpowered being in the world also had no emotions?”

Now, the ones who have written against Watchmen before have just said that Alan Moore was/is insane and overrated and he was just being edgy. I’m not sure that I necessarily agree or disagree with that statement but I also refuse to be that quick to summarize an analysis like what I’ve prepared for you. So let’s get into it.

1. “What if our heroes were as broken as we are?”

Now, if you know anything about me or you’ve read any of my writings then you should already know that I absolutely hate this question. I’m fine with broken and hurt characters working hard to better themselves and the world they live in but you have to understand that The Watchmen is overtly cynical. Sure, there are moments in it that have hopeful connotations but hope isn’t something that should be secondary. Now, you can argue that the sprinkles of hope in a world of cynicism is the entire point of the book and that might be true but to me, the bad outweighs the good in this book. Let’s look at just a few of the heroes :

1. Edward Blake/The Comedian impregnates a Vietnamese woman and is about to just leave her and when she realizes that, she hits him over the head with a beer bottle and then cuts his face with it. He then shoots her. He’s supposedly the one who understands the world the most according to Rorschach and Most assuredly to Moore himself.
2. Walter Kovacs/Rorschach (who is supposedly the moral center of this piece/there isn’t one but I guess he’s the closest) continually brutalizes people to a degree that is typically only seen by the likes of soldiers in war. When we also find out his origin story, he basically became this brutal hero/murderer after he was working a case and found this man with a pair of panties and human remains and proceeded to burn the man alive while discussing the frailty of human existence. “Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and god was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone.” Cheery.
3. Ozymandias Hatches this convoluted scheme to fake an alien invasion to end the cold war and unite the planet. This plan involves killing millions of people in New York City. He’s technically the villain but every stoner who has read too much Nietzsche will tell you that he’s the hero. He never believes he is wrong.
4. Nite-Owl and Silk Spectre are technically supposed to be our “everyman” characters, our protagonists. The only problem is that they’re profoundly boring until the last few issues of the story. Silk Spectre is basically just your average angry girlfriend at worst and she’s an activist who’s given up at best. She doesn’t really add much to the story until her moments on Mars with Dr. Manhattan and admittedly she is the one who convinces him to return to earth. I will give her that but honestly, after finishing the book, Is that even a good thing? She’s also the product of a rape because Alan Moore can’t write an original book without rape. Seriously, unless it featured a major DC Character then it probably has a rape scene in it. Nite-Owl is possibly my least favorite character of the book. He’s the weakest of them emotionally and mentally and is a patsy throughout 95% of the book. The only time that he isn’t is probably the most annoying part of the book. Due to the coming wars and the idea of powerlessness, he can’t perform sexually with Silk Spectre. Yes, this is a serious side story and is the least subtle thing I have ever read.

Now, just real quick, if the point of the book is to appreciate the light and hope of the world while taking the darkness as it comes the just go ahead and think about the things you would need to see/read to counter act that. Maybe the estranged Mother and Daughter of the book get back together and reconcile with each other? Nope. Maybe the anti-hero who is absolutely broken, depressed and soulless will find hope for redemption? Nuh uh. Well at least the greatest being of cosmic power wouldn’t allow Ozymandias to get away with his scheme, would he? Yeah, he totally would.

No, the hope of this series comes from a Conversation that Dr. Manhattan and Silk Spectre have on Mars about how everyone is a “Thermodynamic Miracle” but then he also says that we’re all puppets. So, feel free to make that a hopeful moment with an asterisk next to it.

I hate the core concepts here because it’s hopeless. There is no true moral background to this storyline and the major characters either follow an Epicurean philosophy at best or just have absolutely no care for the betterment of the world at worst.

2. “What would they do in a real crisis/how would the world react to them?”

Alright, so this is the core of why I’m assuming people like this book. They like the realism of it and how it shows the “Heroes” as actual people instead of these idyllic giants of the main DC and Marvel roster. But I have to ask, Why? What’s the real issue with having these ideals to look up to? Why is that an issue for so many people. Why is the Comedian saying “The American Dream came true, you’re looking at it” while shooting rubber bullets and tear gas at a mob considered a classical moment? Because it’s the way people think the world really does work. That’s incredibly sad to me. Watchmen at it’s core is the darkest version of our world and it’s too depressing for me to enjoy. I’m of the opinion that this book has very little place in our modern day world where School Shootings and Sexual Assaults are commonplace. We see this darkness every single day and I just don’t see the necessity for us to take in anymore of it.

I’ve heard multiple fans over the years tell me that they didn’t like the mainstream comics because they weren’t realistic enough and they couldn’t believe in the major characters. Which makes very little sense to me and honestly makes me feel bad for them. They can’t trust in any of these heroes because they have no one to look to that showed them that there are people like this out there. I don’t believe in Wonder Woman because she can bend steel bars with her bare hands, I don’t trust in Spider-Man because he can swing through New York, I don’t look up to Superman because he can fly through the sky and I don’t respect Captain America because he can use his agility and strength to overcome any obstacle in his way. I believe in these characters because even if they couldn’t do all of those things, they still would try.

3. “What if the most superpowered being in the world also had no emotions?”

