"Watchmen" by Alan Moore. I had been interested in this book for years but never got around to reading it. I wanted to read it before the movie as Alan Moore is so vociferously against cinema interpretation of his work. So I borrowed a copy from my brother.
There is a lot of imagery, technique and backstory there that simply won't transfer well to film. I liked it but it wasn't quite as good as I thought it would be. For me it didn't quite live up to the hype that it's gotten in the graphic novel world. It is the kind of book that does require multiple readings. I'm sure I missed a few things first time through.
It's about a lot of different things (right and wrong, individual conscience, group rights vs individual rights, ethics and so on) all told from various perspectives of "superheroes" who live in a 1980's US where Nixon is still President, the US won the Vietnam war, and someone is killing superheroes. The book does stretch the concept of anti-hero to the breaking point. Sometimes there's no one to identify with which I suspect may have been one of Alan Moore's goals...
"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." Winter is Coming Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
