In Progress: Watchmen (I)

At a party this weekend I encountered an English grad student holding forth on the fine line that separates comic books and graphic novels. When I asked why the distinction mattered, she replied, with equal intensity: “You’re right. It doesn’t.” Then she kept on professing.

I have no idea if it does or doesn’t matter; what I do know is that when I pitched an editor a review of Alan Moore’s classic whatever-you-want-to-call-it Watchmen, I had no idea what I was getting into. I’ve never read it, although apparently everyone else I know has. My experience with graphic novels isn’t so far off from . . . well, from someone I know—an English major, Class of c. 1963. When I asked her if she had ever read any graphic novels, she said, “Do you mean like graphic as in sex?”

I’ve taught Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and I appreciated his most recent In the Shadow of No Towers. But I realized quickly that Watchmen isn’t something you write about oblivious of the fact that it has become a cultural icon—one of my coworkers even has a Watchmen tattoo! Another coworker warned me that I would be crucified by Watchmen fans were my review to trip up in any of a long list of ways.

I’ve encountered this before when reviewing a book about Bix Beiderbecke. I received an angry letter from Bix’s nephew, R. Bix Beiderbecke, telling me I had no idea what I was talking about. At the time, that was true, but only to the extent that I was not in on a larger conversation about the book. I thought then, and I continue to think, that my perspective on the actual book, at least in terms of its first read, benefited from my ignorance. I was better able to read it as a story and as a piece of writing.