WATCHMEN 679
September 1986, Wa t c h m e n was collected as a book in 1987, fi nding enormous success
alongside other adult comics of the 1980s, Frank Miller’s Th e Dark Knight Returns
and Art Spiegelman’s Maus , the collected versions of which contributed to the rise of
the graphic novel format. Th e origin of Wa t c h m e n was DC Comics’ purchase of the
rights for characters previously published by the defunct Charlton Comics. Moore, a
British writer who had been head-hunted by DC and was enjoying success with his
re-vamp of the ailing Swamp Th ing title, wrote a treatment outlining how he would
perform the same alchemy with the Charlton characters. However, as the proposal was
a radical departure from the established characters, Moore was given the go-ahead to
create new characters based on the Charlton heroes. Th e result was a degree of cre-
ative freedom that Moore and Gibbons thrived under. Th e story was ambitious, with
a complex narrative structure and a disciplined adherence to a nine-panel grid format,
only broken occasionally for dramatic eff ect. Moore’s scripts were unusually dense for
a comic script, full of extraneous detail and description, as is his habit, but he was not
prescriptive about the artwork, allowing Gibbons more-or-less free reign. Th e format of
the comics was equally bold, with
distinctive covers, and no letters
page, instead Moore used the extra
pages to present supplementary
material such as text stories that
related to the main narrative, as
well as song lyrics and quotations
from famous thinkers. Moore also
consciously decided not to use an
external narrative voice in captions,
or to use thought-balloons, forcing
himself and Gibbons to tell the
story primarily through dialogue
and images, leaving characters’
motivations and thoughts ambigu-
ous, something that was also done
in Moore’s V for Vendetta. Th e
result was a comic that seemed, in
terms of both story and artwork, to
be much more sophisticated than
most superhero comics of the time,
and indeed, somewhat more akin
to American underground comics
such as R A W , where stylish layouts
and narrative innovation were re-
shaping conceptions of what the
medium was capable of.
A poster for the 2009 film Wa t c h m e n, directed by Zack
Snyder. Warner Bros./Photofest