Dear Lord, here we go. Dr. Manhattan is one of my least favorite characters in Comic Book History and it’s because he’s the most passive person I’ve ever seen. The story paints him as someone who is so above everyone else that he has little to no empathy for them. If you make the argument that he does actually have emotions or at the very least wants to have them then consider this quote while he is literally blowing someone’s head up : “The morality of my activities escapes me.” So…at the absolute best case scenario he has psychopathic tendencies.  That’s a disturbing thought for many reasons but here’s my primary choices :

1. He’s billed as a hero at one point and he doesn’t do a single heroic thing in the book. Every time he even tries to emote, it comes off as him faking and attempting to emulate those around him.
2. The book goes to great lengths to compare him to a god by saying he has the cosmic abilities of a deity and yet, he has no emotion. Now, we can take this one of two ways : A) Moore is saying that no one can be God but God or B) He’s personifying the infamous, “God can neither be all good and all powerful.” which is in my opinion a very simplified way of looking at any deity. Especially when we’re looking at one that supposedly is omniscient.
3. Why is he a Superhero/Part of a team? Now naturally I understand the classical argument would be : “But he was forced by the government.” Ok, how? He has all the power. Just think about the statement before you respond. He is the most powerful being in the world, has no empathy and is apparently under the control of the US Government? I mean, I guess you could say he was doing it protect people but why does he care?

The last question makes me dislike Manhattan the most because I truly don’t understand him as a character because if he has no stake in human life or it’s “Complications” then I don’t understand why he’s even part of the story at all. Why doesn’t he leave the universe sooner?

This all ultimately leads to me saying that I just don’t like how depressing the book is and the fact that it really serves no point. Everything that happens in the first 11 chapters is undone by the decisions in the 12th. The general hopelessness of the idea that a cataclysmic event is the only thing that could bring us together is something that I just don’t want to read anymore.

The greater danger of Watchmen and what really annoys me is that it was successful and thus…gave us many writers and artists who wanted to capture what apparently Moore and Gibbons did in the book. “Wait, comics are adult now. Here we go!” The problem is that no one knew how to do it well. This invited multiple writers in the 90’s to basically come up with the grunge version of comics that nearly shut down the entire industry. I don’t want to name any names but basically you had a bunch of younger guys getting in there trying to make money off the heights of the industry but they didn’t really know how to write compelling stories. So this was a time where everyone was “EEEXXXTTTTRRRRREEEEMMMMEEE!” Seriously, go to your local shop and you can almost always tell a 90’s comic from the rest just because of the cover. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a few gems in there but they’re primarily full of angry, muscle-bound anti-heroes covered in chains and pouches with guns larger than a hummer and girls in skimpy outfits and in incredibly suggestive and exposing poses. This even led to a “Marvel Swimsuit Magazine” which featured multiple Marvel characters in Swimsuits. I’m not saying comics should’ve ended in the 90’s…but I would’ve understood.

Yes, I know that a lot of the 90’s were technically harmless fun that we can now look back on like old yearbook photos but when you mix the mentality that I previously spoke on with the idea that every issue was going to be successful enough to sell millions of copies then you have an issue because you’re setting sales standards that no one can meet. Couple that with gigantic stories that you had to buy 7 issues a month to follow and it’s clear to see why sales were struggling and multiples shops were closing.

Now, this leads to a new modern setting for comics following the early 2000’s. This leads to some of the major comic characters becoming more adult in their stories but they were done by people who knew what they were doing like Brian Michael Bendis, Christopher Priest, Ed Brubaker, Brian Azzarello and Geoff Johns. The problem is that there’s always a bad apple among the bunch and for me, that bad apple is Garth Ennis. Once again, if you like Ennis then more power to you but I just don’t care for his work. He wrote The Punisher as an emotionless psychopath, he wrote a comic with a character called “Arse-Face” and wanted it to be considered a masterpiece and worst of all, he wrote “The Boys.” Now, I will readily admit that I haven’t read all of the them but I read the first two graphic novels and I got the gist of the series main themes which is where I struggle with it as a whole. It paints the heroes as these careless god-like figures who, at best, do whatever they want and at worst, are just flat out evil. The Boys are group of people who want to take all of the superheroes out. I don’t hate the idea of a ragtag group taking on a higher power but it’s very clear that Ennis is mocking most of Marvel and DC here and I just don’t care for that. I don’t even want to get into everything that happens but you wanna talk about hopeless? Whereas Moore is apathetic about hope, Ennis is flat out cruel and to his credit he tells you exactly what you’re getting into early on.

The main character is Hughie and while he and his girlfriend Robin are holding hands and kissing, Hughie proposes to her. When he pulls away to look at her, A-Train(A speedster) rams a villain through her into a wall which killed her instantly and left Hughie holding her severed hands while she was a splattered mess on the wall. A-Train is barely even aware of it happening because he just cares about the cameras on him. This is The Boys. I hate It.

I want to be clear that I don’t hate all books targeted at older audiences. American Vampire, 100 Bullets, Fatale, and Scene Of The Crime are some of my favorite books but none of those books try to tear down anything or anyone. They’re darker stories because the world’s they’re in don’t have heroes to save them and they very clearly have moral centers in their storylines and people that you can root for.

If I had to clearly state one reason why I don’t like these books, It’s because they don’t believe in heroes and openly mock the idea of them. Now you might be thinking “Well, Vance, when was the last time someone in power cared about us?” Well, my friend, I can’t speak to those people but I know that I always try to find the best in people and I always try to find areas where I can improve someone else’s lives. Everyone should and if we stopped worshiping Dr. Manhattan and instead try to emulate Superman or Wonder Woman then maybe, just maybe, we’d start seeing more heroes in our own world.