Sorry for another round of shoutouts, but it looks like consensus in the last thread was definitely for a graphic novel -- and Watchmen was mentioned the most of the various options. If anyone has any complaints, air them! The previous thread was extremely split of opinion. If not, let's start Watchmen say round about the 21st?
I'm not going to be actively reading since I've got about 14 other books I need to read at the moment. I'll probably keep up, but no guarantees, so I'd prefer it if someone else could make the threads for the actual discussion.
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Count me in. It's not my first choice, but I'm cool with trying something new. That said, all the people that chimed in and wanted Watchman better friggin read it and participate. Otherwise, I suggest that future iterations of the book club only allow those that have finished a previous book the ability to vote. But, I'm enthusiastically in. I'll get my copy by the weekend.
Let's go ahead and set this in stone, actually. If you finish Watchmen or have already read 2666 or whichever, you get to help choose next time. If not, you go with the flow.Otherwise, I suggest that future interactions of the book club only allow those that have finished a previous book the ability to vote.
I'm (almost) ready. My copy is getting sent to me and should arrive by Friday. I would volunteer to lead the discussion, but I'm in the midst of training for Americorps (kleinbl00 I got in by the way, am a field team leader now. Gonna manage twelve 18-24 year olds for a year all over the midwest) and the bit of free time I have is scattered/unpredictable. My first and only interaction with Moore was V for Vendetta, which I read in the fall of 2010 and remember thinking, "shit, this was published in the eighties? This guy was ahead of his time." How should we structure the discussions? (edit: thanks flagamuffin for doing the heavy lifting, I'm sure Watchmen wasn't your first choice but if it's half as interesting or inspiring as some suggest, it shouldn't be a slog or anything)
Really Shitty Virus. People might have to work at it, but babies don't. Something something walking on hands something something hands in mouth.
Ahhh I see. My apologies for misunderstanding virus/computer virus. One of my favorite high school teacher's son had this, as well as his other son having cystic fibrosis. He told us about both diseases and what work he had to do every day to treat them. Lots of hard work.
He liked to give us comparisons on the parts of the lungs that were affected and how he taught both of them about functions of his body of it, so it was a more a teaching experience for his family and making them interested in medicine in a fun way. But yes, his son's condition was extremely severe. Use of breathing machines at certain points in the day and such.
Watchmen is the last comic with capes book I read.
In the early to mid-eighties I read them voraciously and uncritically Marvel, DC, Charlton everything. A friend of mines older brother (the same guy who made me listen to The Jesus and Mary Chains Black and White, ruining pop music for me) said "hey Jake you like comics right?". We loaned me his Watchman I read it that night if I remember right (the 80's were what 15 - 20 years ago?). I read it and promptly lost interest in comics books. Poof gone. I don't know if I should be grateful. In the 90's I did my bit in the indie confessional b/w comics scene and a draw a comic today but superheroes meh.
Yeah sure, but what if it puts me off reading completely?
Did I not clearly mention that my marriage was on the line? Alright, I'm in. Watchman it is. -totally new genre for me. I'm excited!
:p This horrifically reminds me of the time I went on a date to see the Watchmen movie. Putting aside the basic fact that movie dates suck, and that Watchmen the movie also sucks ... you've got to combine all the factors and realize the sheer shittiness of that date. So what I'm trying to say is read Watchmen with your wife. What can go wrong?
Not a Date but once a Male friend and work and I decided to catch a movie together. We had never hung-out outside of work we watched Velvet Goldmine.
I think both of us spent the whole movie trying to remember which one of us suggested it.
Keep in mind: Zach Snyder made "Watchmen the Movie" as a companion piece to "Watchmen the Book" because there was no way "Watchmen the movie" would ever be anything but a footnote to "Watchmen the Book." And, in fact, made it because it was going to get made anyway, and if it was going to be screwed up, it needed to be screwed up by a fan: As a movie, it's okay. As the obligatory movie necessary in a Hollywood that refuses to not make Watchmen into a summer blockbuster, it's just about as good as it could possibly be.He said that when he was in film school, he wanted to make movies out of everything, whether it was a pair of shoes, or a cup of coffee. When he read comics back then, he thought that it would be great to make some of them into movies. He singled out Dark Knight Returns and Sin City, but when he got to Watchmen, he said there was no way he would even attempt it.
Then the studio came to him after 300 and asked him to make the movie. He didn't want to do it at first, partially because he was so afraid he'd screw it up, but also because the script was just horrible. It was set in the current day, it was about Doctor Manhattan going to Iraq, something about "The War on Terror" and was a PG-13 monstrosity that would be left open to a sequel. It was, in other words, exactly the kind of thing we're so afraid the studios will do to things we love when they adapt them for film.
He said that the more he thought about it, though, the more he felt a responsibility to make it. He said something like, "If I made it, I had a chance to not screw it up. If I did screw it up, at least it was me who screwed it up. But if I let them take the script they showed me to someone else to screw up, it would have been my fault. So I had to make it."
The movie is a fanboi's paean to a holy document, written for other fanbois yet somehow astonishingly delivered as a $150m summer blockbuster. It's especially amazing considering it's a $150m summer blockbuster that probably cost closer to $250m. The whole affair had a tawdry stench of inevitability to it. It's as if everyone involved collectively decided that they would do their best to not make a terrible movie because they knew that the very existence of the film was an abomination.
