"Who watches the Watchmen?"
As a long time comic reader I've went through so many cookie cutter comics and characters it gets a tad tiring. A number of comics follow the safe route and try not to offend or shock their audiences, but with Watchmen well it's done the exact opposite and I couldn't be more thankful for it completely dismantling the idea of what it means to be a "superhero".
Alan Moore's Watchmen is definitely one of my all time favorite comic books.I picked up the graphic novel as a teenager and I can say that it's ruined superheroes for me. I mean this in the best way possible of course. Watchmen is an incredible comic due to it's complete deconstruction of the superhero genre. Every character in the story appears to fit one of the usual hero archetypes you're used to but then they completely flip it around. In this way though I feel that Alan Moore has created a comic which features incredibly realistic "heroes" that would feel more appropriate for the time they take place in.
Most characters we see in comics aren't too complex. They're quite likeable and sometimes even mary sue/stuish at worst. With Watchmen you have gritty characters who's personalities differ greatly in a way which each makes them so unique and real. You wither like them or a little or you hate them by the end of the comic. That I feel makes a comic really great to read. I feel more invested in characters when they feel more real.
I also love how Watchmen eradicates what the usual comic reader is used to when it comes to the whole good/bad morality scale. In this comic no one is truly good or bad. It's an incredibly gray moral area and I feel that just makes it so much more interesting to read. You aren't really sure of what a character may do or what they're capable of.
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