An Inch thick, this book is a long but good read from 1987. It has a great story with lots of twists and mysteries. It puts a series of super heroes in their own world in a very realistic setting that is very politically driven taking place during the Cold War in the 1980's referencing actual current events like the Vietnam war.

I recommend this read to anyone who likes a good mystery story. If you only like X-men with big super powers this is not your comic, though there is good action often.

Art 10/10
Story 10/10
Action 8/10
Cool Factor 9.5/10

Stark Raving Sane's Journal. January, 2011:

"Finished reading graphic novel today. Heard good things about it, thought to try reading it. Movie made too, a few years ago, but never watched it. Not much for graphic novels.

"Surprised me, though. Not typical comic book, or even typical novel, filled with loosely-connected and meaningless blood and thunder. No, this more psychological, more emotional than most novels I've read.

"Much more.

"Novel about forcibly retired vigilante superheroes in dystopian 1985 New York, and world is on verge of nuclear World War III. Was full of deeply intricate symbolic meaning, literary and historical allusions, and intelligent visual metaphors and references. Plot incredibly complex, contrasted by numerous parallel story-lines, but all made sense at end. Upon looking over pages again briefly, I notice small visual hints alongside relevant ironic dialogue, revelations in plain sight, but so discreet they avoid notice.

"Must remember to be more observant in future. Pay special attention to news-vendors especially.

"Characters fully developed, well-rounded and believable. Most drowning in inner turmoil. Primary protagonist especially was psychologically fascinating, more so than the others. Led to complex questions about nature of sanity versus insanity and preconceived societal/cultural expectations of heroes, among others, and shattered them. Won't go into detail here. But he is possibly greatest graphic novel hero ever created. Certainly the most interesting.

"Believe entry paints appealing picture. Recommend novel to others who are intrigued by concepts of psychoanalysis or literary symbolism. Is well worth the time, and thoroughly enjoyable.

"And try to remember: nothing is ever hopeless as long as there is life. SRS"

This was chosen as a book club selection and I was excited to try reading a graphic novel. What I have discovered, is that graphic novels are not for me. I kept forgetting to look at the pictures and only read the words and subsequently got lost many times. The plot itself is actually interesting but I had to watch the movie to get back on track and figure out what the heck was happening.

I can definitely respect that this is a great book...just not the type of book that I enjoy.

When the average person thinks of comic books or graphic novels, generally they don't give them the same respect as a piece of literary medium as they would a regular novel. They are often seen as nerdy and childish, due to the superhero based themes, pictures and often times awkward language that must be used. This is unfortunate because the graphic novel is a fantastic medium that blends the visual aspects of television and movies with the detail and depth of the written word.

Watchmen is one such graphic novel that is just a masterpiece in fiction. It is set in a dystopian Cold War dominated America, where superheroes exist but are outlawed and the world is on the brink of nuclear war. With all that is going on in the world of Watchmen, it is really a character study of these flawed heroes who are trying to find meaning in their lives and question their values and beliefs in their quest to do what they feel is right to save the world from destruction.

Amongst all the grim circumstances and events that take place as the world around them is in chaos, there is one chapter that stands out and is truly inspiring. One of the heroes is debating with another, the one who actually does possess supernatural powers unlike the others, over the meaning of life and human existence as she tries to convince him to save the world. He passes off human life as meaningless and less important to him than the complex geography of lifeless Mars or the complexity of the atom. Over the course of the conversation though, he realizes he is wrong, that all life is a miracle; that the impossible circumstances that have to take place for two people to come together and create another life make every life meaningful.

We live in a world where such fantastic occurrences are commonplace and we see everything the same every day that we forget what an incredible world we live in, that everything is miraculous and has meaning. A must read.

Better then the movie by far, amazing read and look into our culture. Each character is a comment on what society is. Every single detail provides something more to the ploy. The split screen stories and subplot all weave together PERFECTLY.

For all those comic-book fans who want something new to read, this is the book i highly recommend, even if you have already read it. I so praise the idea of former superheroes reuniting after one of them gets killed, but if you are new to this novel, I am not going to reveal who was the one that died. Trust me, this will so be worth be your money's worth.

I've been wanting to read this for quite some time. Longer than I even knew they were thinking about making a movie. I've often seen it on the library shelf but decided against picking up this very thick graphic novel. Of course, it took the recent movie to make me actually get up and read it but by then everybody else wanted to read it and I had to add my name to the very long waiting list at the library. Finally it was my turn.

