"Nothing Ever Ends."

It’s hard to believe that almost 23 years has elapsed since I first started reading the DC comic book Watchmen as a callow teenager in Roscommon, not yet a senior in high school. By that time, I had plenty of comics under my mental belt, but they were of the usual Marvel ilk: Spider-Man, ROM Spaceknight, Moon Knight, The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four, X-Men, anything by John Byrne (he was my first autograph!), and so on.

This was not to say I was a complete Marvel Zombie, buying every single title they released. I also sampled the odd smaller press curve thrown in the mix (the late lamented Dreadstar, where I had my first fan letter published, and Comico releases like Elementals and Grendel) but I was a mainstream kid all the way. Oddly, however, this mainstream didn’t include much from DC; I saw the Distinguished Competition as somehow inferior to the real-world-yet-larger-than-life work Marvel was kicking out in the ‘80s. (Fuck Crisis On Infinite Earths…give me Secret Wars any day.) DC was a non-entity on my reading radar until two limited series from 1986 crossed my path: The Dark Knight Returns (from Frank Miller, who would go on to create Sin City and 300) and Watchmen. And while Miller’s work was gritty and hard-edged, writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons (both Brits) created an entire new reality, down to the littlest details, that blew my still-cohering brain.

Now, there’s no way in hell that the film will get to cover everything, as there’s just not enough time. (I’ve often thought that it should have been a twelve-part mini-series on Showtime or HBO, but slavish imitation of the comic – as seen in the film versions of Sin City and 300 – would be a pointless venture to those that have cherished the comic for these many years.) I just want to be certain that the essence is captured, and director Zack Snyder seems to have a good talent in that regard; his was the re-imagining of Dawn Of The Dead from ’04, as well as the aforementioned 300. I’m just not sure that the general population is ready to see “super heroes” in this light; it took comic readers decades to arrive at the point where a penetrating deconstruction like Watchmen resonated, but have movie goers reached that point as well? Guess we’ll find out tomorrow. And I’ll find out in IMAX.

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