Watchmen was one of the films trailered on The Dark Knight — I’ve seen the graphic novel around, but I’ve never read it. That is something that has now been rectified. I picked up the novel the week after Dark Knight, and it was one of the last copies we had in store. That, also, has been rectified: seventy plus copies, in section, in the queue line, on displays at the front of the store, and on end-caps throughout the popular fiction section.

Watchmen is a dark mirror of our own world — set in the 1980s, in a fifth or sixth Nixon administration, superheros made irrelevant and illegal by legislation begin to mobilize as these now retired ex-crime fighters realize that their numbers are being dwindled by assassinations, and frame-ups, and media-driven witch-hunts. Which begs the question: why?

Yeah, I’m not even going to go into the plot, except that it’s a lot deeper and more involved then you’d expect from a comic book. Then again, this is one of Time Magazine’s Best 100 Novels of All Time. Not 100 best Graphic Novels … best Novels.
Watchmen was written by Alan Moore, the same guy who wrote one of the best Batman graphic novels, The Killing Joke, and V for Vendetta. I haven’t had a chance to to read that latter GN yet, but I’ll admit, despite what I’ve read about Moore’s distaste for cinematic adaptations of his work, I enjoyed that film, and I think I’ll enjoy Watchmen as well.

Also, I can’t get the music from the trailer out of my head. Aiiyeeee!