Only a very broad summary can tell the premise of this plot without giving anything anyway and that hardly does the story any justice. A group of costumed heroes worked at thwarting crime during the forties, early fifties but they eventually went out of fashion in the fifties. But another younger, more resourceful group took over in the sixties only to have an act passed in '77 banning vigilantes altogether, except for a select few who worked for the government. This all takes place on an alternate earth where costumed vigilantes are real, Nixon is still President in the '80s (he removed the 2-term rule) and America won the Vietnam War. Now the world finds itself on the brink of World War III as US and Soviet Nuclear weapons are pointed at each other as the USSR starts to attack Asia starting with Afghanistan then Pakistan.

In this setting we have a more personal story of former superheroes, some retired, some still working underground and suddenly, former masked heroes are turning up dead or worse. One currently working costumed vigilante has an idea that someone is picking off former masked heroes and he tries to warn the others but no one really takes him seriously in this political clime of uncertainty.

This is an amazing book! The story is so intricate. Not only are the two main themes going on as described above but each of the superheroes involved carries their own personal subplot as well throughout the series. Amazingly everything ties together and I'm always stunned when a graphic novel can show such depth and intricacies with such limited text. Of all the great books I've read this month this is my favourite so far. Certainly a product of it's time; the eighties fear of nuclear attack from the Soviets, the Cold War, the threat of a third world war and yet somehow things never change. While the "bad guys" are different today, we still have these threats of nuclear arms making headlines today.

I'm really excited to see the movie now. I've purposely avoided any notice of it as I wanted to read the book without any preconceptions. I don't even know who is in the movie and that is why while reading the book I visualized one of the characters as a certain actor. Jon is a science experiment gone wrong and is a big blue muscular naked guy with a circle on his forehead. His voice is distinctly different from the others, unemotional, and I immediately thought of him as a Jaffa, T'ilk to be exact, and I just heard Christopher Judge's deep voice saying that character's voice throughout the novel! It's weird when that happens.

Back to the book, totally engrossing and riveting. I wish I hadn't waited this long. I said this was my favourite book of the month but this is also probably one of the finest graphic novels I've ever read. It is tough, hard and bloody and most definitely one for adults though, so don't go thinking of this is a "comic" and handing it off to the kiddies. Highly recommended!

I know that this novel is haled not only as a great comic book / graphic novel, but also as a classic of literature. It even made Time Magazine's list of top 100 novels. That was why I even started reading it. Don't get me wrong I love comic books / graphic novels, but I really didn't like this one.

Maybe I'm really sheltered, innocent, and all the rest, but this book really put the "graphic" in graphic novel (Part of the point of the story?.... probably...). I started out really liking it and enjoying the story. A little "blood, guts, and gore" doesn't bother me, but this was excessive in my opinion. I realize that it was to make a point, and it really is a great reflection of society, but I found it too disturbing for pleasure reading. It was also too sexually explicit for my tastes.

I understand why people love it, but the details of the story overwhelmed the plot and made it unbearable for me.

No offense meant to anyone who loves it, and I apologize if I've just trashed your favorite book.

Who would have thought a comic book (essentially, a twelve part comic book series) would have such a myriad of thought provoking themes: good vs. evil, morality, good of one vs. good of the many, the incessant attempt of mankind to achieve utopia, and ( I believe) its inevitable failure. I won't ruin the work by going into detail (notice how quickly after the movie's release I read this...because I didn't want anyone to spoil it for me, so I won't spoil it for you), but the tagline from the film "Who will watch the watchmen?" is only the tip of the iceberg as to what social commentary is analysed in Moore's novel. Impressive in its scope, I wish Moore would pen (and certainly there is plenty left to say about it) a second part (Watchmen II????) in this post-911 world; it made me wonder if Veidt's solution would really be much of a solution. OK...sorry...enough said. Simply put...read this book.

I've been in many discussions over the years -- some in classes I was teaching, some over pints in the bar, and still others late at night with people I love -- about what Alan Moore was trying to say with Watchmen, discussions about the meaning of his graphic novel, and I am convinced that the meaning is not what most people think.

Most people I have talked to look at Veidt's mini-Armageddon to bring peace as inherently evil -- and the most monstrous act in a book of monstrous acts. Veidt's act trumps The Comedian's attempted rape of Silk Spectre and the murder of his child in the womb; it trumps Rorschach's punishment of the child killer, his torture of "innocent" informants, and the brutality he delivers onto anyone he happens to see committing a "crime," petty or otherwise; it trumps Dr. Manhattan's personal engagement in the Vietnam War; Veidt's action even seems to trump the not-so-petty criminal activities we see perpetrated by peripheral "criminals" throughout Watchmen.

