Disagree [comics]

[SPOILER ALERT - if you haven't read Watchmen, by Alan Moore, ignore this post]

Congratulations, Keith Law. You’ve made the list. What list specifically, I don’t exactly know, but there is one, and you made it. For those of you that don’t know, Keith Law is an ESPN Insider who writes about baseball. He used to be in the Toronto Blue Jays organization, as a scout and some sort of player personnel person. I have generally enjoyed his writing on baseball, particularly his scouting insights.

But I also read his personal blog. Where he criticizes Watchmen. Poorly. And that pisses me off.

Let’s address his points, shall we?

I can not offer any comment on whether or not Alan Moore’s Watchmen is, as so many critics and readers say, the greatest graphic novel ever written.

Fantastic. Someone who admits up front he doesn’t read graphic novels as a medium is going to talk about them. Please, go ahead.

I can, however, say that as novels, graphic or otherwise, go, it sucks.

Sweet. At least you’re up front about it. After just mentioning how many readers and critics love it, I can’t wait to see his justification.

Watchmen is a thinly drawn (hah!)

Seriously?

paranoid agenda-driven short story, made novel-length

whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s hold up right there. Novel-length? What does that mean? I’ve read Infinite Jest, which (as E will attest) is really freaking long (Make sure you get to the Eschaton part!), and I am reading Yiddish Policemen’s Union, which, is not THAT long. So how long does something need to be to be novel-length? And why is that relevant? AND it was a serial, not a full blown novel.

by the inclusion of pretty pictures, which, by the way, take the place of the descriptive prose that makes the written novel an art form.

IT’S A FUCKING COMIC BOOK, OF COURSE THERE ARE PICTURES.

Also, I love his characterization of Alan Moore. I just picture him and his crazy beard with a 40 page short story trying to figure out how to make it “novel-length”. I know! Pretty Pictures!

Seriously, the pictures are there for a reason, and I think they are pretty well done in this one. The artwork is a little dated, but it is set in the 80’s, so it works

There is no character development. The plot is linear, with characters’ stories provided for background, but they neither show changes in any of the characters nor are they remotely interesting as subplots.

Hold on one FREAKING second. No change? I haven’t reread this thing in ages, but let’s see, the Nite Owl goes BACK to crime fighting, Dr. Manhattan leaves Earth and breaks up with his girlfriend, I guess Rorshach doesn’t change, but his backstory is interesting. I don’t really know how to respond to the “not interesting” statement. The pirate sub-comic is interesting, how a man capable of rearranging atoms came to exist is interesting, the aforementioned rorshach is interesting, I think the whole book is interesting.

The story rests on a base of anachronisms,

I looked this up, because when I read this line, I thought I sort of knew what anachronism meant, and I thought “of course it is, it’s an alternate fucking timeline.” From my (and N8’s) latin days, I thought ana = opposite/against and chrono = time, so against time, or something.

Merriam webster - “a person or a thing that is chronologically out of place”

both historical ones (the Soviet Union was already in the throes of an irreversible economic collapse when the book was written) and political ones (nuclear power is mentioned in passing as a major environmental threat).

I’m really confused.
1. This is a story. It’s not meant to be real.
2. I’m stopping, that’s really all I need to come up with. Who cares if the things it describes are “historically inaccurate” (which is what I think he meant, not anachronistic). Are you criticizing a graphic novel for not being “real”?

And the whole thing was just beyond boring.

disagree

Even when the book got a little interesting in the final two chapters, Moore screwed up his writing. You’re telling me that of the four people in the room in Antarctica in the final chapter, not one of them realizes that the artificial peace is strictly temporary, or at least argues that it is? The smartest man in the world thinks war is over, forever, unless the event that triggers the peace is repeated at unpredictable intervals?

Did he really just say that no one argued that it was temporary, and then said the world’s smartest man said it was temporary? I think I let my anger cloud my judgment here, so that I don’t understand what he wrote, and I don’t remember the scene right now. But I think Keith’s contradicting himself.

If he’s the smartest man in the world, we really are a race of orangutans with safety razors.

Man, Campbell’s drawings make those orangutans look SO human.

I always felt that the TIME book critics added Watchmen to their top 100 novels list as a token entry, as if they felt the need to put one graphic novel on there to head off criticism that they had ignored this burgeoning genre, but reading the book confirmed my suspicions. And really, this was a more deserving entry than Cry the Beloved Country, Brave New World, or Tender is the Night, just to name three works of actual literature? Or, if we’re into tokenism, how about a token novel written by an African (A Grain of Wheat), a token mystery (Murder on the Orient Express), or a token comedy (something by Wodehouse, perhaps).

Uh, I don’t know, man. Seems like a topic for a different post. Look, if you’re pissed off that Aldous didn’t make the top 100, then say it. But don’t go shitting on a great graphic novel because of that. It’s not Alan Moore’s fault.

Also, your decision to place value (to the point of having a tag in your blog) on TIME magazine’s Top 100 books is REALLY misguided. You’re criticizing a news magazine for not including the right literature in a Top 100 list? Keep that question in mind as you read on.

There is simply no comparison to the thematic and textural depth provided by a traditional novel and the superficial treatment inherent in the graphic form. And, since everyone seems to think that Watchmen is the genre’s peak, I think I can safely ignore graphic novels from here on out.

Then why are you comparing them? And there is come comparing, the same way you can compare film to novels, or comics to TV, or video games to film. Or maybe you can’t.

Look, dude, I know this is your outlet blog. But this is a really shitty post.

You’re obviously not a comic reader, and you have no idea about the medium or how to read a graphic novel or anything related to comics. I think it’s a bad move to abandon a medium because of one experience. I wouldn’t stay away from all movies if I didn’t like the Godfather, or all musicals if I hated the Sound of Music, or all novels if I hated War & Peace. If you expect Brave New World when you open Watchmen, you’re going to be disappointed. You went to Harvard man, and this is what you’re giving me.

Thanks for reminding me that guys who are smart about baseball, and people that went to Harvard, can be really dumb.

- Y