Perhaps political bloggers are the wrong variety of nerd to appreciate this kind of thing, but Alan Moore is probably the world's best-known comic book artist (these days they call them "graphic novels") and Watchmen his best known (although not his best) book. It is now being made into a movie by Zack Snyder of 300 fame. That's the first trailer above.
Lots of possible downside here, starting with the director. Furthermore, previous attempts to render Moore's work on film have been less than successful, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen being horrible, and V For Vendetta getting boring at about the same point as the book did.
Anyway, while Watchmen is Moore's most famous piece, his best are the first two volumes of The League, especially the 2nd. The 3rd volume (The Black Dossier) is crap, and you basically have to have it smuggled over the border due to copyright issues (although it has one interesting character: John Carnacki, the Ghost Detective from W. Hope Hodgson's old stories). From Hell is Moore's retelling of the Jack The Ripper story, where you know whodunnit from page one. 8,000 pages long in smudgy B&W drawings. V For Vendetta starts out good, and towards the middle becomes a bit of a trudge where it is generally impossible to tell one character from another.
Here's hoping for the best with Watchmen.
1 comment:
Not actually being a graphic novel nerd, Watchmen is nonetheless famous enough that I didn't say "what?" when I heard it was being made into a movie. I saw the trailer on the big screen (not the BIG IMAX screen, just the regular big screen) when I saw The Dark Knight on Sunday, and it LOOKED super cool.
I'm quite looking forward to it.
I haven't read the graphic novel, but if I enjoy the movie I probably will (no sense reading it first now, as I find that tends to ruin the movie).
Should be fun, hopefully.
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