On the surface, we tend to condemn Veidt's action because of its scale. It's cold and precise and sterile and necessarily takes the lives of "millions of innocent people." We have been indoctrinated from the youngest ages to hate this kind of killing more than any other. Our great monsters are Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, but we somehow find it in our hearts and minds to forgive Truman's nuclear attacks on Japan because they "saved millions of lives," as a young Walter Kovacs (aka Rorschach) writes in an essay about his absent father, defending Nuclear War and the Truman doctrine, albeit at an early age. And if we can forgive Truman's attack (I recognize that some people cannot forgive that attack, but many, many can), why not forgive Veidt? If we can forgive one, we must forgive the other. Sure Veidt killed more people, but he saved more too, and created a utopia out of the chaos.

This discrepancy in our accepted opinions is not lost on Alan Moore; in fact, it is at the core of Watchmen. We see it being played out in dialogue and action by characters from The Comedian to Rorschach, from Ozymandias to Dr. Manhattan, and even in the supporting folk who populate Moore's distopian future.

When faced with this discrepancy and pressed to discover why Veidt's actions continue to rile us, it doesn't take long to uncover a deeper root for our disdain: our need for individuality and Veidt's destruction of the freedom to make our own mistakes.

This realization of our anger at Veidt and why his action is "evil" quickly becomes the accepted meaning of Moore's story: that derailing humanity's ability to choose is the greatest wrong anyone can commit (the secular see this as a fundamental attack on our freedom, while the religious see this as our fundamental gift from God, but they tend to add anger at Veidt for playing God), and that Veidt's utopia will fail because the power of the individual is too great -- it always overcomes.

I disagree.

I don't think Moore considers Veidt's act evil so much as misguided. I am not convinced that Moore believes in good and evil at all. Throughout [book:Watchmen] we are led to see one man as the man who "gets it" and that figure is not Rorschach. Rorschach is a guide, nothing more. Rorschach acts as an Horatio figure, guiding us through the narrative, telling us what to pay attention to, whom to believe, what to see: mostly he is trying to get us to see The Comedian. If the story is anyone's it is The Comedian's. The Comedian is the man who "gets it," and what the amoral Comedian gets is that morality is a construct designed to help us avoid despairing at what Moore believes is the truth: humanity is violent and base; it is ignoble; it is doomed to repeat and repeat and repeat its violence because that is what humanity does best -- violence -- and everything else is playacting. Thus, Veidt's mini-Armageddon is futile, not because of our noble individuality, not because of the strength of our human spirit, but because of the strength of our animal instincts. All those lives were wasted to create a utopia that simply couldn't be.

And Rorschach's journal, slipped through the door of the paper and ready to be printed, is the detonation cap.

[book:Watchmen] may be the most hopeless popular book printed in the last fifty years, and the most truthful. I am continually shocked by its popularity (even if only as a cult phenomenon), but then maybe it is only popular through a quirk of misunderstanding. Then again, it could be popular because people understand it better than they're willing to admit.

If you like dark, twisted, thought provoking, emotion wringing graphic novels, then Watchmen is right up your alley. Buy it. Seriously.

I actually bought the book with great expectations since everyone was saying it was so good and it won all these awards and stuff. So I started reading it, and the story was so good, the artwork so good, that I just got addicted and finished it in 5 days. My favorite character of course is Rorschach. (who's isn't?) The ending was so unexpected and so petrifiyingly stunnung that I was shocked at how it all came together in the end. That's what makes Watchmen a great story. Kudos to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

Who watches the watchmen? Everyone, I say. And plenty who has and will read the visionary "Watchmen". Believe when they say it is not your typical superhero comic book. The vigilantes are for the most part average citizens, donning masks and costumes to bust crimes, yet are unique, individualistic characters. Retire or legislated out, they lead their lives until a tragedy befalls on one and soon the rest. Insightful political and social commentaries interweave the plot that pops out with the spectacular artwork - detailed drawings and contrasting dark and bright colours. And unless you have already been spoilt, you never see what's coming.

A superhero called the Comedian is thrown out the window of his apartment and killed ... murdered. Soon afterwards, another is framed for causing cancer to those he has been in relations with. And the strikes continue, upon the survivors of a superhero group who had called themselves the Crimebusters. Who has discovered their secret identities? How? And why do they want them removed? The threat of a nuclear war, the third World War, lingers, as these not-so-super superheroes struggle to find who has been orchestrating their removal, and the destruction of mankind.

