yeah, most of us do. it was all groundbreaking and beautiful and how superheroes would actually be in the "real" world. to a certain degree, anyway. it sure was big news back in the day. it's still a pretty good work of fiction, though it's legacy has been diluted to many comics trying to achieve the same thing with known characters who were not designed to be in any kind of adult situation likes these characters were. the majority of famous comic book characters were designed for kids, not adults or cynical, stunted semi-adults who want everything to be dark, gritty and realistic.
and fie upon that sort of thinking- it's why I don't read new comics these days. that's not why I'm writing this though.
one of the conceits of the comic book is that actual superhero comics don't exist in a world where actual superheroes do exist. on the surface this makes a good bit of sense, especially in this Watchmen world.
Moore chose sci-fi, horror and piracy as the main types of comics that would be read in his Watchmen world, since superheroes would be scorned. but the logic falls short if you think of comics in this real world of ours that are based on true events- like, say war or western comics. you'd think war being hell would make that a subject of scorn, far more than superheroes actually fighting crime. and most of these aren't even super, just regular joes with no extra powers.
perhaps I've given this too much thought...
But there actually was a Superman in WATCHMEN, though you had to read very carefully to find him. He didn't make it big and faded out, though whether this was directly attributed to the real superheroes of their world is something I don't remember anymore. But if the conceit is that Superman failed, there wouldn't be a "superhero comic" the way we think of them.
ReplyDeleteWar and western comics were big once, but by the time WATCHMEN came along, they were both pretty much dead as genres.