If you have not read Watchmen, I suggest you should. After watching the movie first, which is sometimes a huge mistake, I decided to read the graphic novel. Usually, the book is always better than the movie.. and this time I wasn't disappointed. The graphic novel was fabulous, and actually I borrowed this novel from my boyfriend almost a year ago and have not since returned it..and I am not really one for a superhero story.. I mean no offense to anyone, but superheroes are really overrated nowadays, I mean they have like 50,000 movies and remakes and basically the same plotline over and over again. Personal trauma leads to vigilantism with or without superpowers, and I expected Watchmen to be exactly the same. But unlike The Justice League or the Fantastic Four or whatever your preference is, and side note: Those were Marvel comics, unlike DC, which is what this novel is from.. and personally I believe DC to be a bit edgier than Marvel. But Watchmen is set in an actual place, in an actual time frame that people have lived through ( The Cold War). The 'superheroes' are really just average, a businessman, a soldier, a scientist, etc. They are people we can relate to. However, what I was surprised to learn is that, I fell in love with the characters and the story just as much in a graphic novel that I do in a book. Whereas with a movie, you sometimes feel like you are on the outside looking in but we get everything like it would feel 'real', books sometimes we feel more actively participated in because we have to imagine what the settings and characters are, and at least in a book, you have to turn the pages. However graphic novels are like this brilliant marriage of the two. The words and pages from a book meets the pictures and timing of a movie.
A unique experience, if you ever get a chance, try looking over the graphic novel while you watch the movie, it's pretty neat.
As far as graphic novels go, different from movies, we are only given three method by which the story is communicated to us, words, pictures, and frames. We all know words and pictures are a given... Words in a graphic novel literally "tell" you what is going on in the story. They can also illustrate dialogue, 'sounds', and thoughts of characters and objects. The words in Watchmen, while not only telling the story, but also can give insight into a character, and help us understand them better, from one character in the novel, Rorschach, we see his true personality through his diary that he keeps throughout the novel. The diary sets the mood and at times the setting for the next scenes.
Pictures in the graphic novel literally "show" us what is happening to the main characters. Pictures, unlike regular novels are essential to graphic novels because, they can sometimes give us a better understanding and grasp on the story more than words can. With pictures, we can see the expression on someone's face. the clothes they wear, posture, and physical mannerisms. The graphics, I think help us make the character more real, if we have a picture of them, then we have something tangible, an icon.
The pictures in Watchmen not only show you visually what is happening, but they are used in Watchmen to get a reaction from the reader. For example, the transition Dr. Manhattan faces as he is transformed from his human body into a superhuman is not as effective if you just describe what he now looks like, you get a sense of just how alien and different he is if you actually see him. Alternatively pictures also show us the other characters' reactions to Dr. Manhattan as well, and it just isn't good enough to say that Dr. Manhattan felt isolated from everyone else. We must see people yelling and being frightened, see the looks on their faces, their menacing and disgusted, awed expressions.
Frames in graphic novels, not only show how time passes, but also a kind of grouping of events, a provide a sense of movement for the reader, so not only are they reading but also following the flow of the frames, which makes for a smoothly constructed story.
Frames in Watchmen actually helped me keep interested in it, they story was told very nicely and though at times, not easy to follow.. but the timing helped keep things in line and told in a specific way, building and then explaining.
Without words, we wouldn't be able to have an in depth story, and be fully aware of the sequences of events. Without pictures, there would no undercurrent, we like pictures, colors and illustrations and the like, and in graphic novels they enhance what the words already tell us, but even still we can look into the graphics and lose ourselves within the story.
Without frames, though, the transitions would be chaotic, frames balance and support the text and pictures and make us understand that each frame is a different "scene". In many ways, and in slight contrast to what I said before, graphic novels are like movies themselves, without actual 'sounds' or 'movement' but combined with words and frames, we can create the illusion of motion picture without a camera.
<--The original Watchmen clockwise from top : Dr. Manhattan, Night Owl, Rorschach, The Comedian, Silk Spectre, Ozymandias
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Watchmencharacters.jpg
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