The Greatest Graphic Novel of All Time: Watchmen

Growing up i was, like many kids, a comic book reader.  My friend zack and I used to walk up broadway to "Forbidden Planet" a great comic book store in new york, and hunt for comics for hours.  My tastes were pretty mainstream, I collected the X-men mainly, but i also loved Cerebus the Aardvark with its unbelievable background art, and the strange Tales of the Beanworld.  And my father had a very old Superman compendium and some shazaam comics that were magical.

But sometime in high school i lost all interest in comics.  I would still go into a comic book store occasionally to see if i could rekindle some interest, but it never happened.

Then a few years ago zack suggested a graphic novel (basically a long book-sized comic book) to me, I *think* it was Kingdom Come, which revisited some of the comic book heroes i had read growing up.  That was a huge eye opener -- it tapped into all of the deep seated memories and emotional attachment i had to the comic universe, but somehow made it interesting and accessible again.

Now we come to Watchmen, which completely blew my mind.  This is a tale of comic book heros from an adult perspective.. Just a remarkable achievement.

I don't know if someone who never read comic books as a kid will get much out of these high quality graphic novels, but if you used to read comic books as a kid, but lost interest in them, I cannot recommend Watchmen more strongly.

As you might guess, what's motivated me to make this post is the impending release this week of the Watchmen movie.  I have no idea if it will be good or not but you can get the graphic novel on amazon for $11.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen