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Gratuitous gay-baiting in Watchmen?

Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That
A pivotal moment in the “Watchmen” plot has Nite Owl and Rorschach hacking into Ozymandias’ computer. Keep a close eye on his desktop, and you’ll see an ominously titled file folder. “Adrian’s sorta like very asexual, but he’s possibly a homosexual,” grinned Matthew Goode, referring to a long-held suspicion among “Watchmen” fans. “There’s a very small thing in his file window, and it just says, ‘Boys.’ Which is very funny, and that’s the kind of detail that Zack works with.”

Added by Zack Snyder? The devil you say!

This movie is going to suck on a scale heretofore never imagined, isn’t it?

According to their copyright information, these are the actual titles of the first four trade collections of the current Hercules series from Marvel:

• Hulk: WWH–Incredible Herc
• Incredible Hercules: Against the World
• Secret Invasion: Incredible Hercules
• Incredible Hercules: Love & War

So, depending on how they’re stocked in the store, the books could be in either one place on the shelves, or three different places. It goes without saying that there are of course no volume numbers on the spines or covers of these books.

And it’s hardly as if Hercules is the only Marvel series to be titled in such an…idiosyncratic way for the collected editions.

Why, it’s almost as if Marvel, after all these years, is continuing to treat their trade paper-back program as a half-assed after-thought instead of a genuine revenue stream…

I apologize for the link to Ain’t It Cool News, but the video clip in question doesn’t make sense without the context. So go take a quick look and then come back.

This is the line that I want to take issue with:

But the following clip has one of the coolest sound effect mixed with an action that I’ve seen in a really long time.

Yeah, about that sound mix…it’s about as close an approximation of the “Biff”, “Bam”, “Pow”, “Wowee” sounds of the 60s Batman live-action show that I’ve ever heard. Insert some graphics over the action, and it pretty much is the 60s Batman tv show.

But was purposefully camp then, I’m being expected to take seriously now.

There’s something very wrong with that.

Kevin’s right, of course.

I wish I could be as determined as Kevin to avoid the film, as Watchmen the comic book is a work I respect tremendously, but between Pete expressing an interest in it, the presence of Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the film, and my own morbid curiosity over just how bad it’s going to be, I’m pretty sure I’m on the hook to see it at some point. Of course, what really fascinates me in that link is the fact that, once again, for stating an opinion Kevin is being raked over the coals by people unable or unwilling to see his point. And that’s funny to me, because Kevin is a hell of a lot more politic about it than I would be.

I mean, let’s all be perfectly honest here: Watchmen the movie is not for comic book fans. It’s for the people who made Paul Blart: Mall Cop the number one film in the country for several weeks. It’s for the people who read The DaVinci Code and patted themselves on the back because they read big, thick books. It’s for people who keep Fox News on the air.

And you can’t blame Kevin, who is in most things a man of taste and discernment, for not wanting to subject himself to a film crafted for that audience. Which begs the question: why would anyone take Watchmen, one of the most important texts in the history of comic books, and turn it into a film aimed squarely at the lowest common denominators of the American public? And that’s when we get to the tragic truth…

Most people didn’t read Watchmen and come away with an indictment of the fetishization of nostalgia. They didn’t read it and find a critique of authoritarian power structures in global politics and how that is mirrored in popular entertainment vigilante fantasies. They didn’t find an examination of the limits of that whole “power and responsibility” thing and how that absolutist notion of morality falls apart when faced with reality. Nor did they find an amazing example of story-telling structure that fully exploits the idiosyncratic nature of the comic book medium to tell a mature story that is, quite literally, only possible within the comic book medium.

No, they found a cynical super-hero beat-’em-up comic with sex and swearing. They skipped the text pieces. They skipped the “boring stuff with the pirate comic.” And they found that if they threw the word “deconstruction” around when discussing the comic, they sounded smart.

And that’s the movie Zack Snyder is giving us:  that shallow, superficial reading of the comic translated to film. I mean, honestly, what else did anyone expect?

I guess “cast stands around looking vaguely embarrassed to be here” is the new “giant heads looking off into the distance.”

Uhm, at least The Comedian looks okay. Ish.

