If it weren't for them, I wouldn't have seen today's Doodle, stopped everything that I was doing (cough applying for real jobs, of which there are very few cough) in order to write this post.
Marvelous Google is celebrating Hermann Rorschach's birthday by displaying an interactive Doodle that allows users to share what they see in their very own ink-blot test! How cool is that? Cooler still, Google and Wikipedia wanted me to know right away that yes, Rorschach does look remarkably like Brad Pitt!
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| From TotallyLooksLike.com |
Anyway, I'm fiddling with the ink blot test and I'm seeing whales, and kissing women, and stingrays and then a face-- which immediately called to mind one of my most favouritest books of all time: Alan Moore's Watchmen. If you haven't read this masterpiece of wordcraft and artistry, STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND READ IT THIS INSTANT. I mean it. Drop your pens, turn off your thingamabobs, put your toddlers in their kennels (or whatever cushy cages children live in??) and RUN to your local used bookstore, your closest library, the nearest Chapter's, or at very least the closest Wifi signal that can get you to BookDepository.
Watchmen was the first graphic novel I ever read. For those who have never trespassed into the genre before, Watchmen is a great place to start. Part comic book, part novel and part
scrapbook, Watchmen is less about the
pictures and more about the words. You
aren’t able to settle into the pictures-in-boxes format before the writers
throw in a few full pages worth of text; an “excerpt” from an essay, or a
police records file. So for a literature
major who was expecting a worn out superhero-shtick, I was pleasantly
surprised.
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| From Fanpop.com |
But it’s an even better book for
comic book junkies to get a taste of classic literature. Watchmen
includes passages from Shelley and Blake’s poetry, and quotations by Nietzsche,
Jung and Einstein. It also is one of Time Magazine’s 100 best novels:
evidence, I think, that graphic novels are becoming a more appreciated and
recognized form of literature than they have been in the past.
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| From DCComics.com |
What’s
really impressive about Watchmen is
that it is incredibly introspective. It
actually analyzes the superhero formula, and pulls itself far away from the
expected. As if Superman ever sat down to
think about why he wears blue tights. You’ll still see classic art and costumes, but
what I preferred was the frank exposing of the underground superhero, the
retired superhero, and, the non-super hero: everyday people who become
vigilantes, à la Batman. And for those
of you who need a dose of cliché, there’s even a hilarious Star Wars-esque
moment of “I am your father”, followed by the hilariously drawn out “Nooooooooooo!”
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| Writer Alan Moore, photo from Wired.com |
It’s a well rounded philosophical action-drama that never once gets dull and makes you use your brain in new ways. But be warned: start with the book, not with the film.
Gotta book it!
xox
-Jem
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