Also worth noting (as I'm sure KB knows) that Alan Moore formally (and magickally) cursed the film project, and took the stance of donating his fee to Dave Gibbons the artist; a decision he later sheepishly and in good humour appears to regret, as it was a great deal of money. In interview he has spoken about how the medium of literature, and particularly comics, allows the author to great thematic and visual links that bind panels in scenes separated by pages or whole chapters. This allow the reader moving at her own pace to flip back and forth between sections, absorbing the juxtaposed elements. This, he says, is impossible in a time-bound linear medium like a film. As he wrote Watchmen for the former medium, he believed it would never work as a film, particularly not a single Hollywood chunk. At one point the adaptation was to be a mini-series under the direction of Terry Gilliam. Perhaps a better form, allowing more depth, but arguable it would have taken more liberty with the content. Hollywood has a history of screwing up Moore's work. KB's right - this is the least worst adaptation; even some of the climactic plotting changes could be argued superior and neater; but for sheer depth and tone the original material is the way to go.
Yes, I'm sure this is why people didn't like the movie. I have mixed opinions, but I also try to look at movies as "riffs" on books as opposed to page-by-page retellings (because they never are; why get disappointed?). What Hollywood's done to the Hobbit is pretty shitty and gratuitous, though. However I still have seen it in theaters and will go see the last one...can't not. It's true. V for Vendetta is just totally different all the fuck over the place. Sometimes I find it very interesting to see what they change and why. Can we blame at least some of this on the MPAA, though? I'd like to. Though - the would-be Watchmen KB talks about, that just makes me shudder. I'm very glad that's not what happened.and magickally
Hollywood has a history of screwing up Moore's work. KB's right - this is the least worst adaptation
Amen. Lord of the Rings trilogy, read aloud: 54 hours. Hobbit, read aloud: 11 hours. Lord of the Rings trilogy, directors cuts: 228min + 235min + 263min = 12 hours. Hobbit, directors cuts: 182min + ~ 180min +~ 180min = 9 hours. LOTR, read aloud/LOTR, filmed = 5:1 Hobbit, read loud/Hobbit, filmed = 1.2:1 There's a reason The Hobbit seems 4 times as slow and drawn out as LOTR. It is.What Hollywood's done to the Hobbit is pretty shitty and gratuitous, though.
Yikes. Well, I guess they need more time to manufacture Hobbit themed Lego sets . . . I will say that the current movies look really great on the screen, but when I (tried) to watch the first part of The Hobbit I kind of just wanted to see that old cartoon version. Or Wizards.
I probably post this somewhere at least twice a year.Watchmen has had no shortage of Hollywood admirers. In the late '80s, producer Joel Silver (The Matrix) tried to make a film adaptation with director Terry Gilliam. Robin Williams and Richard Gere were rumored to be interested. But the project imploded primarily over budget, and the end of the Cold War deprived Watchmen of its political relevance. But in 2001, the comic found new life thanks to a zeitgeist-mining script by David Hayter (X-Men). Paramount was set to roll earlier this year with The Bourne Supremacy's Paul Greengrass at the helm — until a regime change at the studio sent it into turnaround. Still, says producer Larry Gordon, ''We have every reason to believe we will eventually make the movie.'' By the way, Moore doesn't mind: He's adamantly opposed to Watchmen's adaptation for artistic, business, and personal reasons — a position that hardened after Fox's limp 2003 version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen — and plans to give any film royalties to Gibbons.
Downloaded watchmen a CBR reader to boot. It was a little tough getting past Alan Moores Magiks protecting it. But drew a Sigil and sailed on past that biz.
what are you a cop? [put distrustful emoticon here]
You should reconsider. Even Alan Moore hates superheroes. That's what makes Watchmen so good. He also hates movies and considers the "superhero" to be an extension of American exceptionalism and totalitarianism. To say that Watchmen is a superhero movie is to say that Citizen Kane is about a rich man who misses his sled.
It's not the actual story that I don't like--it's the format. I enjoy creating worlds in my mind and visualizing characters, and graphic novels take that away from me. In reading, half the fun is using my imagination. Having a graphic element removes the imaginative aspect for me. Part of what I enjoy so much about reading is the fact that everyone interprets the author's world differently.
I just finished the first book spoiler Rorschach not Niteowl is Batman/Miller and is a huge prick.
He's Ditko's The Question/Mr. A, from the Objectivist religious tract comics he made after he went nuts. There's a really funny issue of Dennis O'Neil's Question series where he reads Watchmen and concludes that Rorschach is, indeed, a huge prick.
maybe it is because there are really only 5 or six superheros?
Maybe it is because the last Miller I read was this of course I my reading has been cape free since this came out (my tv viewing has not been go Paul Dini.) but I find for easy classification Manhattan is Superman Rorschach is A or the question (but really Batman hehe) Silk is Wonder Woman Nite Owl is the Blue Beatle I don't have a really good peg on who Ozy is.
The Shadow/Doctor Strange/Doc Savage? He'll have directly based on a Charlton character, because they all were, but I don't know which.I don't have a really good peg on who Ozy is.
I remember that. I try to avoid anything he's written since Daredevil and Elektra.