Watchmen

     Watchmen is a graphic novel that pushed the envelope as a super hero comic as well as a novel. Watchmen is one of Time magazines best 100 novels for a reason. Watchmen is a mixture of a book and a graphic novel. I really enjoyed this aspect of Watchmen. The panel arrangement was one of my favorite things in reading this novel. Many of the comic pages have 9 similar panels with very different angled illustrations with different compositions but it still reads very well. The design of the panels really added to my reading experience. What was really interesting with Watchmen was the break between comic pages and articles or excerpts from Under The Hood. I feel this was a good aspect to add to this graphic novel in the way it kept the story going as well as explaining background information with events and characters. In a way it gave more legitimacy to the comic world. This basically said that yes comics are made up of superheroes but it can be a realistic and legitimate story not only as a graphic novel but as a novel as well. Watchmen overall as a novel was an enjoyable read mainly because they took the superhero genre and made it a more realistic story. The griminess of the subject matter and the attire of the heroes made a nice back and forth. These people were dressed up as generic superheroes but they kicked ass. It was not the generic Superman saying drugs are bad and taking the bad guys to jail it was Rorschach kicking the crap out of people to find justice. Watchmen was a very enjoyable read and overall I enjoyed Watchmen and I believe it is a must read for book lovers and comic lovers everywhere.