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May 6, 2007

Watchmen: A review

Who’s watching the watch---

A recurring theme to this graphic novel is that the above phrase is never fully shown. It’s always partially obscured, or just off the panel, so that we never actually read the phrase, which was based on an old Latin saying.
I mention this because if you go googling the watchmen, or look at the many annotated scripts out there (more on that in a minute), you’ll see people are always pointing this fact out first.
Here’s what I got from my first read:
- You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.
- The book’s “villain” posits that the only way to save humanity is to destroy it (or at least some of it). So it’s hard not to draw comparisons to Sept. 11. And it was strangely prophetic in its depiction of the world coming together.
- Realistic omnipotence – is there such a thing? If you were given all the power in the world, and all the knowledge, would you cease caring about taking part in humanity? I’ve been stuck on this one for awhile.
- It takes a certain type of person to go around wearing a costume all day. My sister was Ernie (of Bert n Ernie) once. Nuff said.

That’s all for now. I’m going to read it again and post another review, one a little more in-depth. There’s just too much to say about it all at once.

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