Managing Expectations

Right now I'm procrastinating on more important projects by working on a less important project. I might teach a science-fiction course spring semester 2010, so I've taken this as an excuse to read some science-fiction. I asked for some suggestions on facebook; I received a few. Some suggested graphic novels. Watchmen came up. So I checked it out, and finished reading it yesterday.

It was disappointing. I'd heard a lot about this particular work the past couple of years. I like comics; I grew up on a steady diet of Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Avengers, Iron Man, and Thor (speaking of which, where is Thor's feature film?). And I admit that Watchmen engaged comic book superhero tropes in some interesting and engaging ways. I think perhaps the book suffered from what I'll call the Casablanca or Citizen Kane syndrome. Watchmen obviously influenced an entire generation of comic books, films, even TV shows. By the time I read it (much in the same way as I saw those two films) it simply felt cliched. I'd seen this stuff before. Over and over again. Enough with the brooding, flawed super-heroes.

But of course, it's horribly unfair, because Watchmen, Casablanca, and Citizen Kane are the reasons those cliches exist; or at the very least, they helped those tropes become set through their own brilliance.

At any rate, I don't think Watchmen is going to make the cut; it mostly engages comic book tropes; the science-fiction genre, while occasionally making an appearance, takes a backseat to the series' attempts to reexamine classic comic book beats.