This is my first ever graphic novel! It seemed like a fun, interesting way to branch out from my usual selection of mysteries and airport quality chick lit. On reading a graphic novel, it was extremely challenging for all the reasons I thought it would be. I struggled with reading the words, and looking at the images. Watchmen is dense, you have the read the words to really follow the story, and it took me like 75 pages to get the hang of the reading and looking and feeling the flow of the story. At first I would read, look at the pictures, read, look at the pictures, but it interrupted the flow and I felt like I wasn’t fully appreciating the fantastic imagery.
I selected Watchmen by Googling “graphic novels for beginners” and this was the right choice for me. It was a world of super (nonsuper?) heroes I knew nothing about, so I could build my expectations and the world from the ground up. The story has some of the black and white appeal of a classic good v. evil comic book story, but it’s dark. The characters are far more morally gray. You’re rooting for the vigilantes, the men and women who took up masks to fight crime on their own when the government wasn’t doing enough, who were eventually replaced by actual superheroes. You don’t really fully believe they’re heroes, because their imperfections are out on the line more so than any other heroes I’ve been exposed to. Continue reading
Book It. 