GraphicNovelAnalysis


 * Watchmen: A Pioneer in the Graphic Novel Medium**



Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” is regarded by many in the field as the apex in the graphic novel genre. Found within the book’s pages, is a vivid and complex narrative that takes place in an alternate history planet Earth where history unfolds a bit differently due to the existence of actual superheroes and ‘masks’ fighting crime. The story is incredibly intricate but the main plot goes as follows; the introduction of superheroes into the world greatly changes the course of history especially in the United States of America. The Vietnam war which was considered to be a devastating loss in American history has in fact been won, thanks to in large part to a superhero who is much like a God and because of this victory, the whole world – especially the Soviet Union – fears the USA and places the nation as the predominant superpower in the planet. This fear from the Soviets culminates to a breaking point and as a result the nation begins to stockpile weapons of mass destruction as a sort of means of defense and retaliation to this American threat. In turn, the whole world is under an extreme state of paranoia as the attention focuses on America and the Soviet Union… and as the hands of the doomsday clock reaches closer to inevitable doom, the Watchmen are forced to don their masks again, in order to face a moral decision they might not be able to differentiate the right from wrong.

Watchmen is highly regarded both inside and outside the comic industry and has earned critical praise from the literature field. The book was a winner of the Hugo award (an award given to the best science fiction works) and was declared one of Time magazine’s 100 Best Novels. These accolades for a ‘comic’ book were simply unheard of in that time period. Many believe Watchmen was one of the books that put graphic novels as a medium, out there on the map for it shattered old conventions and offered a unique way in telling a story only deemed possible through the graphic novel medium. In relation to McCloud’s book “Understanding Comics”, Watchmen offers its own unique approach in many of the various elements covered by Scott McCloud. These approaches made Watchmen much more than one’s conventional comic book – it took these elements and expanded and improved upon them – and the results were nothing short of brilliance. The approach to how the concept of time is handled in one particular chapter, the way in which colour becomes an extension of the Watchmen universe, and its complex narrative structure can all be traced back to McCloud’s theories but all have added their own unique Watchmen-esque twist to them.

In the book, a man by the name of Jon Osterman is a scientist who through a freak accident transforms into a super-power later dubbed Dr. Manhattan. His powers can be considered god-like as he can make any obstacle standing in his way vanish into thin air – single handedly controlling the state of matter with the flick of his wrist. Brought on by this change of state from delicate human to a ‘God’, Manhattan is able to perceive time differently for he resides in a quantum universe – where he does not experience time in a linear fashion but does so simultaneously. The way in which this is presented in the graphic novel is ingenious. McCloud touches upon the different types of comic panel juxtaposition and lists six main types, they are: moment to moment, action to action, subject to subject, scene to scene, aspect to aspect and non-sequitur. In order to show how Dr. Manhattan perceives time simultaneously, Dave Gibbons (illustrator of Watchmen) uses a scene-to-scene style as seen in Chapter IV of the book. In order to tell Manhattan’s life story – Gibbons presents Manhattan performing a single action (in this case he is viewing a photograph) and in that time span from when he views the photo to when he lets the photograph fall to his feet, he injects panels of different scenes in between this snippet of action. Therefore, Gibbons adds another dimension to McCloud’s premise regarding time frames (McCloud 1993, 94). Dave Gibbons plays around with how readers perceive time in comics – the way in which readers use their imagination to fill what occurs in between panels (the gutter) (McCloud 1993, 101) – and also taking into account how Dr. Manhattan perceives events in his life simultaneously – he arranges the content within the panels so they don’t necessarily follow a certain sequential-linear path like conventional comics. One panel can show one scene from Manhattan’s past, and the next panel can jump and show an event in the present (as seen in Ex. 1). This implementation of scene-to-scene juxtaposition style in the panels of chapter IV is interesting because readers are actually given the opportunity to actually experience how Dr. Manhattan perceives time simultaneously, and thus there is order to this chaos after all. This is important to note because this sort of affect can only be made possible through the graphic novel medium. It was a risky gamble but it worked wonders and showed the true potential of the medium in everyone’s eyes.

