Who watches the Watchmen?: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen

Secret Life of Books

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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, wrote the Roman poet Juvenal two thousand years ago. And just in case your Latin isn’t up to scratch, we’ll translate it for you: Who watches the watchmen? That line provided inspiration to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen - arguably the first graphic novel to join the ranks of classic literature.

Published as a stand-alone comic in twelve issues between 1986 and 1987, and compiled later that year, Watchmen did for comics what Sergeant Pepper’s did for pop music, legitimising them as a serious artform in the eyes of many. Watchmen is influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Pynchon and Jorge Luis Borges as much as Superman and Batman.

It tells the story of a group of morally-dubious, has-been superheroes, who are being picked off one-by-one by a mysterious killer against the backdrop of nuclear threat. These are the ‘watchmen’ of the title, but - as the quote from Juvenal suggests - pity the society that is looked after by these guys. Sure, they fight crime, but they also commit a lot of it - and even they aren’t sure if the world is a better place for their existence.

While the book isn’t short on action, its characters also discuss philosophy, analyse the history of the comic as an art-form and engage in commercial ventures to capitalise on their own story.

Some time ago, when TIME Magazine listed the 100 most important books of the past century, Watchmen was on the list, wedged somewhere between Lolita and Things Fall Apart (in this case you really do have the watch the watchmen because one of the people responsible for the list and, in particular, for Watchmen’s inclusion, was Sophie’s husband Lev).

To discuss the book, Sophie and Jonty are joined by Andy Miller - writer, performer and one-half of the power duo behind the brilliant Backlisted podcast. In fact, when we asked Andy to come on the show and what book he wanted to do, Watchmen was the first thing he said.

In this episode, Andy, Sophie and Jonty discuss how Watchmen predicted the 21st Century, changed the shape of comics and literature, and why Alan Moore can’t stand the term

‘graphic novel’.

BOOKS REFERRED:

Watchmen (1986-7) by Alan Moore

Providence (2015-17) by Alan Moore

Jerusalem (2016) by Alan Moore

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (1991) by Art Spiegelman

The Dark Knight Returns (1986) by Frank Miller

American Psycho (1991) by Bret Easton Ellis

Paradise Lost (1667) by John Milton

Tristram Shandy (1767) by Laurence Sterne

The Prisoner (TV series) (1967-8)

Revelations In the Wink of An Eye (2024) by Jeffrey Lewis

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