Watchmen is a formalist exercise in comparison.
I like Watchmen better myself. To me, it's an indictment of everything in our culture that allows fascism to take root and grow, of everything about us that says "yes, we're actually okay with fascism, as long as we have our toys." And one of the things he focuses his attention on is super hero comics.
It seems even more prescient now, in subtle ways, particularly the Nixon-still-being-President thing, what with the power players in the BushII administration having trained under Nixon, and using his playbook.
I also liked Watchmen more. I think it and V for Vendetta take mirror strategies into the same political stance (which is exactly what Sean says: rampant consumerism and absolute trust in authority for security is fascist mentality), with Watchmen imposing authority from capital (and, incidentally, crazy superheroes) and VFV imposing authority from government. Frankly, I think Watchmen works better because the characters seem a little better-conceived. In VFV, the government is entirely unbelievable in its textbook psychology of the major players, although the dissolution among the ranks seemed true enough, and the character of V seemed altogether too close to the omniscient, omnipotent, super-fast serial killer-type from the movies - y'know, the one who has perfect knowledge of how other people will react in any given situation and has somehow had the time to lay plans that allow him to be 3 steps ahead of everyone else, no matter what. It always strikes me as a little lazy that V is perfect.
That said, I don't want to come down too hard, because I think it's a fantastic comic.
In other news, I saw both Junebug and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit this past weekend and enjoyed the heck out of both.
Ironically, even though I prefer Watchmen, I have a stronger urge to reread V, if only to see if it improves on rereading. (I was putting off the reread until after the film came out, because I didn't want to be distracted by the changes if I could avoid it.)
It always strikes me as a little lazy that V is perfect.
I think "perfect" is an awfully strong word for a psychopathic hermit serial killer, but I know what you mean.
Yeah--he's perfect for what he needs to accomplish. The perfect
accidentally created
weapon.
That said, I don't want to come down too hard, because I think it's a fantastic comic.
Yes, this. Though VfV is the lesser light in my book, I still loved it.
I think "perfect" is an awfully strong word for a psychopathic hermit serial killer, but I know what you mean.
Hee!
I throw "perfect" around too often, I know. But that's funny, P-Moon.
I've posted some spoilers in my LJ here, in case anyone wants to be prepared for what the major changes are.
Part of my problem with Watchmen is that I'm not actually that big on superheroes. I think the only superhero books I've read are postmodern and/or piss-takes, so a lot of the stuff that is (I understand) groundbreaking was transparent to me. Plus, I'd seen "The Architects of Fear," so that was kind of a letdown.
I reread it a few years back and that increased my feeling that the parts are much more interesting than the whole. And the core mystery made less sense on reread, so that was annoying.