"Watchmen" is nothing that you could presume it could be going in. It's a satire, it's a drama, it's a murder mystery, it's a superhero comic mini-series ... and a landmark in the medium. The artwork is fantastic, and very professionally plotted out to make it easy to read. Colour is used more as an emotional anchor than to distract from what is happening. You'll find here is a fantastic literary achievement, chronicling the later adventures of strong-willed individuals, driven to save humanity from itself. It dishes out psychology-rich, deep-reaching personal profiles of the characters, exploring into what shaped them, what drives them. You come to feel that you are reading an illustrated recording of actual events, accurately portrayed, despite some tall-tale elements. Its believability is as striking as its vivid reflection of reality. "Watchmen" serves as a mirror to better view a world in crisis that we easily glance away from. There is no arguing with the problems which "Watchmen" exposes. It's stark, gritty realism.

Alan Moore (writer of "V For Vendetta" and "Swamp Thing"), and artist Dave Gibbons ("2,000 AD", "Green Lantern") teamed up to make a comic mini-series to prove the industry wasn't just for kids, and that such a comic could be as literary, as meaningful, and as deeply gripping, as any novel. The heroes were loosely based on those of Charlton Comics, but they are fully their own characters. The idea of the book is simple -- what if superheroes were real? What if, in this messed-up world, there were people screwy enough to don silly guises and try to save it? How safe could we be without them? How safe could we be with them?

I was delighted that Amazon sent it to me in mint condition, with the British release cover version as it advertises (the American release cover shows a window breaking and is a far less original first glimpse upon such a powerful book.) "Watchmen" is the first graphic novel to win a Hugo award and earn a spot in Time Magazine's 100 Best Novels. It stands as a work of high cultural influence, a subject of discussion, and a marvel in storytelling. A book to read once, read several times more, hold onto and treasure for a lifetime.

1. great art work
2. great story
3. amazing interweaving of stories
4. all the characters had amazing back stories
5. good ending, didn't see it coming

I finished this a little while ago, and i was kind of left saying to myself........that's it? the ending just leaves you not wanting more, but instead, NEEDING more, because sure, the characters are deep, the action is decent (go rorschach!), but there wasn't a solid story. basically, a hero gets killed, it gets investigated, more heroes get in trouble, and thats it right to the end. investigating. maybe its just because everyone (even the guy at the counter who i bought it from) said: "youre going to be blown away" so i got my hopes up. but i give it three stars because of Rorschach.

Amazing and revolutionary! This is slow to start, but everything comes together... It's realistic enough to convince the reader that the events unfolding are possible.
The excellent artwork by Gibbons complements Moore's wonderful story. I've personally seen people who've never picked up a graphic novel enjoy this book thoroughly. It's the must read of the century!

This graphic novel is intense, intelligent and insightful into the lives of less than stellar and quite seedy superheroes. I cannot wait until the movie comes out next year. Better believe that expectations will be really high. Only downer is that there are so many personalities in this series that it is hard to relate to a specific character. Much easier to identify with better known vigilantes like Batman as most of us have grown up to Bob Kane's vision for close to half a century. Nevertheless, The Watchmen's story-line and awesome animation is a feast for our minds and eyes.

In every official top ten list of graphic novel, this book is bound to appear. But for some reason for me, it doesn't work. Granted, we read and discover more about the emotional and mental road every costumed adventurer travels in becoming and dealing about who they are, in a way rarely seen in other graphics novel. Or University thesis. Alan Moore is a fantastic author, I absolutely love his writing, his twisted-minded borderline psychopath writing. I buy any book with him as an author immediately, no questions ask. But somehow the length of the book (350+ pages) bores me. At one point, I don't want to know about every inner problems of everyone. And adding the repetitive, traditional '9-square-by-page-drawing', specially when today the drawing, the ''mise-en-page'' is so exploded, that results in not being a book I would give first to convince someone to give a try to graphics novel. I might regret saying this one day, but Watchmen would not be in my top ten list right now. Maybe never.

Stop reading this and buy this book now. I can't describe how important it is that you purchase this book, go home and read it. In fact don't even go home. Read it in your car, or if the store has chairs read it there. This is important.
The Watchmen are super, but they aren't heros. They realize that being a superhero is just a great excuse to beat the crap out of people, Anything else I tell you will ruin things.
GO NOW AND START READING!!!!!