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

So, this is the great American graphic novel? This is the best comic ever created? Man, those dicks at DC must think we’re fucking stupid or something if we’d actually think this shit is any good. This is, without a doubt, the worst fucking comic I’ve ever read. We’re talking Skate Man bad here.

Chapter One
Pages 1-4: A fucking pan up? Lazy. And what’s with the nine-panel grid? Boring. The whole damn book better not be like that. What a way to insult the audience right off, with the dullest, most pedestrian page layout possible. It shows a complete lack of imagination.

And what’s with the cops? This is a super-hero book, not some damn cop drama. Let’s focus on the actual characters.

Pages 5-8: God, I hope Moore isn’t being paid by the word. No dialogue. Not even a damn thought-balloon. What kind of comic is this?

Pages 9-13: If Moore is pulling the kind of crap I think he’s pulling he should be ashamed of himself. This is a completely disrespectful way to treat characters of such depth and complexity and rich history as the Blue Beetle and the Question.

Page 17: Okay, Moore doesn’t get it. Peter Cannon would not call the Peacemaker a Nazi. No, no way. This is shit and completely disrespectful.

Pages 20-23: Either Moore or Gibbons must be a fag, because I can’t imagine why so much attention is being paid to making sure we see that Captain Atom is naked.

Pages 27-32: More laziness. Apparently Moore isn’t a good enough writer to think of a way to include back-story in the comic itself and had to put a damn “supplemental guide” into the book. LAZY!

Chapter Two
Pages 6-7: Fucking disgusting! Not only is this completely unnecessary, but it’s offensive. Rape has no place in a super-hero comic. I read super-hero comics to escape from reality, not to wallow in filth and perversion. Maybe Moore gets off on this sort of thing, but he’s clearly a pervert.

Pages 9-18: And Moore hates America, apparently. Not only is this a complete and total disregard for the actual nature of the Peacemaker, but this is just stupid, liberal, anti-American propaganda. Hello, we were in Vietnam for a reason people. The commies weren’t just going to give up on their own!

Chapter Three
Pages 1-3: More of characters completely unimportant to the narrative given attention. And what’s with this pirate comic. Why would kids want to read pirate comics? Oh sure, maybe a pervert like Moore likes them, but real Americans won’t. It’s completely unreal.

Page 13: Three issues in and this is the first real action sequence we get? And it’s interrupted by more anti-American propaganda by Moore.

Page 20: Fucking disgusting. Penises have no place in super-hero comics. Clearly this is an adults-only comic, but it’s not labeled as such. DC should be ashamed of themselves for publishing this filth.

Pages 29-32: Okay, this is getting fucking ridiculous. More background that apparently is necessary to the story that Moore couldn’t’ find a way to work into the narrative. And this is after how many pages of Captain Atom just walking around and not doing anything. Lazy, lazy, lazy!

Chapter Four
Page 3: I am so sick of comics writers trying to talk about physics as if they understand anything. Like some watch-maker is going to understand the theory of relativity. Completely unrealistic and throws me out of the story.

And the sad thing is, this would be a perfectly acceptable new origin for Captain Atom if it wasn’t tainted by the sex and perversion and anti-American propaganda. But it should have been the first issue, not number four.

Chapter Five
Page 7: Child murder. More filth and perversion.

Page 9: More pirate shit. Why does Moore keep insisting on interrupting the flow of the story with this pretentious, extra bull-shit?

Pages 14-15: It takes all this time for something to break up the damn nine panel grid. Gibbons must have gotten sick of following that ego-maniac’s Moore’s directions.

Page 20: Enough of this pirate shit!

Pages 29-32: Goddamit! Moore is gay for pirates! This shit adds nothing to the story! It’s just Moore’ ego forcing his pet projects into the story.

Chapter Six
Pages 1-32: This is just filth. Never have I seen such a willful disregard of a creator’s purpose. This is not the Question. This is some rabid anti-American pervert’s filthy distortion of a living creator’s greatest work. This is disgusting and reprehensible. Moore and everyone at DC owe Steve Ditko an apology. They are not fit to lick the dirt from his shoes, and yet they go and distort his work to make it into this ugly, lewd traitorous condemnation of American values and decent, God-fearing morality.

