Book Review: The Watchmen

I just finished a book, a book unlike any other I had read. In remarkably brief fashion, the author(s) managed to create and bring me into a world that bears a striking similarity to our own but whose divergences are as remarkable as its parallels. It's a world that attempts at every turn to prove itself as our reality just so it can overflow its bounds and flood our fertile minds with possibilities. The possibilities extend from our own reality like surreal protuberances, tentacles reaching, groping out in the darkness of time and space looking for a light switch.

Unlike all of the other books I have read, this book was illustrated, a graphic novel. Not just any graphic novel, the Watchmen is the only of its kind to be selected by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best novels of all time. I had never read any graphic novels or the comic books from which they emerged. My knowledge was limited, but I knew that there were two types of heroes—ones who possess superhuman powers and ones who are simply mortals with fancy gadgets. Supermen and Batmen. The Watchmen, as it turns out is a little of both: most of the characters are of the Batman variety; one, a Superman. And the Superman-type character is a conundrum, being both believable and unbelievable: he origins are rooted in the particle physics of our reality, but his powers are unimaginable, unbelievable, inhuman powers. Inhuman.

To me, the novel was a gigantic puzzle. The characters were deeply intense, the plot, an international intrigue, and putting it all together is a task partially up to the reader. Starting with a simple whodunnit, a single murder, it ends by involving the many more deaths/murders and an apocalyptic fervor ushering in a new world order. Luring you in with something easily believable, almost commonplace, it builds upon this foundation a beautifully grotesque monument to human existence. Along the way, it goes through a tangled web of characters, corporations, and other supporting evidence to lead you to a conclusion that is both optimistic and pessimistic and punctuated by a question mark. Supporting the story are details and interstitial commentary that, though seeming absurdly tangential and unnecessary, ultimately ties in. At one point, a character in the book reads a comic book—a play within a play? a commentary on using comics to escape the horrors of the world?—the plot of which seems parallel, unrelated, but ends up being almost related. The lines never actually meet, nor do they maintain their perfect distance. Thus it is that every image, each plot detail is a question mark, and every question is answered save the one posed on the final page.

Ultimately, at the end, it left me with a sense that I understand the world better, understanding good and evil in a deeper way, such that they never truly exist, that what is ostensibly good is, in fact, tinged with evil, and so on and vice versa: a full-color, three-dimensional yin-yang with goods and evils intertwining and containing each other. It demonstrates this through fiercely individual characters, each with their own morality, and, operating accordingly, they unfold the whole drama as if it were already written. Everyone's a hero, everyone's a villain, and in between are the watchmen. But who watches the watchmen?