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 Watchmen was unprecedented.
Watchmen might also be the best comic book on a purely technical level. Moore writes snappy, noir-ish dialogue which fits perfectly into a story about corruption and the dark side of human nature. He also uses unconventional storytelling devices like interweaving the plot with images and text from an in-universe (to use a nerdy term) comic book, which serves as an allegory for the events that “actually” happen. You don’t see weird, nonlinear stuff like this in comics much even today, despite the fact that the visual nature of the story makes it much easier to pull off. Speaking of visuals, the art in Watchmen is great. The artist does stuff like depicting two characters in a mirror and then having each speech bubble hover over the other character’s head.
I didn’t like the ending. By which I mean it made me angry. I guess that’s the point, though. Without spoiling anything, I will just say that it is a really weird ending for a supposed anarchist to write. You get the sense that Alan Moore might be a leftist more out of a deep hatred for conservatives than any coherent positive political theory. It fits the comic book itself perfectly, though.
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.