Apparently I’ve found our hot-button issue, the one guaranteed to provoke responses from Galleycat readers–at least the fanboy contingent. (And I say this with love, you understand, because I’m a fanboy, too. Why do you think we have a new “Comicbookland” category, anyhow?) This morning’s revisitation of the Watchmen issue brought in two more reactions:
- “It’s far from perfect, but it’s very important to the evolution of a certain kind of comic book—the ‘traditional’ comic book, by which I mean the comic book that most people think of when they think of comic books, you know, Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, etc. Watchmen was the first evolution of that genre to a kind of realism that is now almost expected. It was comic book noir and , more importantly, it was mainstream. So, stick to you guns all you want, you really aren’t going to convince anyone who was paying attention when Watchmen hit the scene that it wasn’t important and, yes, one of the best ever…”
- “Skizz? Arguments can certainly be made for the other Moore works you cite (me, I still mourn the unfinished Big Numbers), but Skizz? You so crazy.”
I agree, Alan Moore’s one of the best, and there’s a lot to admire in Watchmen. I don’t even deny its influence on superhero comics since its publication. I just think there’s better books, that’s all. (And, yes, anonymous reader, Big Numbers would’ve been one of them, if it had ever been finished…)
Meanwhile, over at Flog!, the Fantagraphics Comics blog, Eric Reynolds echoes my concerns: “As much as I like and respect Watchmen, we’re in trouble if there hasn’t been anything better in the medium than a 20 year-old postmodern superhero book.”