Posts tagged as:

Watchmen

They’re Adapting Your Favorite Book or Comic!!

by revgeorge on December 15, 2009

Found this article on The Torch Online.  I post it for two reasons:  One, it’s a nice, thoughtful article on a topic we’ve discussed much here regarding adapting books or comics for the big screen, and Two, it mentions specific books/comics we’ve talked about much here, namely The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the Watchmen.  Plus, our very own Matthew/Korg is mentioned.  See if you can find where! ;)

Feel free to share your thoughts on the article here.  Enjoy!

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Heroes and Villains

by Dave the Longwinded on April 1, 2009

I wouldn’t normally cite anything from Entertainment Weekly as an especially interesting analysis of things literary, but the most recent issue (3 April 2009) has a piece by Jeff Jensen exploring modern America’s fascination with villains and significantly flawed heroes (“Heroes and Villains”).  This passage struck me:

The current state of heroism can be summed up in a word: Lost.  Lke the castaways of ABC’s mystery drama, today’s would-be heroes are so flawed or messed up, they need to be saved from themselves before they save anyone else.  Some succeed, like Iron Man’s ethically murky Tony Stark.  But many others — Anakin Skywalker; the meth-cooking cancer dad on Breaking Bad [an AMC drama]; almost anyone on HBO, Showtime, or FX — find it more empowering to embrace the dark side.  These characters reflect a culture that feels powerless and pissed: We desparately want good to triumph over evil, but we can’t staunch our doubts that good is up to the task.  [click to continue…]

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Dr. Manhattan: “The Superman exists…”

by Dave the Longwinded on March 9, 2009

Figure 1. Dr. Manhattan working to isolate a "gluino."

“…and he’s American” (IV.13).  His backstory comes straight out of a Marvel comic, a company famous for its heroes who are made so by exposure to some form of atomic energy.  He begins life as Jon Osterman, a kid predisposed toward ingenuity.  He becomes a physicist, working in high-tech tests for the federal government concerning “intrinsic fields.”  An accident in the lab one day disintegrates his body, but leaves his consciousness intact, which begins reassembling its parts:

It’s November 10th now.  There is a circulatory system walking through the kitchen…

November 14th: A partially muscled skeleton stands by the perimeter fence and screams for thirty seconds before vanishing…

Really, it’s just a question of reassembling the components in the correct sequence…  (IV.9) [click to continue…]

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Watchmen at The Hog’s Head

by Travis Prinzi on March 7, 2009

Watchmen opened this weekend.  Dave has been blogging away on the graphic novel, and he and I are trying to arrange a time to record a podcast about it.  Here are Dave’s posts so far:

Also, Pete Peterson at Rabbit Room links a Motion Comic of Watchmen.

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Rorschach: Watchmen’s Abyss

by Dave the Longwinded 03.04.2009

Rorschach (aka Walter Kovacs) is easily one of the more (in)famous characters from Alan Moore’s world.  And Dave Gibbons’s visual take on him has become iconic to many comic fans.  Figure 1 demonstrates the film’s desire to be as faithful to his character design as the medium allows.  The look clearly seems to draw from [...]

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Watchmen: Getting Started

by Dave the Longwinded 02.24.2009

Preliminaries (Updated)
Update:  Here’s another link that appeared online:  IGN’s “Top Ten Most Memorable Moments from Watchmen“.
First, here are a couple of links to online “annotated” versions of Watchmen (the book):

Watching the Detectives:  The site bills itself as “an internet companion” to the book; it’s akin to a Wiki, although the layout is different from anything [...]

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Who will watch Watchmen?

by Dave the Longwinded 02.21.2009

I had intentions of posting material on Watchmen in the coming weeks, with the movie’s coming release.  But, Red Rocker brought the subject up in the comments section of a post, so I thought I’d give everyone some material to mull over, now.
Watchmen is a radical departure from much of the material we’ve examined here [...]

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The Snaped Crusader (#2): The Rise and Fall of Harry’s Nemesis

by Dave the Longwinded 02.18.2008

by Dave
A standard literary trope is to set characters against each other, playing one’s personna in relationship to another. Typically, we find the “arch”-nemesis, especially in adventure or heroic stories. The main character is opposed by a primary antagonist, and the juxtaposition of these characters reveals something about one or both to the [...]

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