Book Bearings
Watchmen
- 421 pages · about 7 hours
- First published 1986
- 43 editions
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1 About this book
Watchmen is a graphic novel written by Alan Moore, drawn by Dave Gibbons and colored by John Higgins, first published as a twelve-issue comic series in 1986 and 1987. It is set in an alternative 1985 in which costumed crime-fighters have been part of American life since the late 1930s and have changed the course of history: the United States won the Vietnam War, and Richard Nixon is still president. When a former government-sponsored hero known as the Comedian is murdered in New York, the vigilante Rorschach suspects a plot against costumed adventurers and starts to investigate.
- Comics & graphic novels, science fiction
- Crimes against
- Comics & graphic novels, crime & mystery
- Science fiction
- Fantasy
- Classics
- Dystopian fiction
- Graphic novels
2 What to expect
A graphic novel that takes superheroes apart: in an alternate 1985, the murder of a former costumed hero draws his aging, damaged colleagues back together. It is a murder mystery, a Cold War thriller and a study of power and who can be trusted with it, told in a strict nine-panel grid with a comic-within-the-comic woven through. It is dense, bleak and violent, and it repays close attention to the details in every panel.
Good for readers who want: a serious graphic novel, superheroes taken apart, and a dark, layered story.
3 About Alan Moore
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
4 More by Alan Moore
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