Chapter Seven
Pages 1-10: I’d almost think this was good, if it wasn’t done to death and completely unnecessary. So Blue Beetle and Nightshade talk about Beetle’s equipment. Great. This sort of thing is more appropriate to a paragraph or two in Who’s Who than ten pages in a comic.

Pages 23-26: Well, it’s about damn time one of the super-heroes in this comic actually did something super-heroic. Somebody in DC editorial must have forced this scene into the book so that Moore wouldn’t completely pervert all of the Charlton characters into disgusting caricatures.

Page 27: Oh, ha-ha, an ejaculation joke. I guess Moore just couldn’t resist putting more perversion into the comic.

Pages 29-32: Again with the nonsense that doesn’t add to the story at all. And why would the Blue Beetle give a rat’s ass about fucking owls?

Chapter Eight
Pages 1-28: Eight chapters before the plot actually has anything happen in it? I’ve heard of padding for the trade, but this is fucking ridiculous. So the first seven chapters were all, what, prologue? See, if Moore were a good writer everything that happens in this chapter would have been spread out over the first seven. But no, he spends seven chapters on his liberal propaganda and perversion before he starts running out of issues and actually has to have the story start.

Pages 29-32: And yet more anti-American propaganda. This cartoonish caricature of real American values is insulting and infuriating. I’m sorely tempted to forward a copy of this trash to a real American like Bill O’Reilly. I’d like to see Moore try to defend his filth against a real intellectual might like his.

Chapter Nine
Pages 1-28: And all that momentum built up in the last issue spoiled. Just a long look at a secondary, D-list character like Nightshade. I mean, you’ve only got twelve issues, and you’ve already padded it out, not to mention filling it with filth, and then you go and waste an issue with Captain Atom and his side-kick talking about her feelings. Waste of paper.

Chapter Ten
Pages 1-28: Christ! How much padding did Moore do? This entire issue is nothing but Blue Beetle and Question moving from one location to another. With, of course, plenty of interruptions from that stupid pirate comic that nobody cares about! And then to set-up Peter Canon as the villain? How stupid is that? Moore just doesn’t get. He. Just. Doesn’t. Get. It. This isn’t as serious as the disgusting changes made to Peacemaker and the Question, but it is part of a pattern. He just hates super-heroes. He has no respect for them. Why on Earth DC would give a man like that the opportunity to write a super-hero comic escapes me.

Chapter Eleven
Pages 6, 9, 13, 20, 23: More of this nonsense with characters that nobody cares about and that stupid, pointless pirate comic.

Pages 7, 8, 10, 11: Moore clearly rushing to get out some sort of “important” information. If he’s just done the origins of the characters at the start of the series, like he should have, and paced himself better instead of continually padding the comic with stupid, extraneous information that nobody cares about he wouldn’t have had to so badly rush everything at the end. This is not just laziness, this is bad writing.

Pages 18, 19, 21, 22, 24-26: This is just a colossal insult to the intelligence of the reader. It reeks of comic book clichés. If Peter Canon is the big villain (and it makes no sense at all that he would be), why waste all his time explaining his plan to the Blue Beetle and the Question? It’s stupid. It’s the worse cliché in comics. And people think this is good writing?

Page 27: And this is even dumber a revelation. “Oh, I already did it. Nyah-nyah-nyah! You can’t beat me!” It’s a juvenile cop-out and further evidence that Moore is just an adolescent mind spitting on the noble legacy of the Charlton characters simply because he happens to personally not like them.

Chapter Twelve
Pages 1-6: Six splash pages! What is this, an Image book? I’m surprised I didn’t have to turn the page side-ways for any of these panels. Clearly Gibbons was just trying to sucker his pans out of more money by making some extra splash pages he can sell at conventions.

Pages 17-20: And this is completely implausible. Peter Canon’s plan made no sense, and it’s just a cop-out to have it “work.” It just gives Moore an excuse to end the story without any of the characters facing any consequences for their actions and just serves as a further example of his disregard for the characters and their creators. Moore doesn’t like super-heroes, and he doesn’t respect the creators, so of course they have to lose. Juvenile bullshit.

Pages 23, 24: And this is the final insult. Moore perverted the Question into his pet anti-American stereotype, and so the lone voice of morality must be killed. Honestly, there was no point in finishing the book at this point. I don’t care how it ends. This was just insulting.