Not Watching the Watchmen over on RedState.

Warner Todd Huston, my colleague over at RedState, has written something on Alan Moore‘s Watchmen comic series: the fact that it’s titled “Unheroic Superheroes, Watch out for the Watchmen” suggests that he’s not likely to be going to go see the film, to put it mildly (he’s gone into more detail here, although I haven’t read it yet).

I like Alan Moore‘s work a lot more than Warner does – in fact, I think that I have most of it by now – but I will readily enough admit that Warner’s central point is valid: Moore is depressing, cynical, and deeply anti-authority (as distinguished from anti-authoritarian), particularly when they’re conservative authorities. I enjoy it anyway, because of the dark places that lurk in my soul… nah, not really. I enjoy Watchmenbecause Moore also has a good eye for detail in a scene and is exceptionally well versed in the history of our culture (look at his The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for a very lengthy proof of that). In other words, while I see his point, I don’t worry about it as much as he does.

But on the gripping hand… yeah, we went down depressing roads with that, and nothing confirms that as much as Mark Millar’s Wanted, which I finally got around to reading. I don’t know if Millar intended for this to be a searing indictment of the Great Comic Book Reboot of 1986, but that’s what we got: I’ve never seen a more brutal takedown of the entire notion that supervillians were somehow attractive in their own right*.

And there’s your dose of comic culture for the morning. I got a baby to feed.

Moe Lane

*I also don’t know if Millar’s intent with the deathtrap scene was to turn Mr. Rictus into what was in some ways the most tragic character in the series – read it if you want to know how demented that statement is – but he did that, too.