Many familiar with the novel are aware of the unique and specific look of Watchmen – not only in terms of art style, but more specifically the color template applied throughout the novel. To reflect the gritty and morbid feel of the story, Dave Gibbons hired world-renowned colorist John Higgins to the project and Higgins himself decided to apply secondary colours – the purples, the greens, the oranges etc. which ultimately gave Watchmen its own unique look and style. Avoiding the use of rich, primary colours, Higgins gives the Watchmen universe a bleak and melancholic look – a sort of perfect parallel to the mood of the story which relates to McCloud’s observation in regards to colour in comic books – “colour can express a dominant mood, tones and have the ability to add and evoke depth”(McCloud 1993, 182). The subject matters covered in Watchmen are serious in nature such as death, corruption and violence and the colours only act as reinforcements to these ideas. When you look at the illustrations, it becomes much more evident that colour acts as a sort of extension of that universe. One can’t help but evoke emotions of gloom, sorrow and despair. It is in this case that McCloud’s statement rings true: that colours have the ability to act as a formidable ally for any artists in any visual medium (McCloud 1993, 178).

The way in which Watchmen is structured is an important point to touch upon. Watchmen was released as twelve separate issues (an issue discharged every month or so) and it was not until all twelve were released that they were able to combine all of the issues into one paperback format. Therefore it was integral for Watchmen to have a strict structure. It was important that Alan Moore be careful with how he told the narrative of Watchmen (because he was not only dealing with one narrative, he was dealing with multiple complex narratives) – he needed to ease readers into the universe and be careful not to overload them with the story, so pacing was definitely an issue Moore was concerned with. This type of conflict can be tied alongside McCloud’s commentary on the concept of structure. He describes structure as one of the six steps used to describe the process of creating a comic. Structure deals with the way in which a work is put together – how to arrange and compose the work (McCloud 1993, 170). In order to have the best possible level of control over the storytelling, Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore thought best to use the nine-panel grid system because of it’s authority. “There was this element of pacing and visual impact that he could now predict and use to dramatic effect.” Moore was able to control the flow of the story with the nine-grid panel system; he was able to organize the multiple narratives throughout the book thus providing a smooth reading experience no matter how complicated the tale was.

Watchmen - the brainchild of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons is truly a landmark in the graphic novel medium as stated by Time Magazine. One cannot understand its brilliance until they have actually picked up the book and experienced its vividness. Using McCloud’s theories he covers in his book “Understanding Comics” and taking it one step further and not shying away from the convention of comics, Watchmen took risks in its approach of time, colour and structure. Where Moore and Gibbons could have been satisfied telling the Watchmen story through the use of old archetypes, they infused innovation into their work and thus a whole bevy of readers alike saw the untapped potential of graphic novel as a medium. No other medium could achieve the same effect – the golden example in this case would be Watchmen as a motion picture. The movie was in large part only appreciated by people who possessed background information on the Watchmen universe, while many who weren’t were simply lost in translation. Film and comics are two completely different mediums and thus the same effectiveness of the comic was not able to translate well to film – which is a testament to Marshall McLuhan’s theory about how the medium ‘is’ the message. It is evident that Watchmen itself was a landmark in the genre. It simply broke down conventions, made critics alike take notice of the graphic novel medium genre – that it simply was not as inferior as some of our predecessors would have us believe and catapulted the medium to new and exciting heights. Most importantly, Watchmen is a running commentary on the human condition. It spoke to people on a much grander scale than previous comics and dealt with considerably important subject matter and as McCloud stated in his concluding chapter – that is exactly what makes comics such an effective medium, for it spoke to us about human condition, which is something the Watchmen universe successfully accomplished.


 * Works Cited**

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics The Invisible Art. New York: HarperPerrennial, 1993. Print. Moore, Alan. Watchmen New York: DC Comics, 1986-87. Print.