The way people talk about Watchmen like it's just a superhero story drives me crazy

I overheard two guys at my local shop last Saturday calling it 'just another dark comic with capes.' They clearly never got past the surface level because the whole thing is a deconstruction of the genre, not an example of it. Has anyone else had to explain the difference to a new reader?

3 comments

3 Comments

tessa_murray1mo ago

Saw my friend spend twenty minutes explaining how Rorschach is a commentary on vigilantism, not a role model.

lilya761mo ago

I mean, that friend isn't wrong, but they're kind of missing a big part of it. Rorschach is absolutely a commentary on vigilantism, but he's also a pretty clear warning about black-and-white thinking and how that can turn someone into a monster. Like, the whole point is that his rigid moral code doesn't make him a hero, it makes him dangerous and unstable. The rape and murder stuff he's fine with as long as it fits his rules, that's not just a bad role model, it's a critique of that whole mindset. Idk, maybe it's just me but I think people focus too much on the cool trenchcoat and not enough on how the book shows him as a broken, paranoid person.

wilson.joseph1mo agoTop Commenter

I started asking people who liked Rorschach what they thought of his landlord's murder, and that usually got them thinking.