It’s unfortunate that Watchmen has been so influential in the superhero genre. Reading it now, it’s impossible to understand how revolutionary this book must have seemed to readers in 1987. It’s my understanding that Watchmen was the first series to take the idea that power brings out the worst in people rather than the best and apply it to superheroes. Now that the average age of comic book readers is 35 and older (no, seriously, look it up), this idea is arguably more present in the average comic book than the other one—the “with great power comes great responsibility” one—that the superhero genre was founded on. Nearly every superhero has been given a dark, gritty reboot to please manchild fans who think that edginess is the same thing as maturity. But I digress. In 1987, most comic book readers were children, instead of adults with the minds of children, and was unprecedented.
If anyone is in the mood for a re-reading, I suggest to try out the motion comics, which is a brilliant adaptation (better than the movie, or the forgettable HBO series). It can be found at the usual dealers of moving pictures, it last hours and reveals a ton of details that can be easily missed during a regular reading: in the motion comics, almost every panel of the comics gets animated and performed by a sole remarquable voice actor. I have long wished this type of medium would know better success, but none is as good as this one, and I now understand this motion comics is particularly exceptionnal. It's worth a try, at least to experience a different way to read comics.