watchmen

(WARNING: Dad, I’m using this space to openly express myself, without censorship or judgment. If you’ve returned to this blog at some point to see how I’m doing, please know you might read some things you’d rather not know. Like this entry. I’d like to think by this point you know I’ve had sex before, but if you’d still like to hold on to that fatherly illusion (completely understandable), do not read this. I’ll try and warn you on other entries as they come up. Love you. Hope it’s hot in the desert!)

“Watchmen” was my first as graphic novels go, and not too dissimilar (forgive me for saying it) to that awkward other first Halloween of 1993 when I lost my virginity to a drunken, face-painted jester with a long hat split into two belled ends (uh, I said Halloween, remember?). Each was unfamiliar, treacherous in its mere mystery, altered over time by the randomness of my memory, and unsettling – however exhilarated I was to simply have both vast unknowns revealed.

If you think it odd that I might be comparing the very meaningful act of first sexual encounters to the experience of reading a little picture book, then you clearly have never read a little picture book. In fact I’m more inclined to share with you “Watchmen” than I am that Halloween night, and it’s not for any puritanical modesty (please, I’m so beyond that) but rather that one is more vivid, more plot-ridden, more packaged, more for sale at your local comic store, more likely to have a feature film of the same name COMING MARCH 6 TO A THEATER NEAR YOU! Can you guess which of the two I’m referring to? Let me give you a clue: it will have plenty of face paint and sex, but no jesters.

So what was it that caped me into the caper? What dialogue bubble dragged a literary zealot from her Gogol and Bolaño into the realm of bathroom readers without so much as a kick or a scream? (In point of fact, I put aside Dostoevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov” after reading – and enjoying – its first 100 pages so that I could tackle the literary tome “Watchmen”).

So what was it? Dare I say the simplicity of its morality, the directness of its plot, and the funness of its format. “Eek!” my literary professors would scream, not only for my shallow literary pursuit, but my unforgivable attempt to make the adjective “fun” into a noun. But sometimes sweet and shallow wins the day, professor. Throw into the package a villain who’s killing off masked heroes, a group of vigilantes without any real superpowers who dress in tights and save people from burning buildings, a trip to a biodome in Antarctica and a feisty foul-mouthed journalist and I can’t strip myself away.

Plus, Dave Gibbons rocks. Especially with the pirate comic book within the graphic novel illustrations – holy cow, am I really marveling over his rendering of a raft made from the bloated remains of an entire crew? Why, yes I am, and with a strange sense of pride, as though I’ve found myself among the ranks of a whole new group of misunderstood masses who have found the marriage of artwork and words tells a pretty mean story, a whole new group that really, really gets me right now.

SEE YOU FRIDAY!