We’ve heard over and over from other beloved comic book heroes that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Instead, Watchmen presents an uncomfortable scenario, a too-real reflection of how personal responsibility tends to evaporate in the presence of that great power.ĭespite how much Watchmen bucked comic book trends at the time, it had the weight of one of the medium’s biggest names behind it. Writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons begin with what seems like an everyday superhero story: a murder mystery, a band of heroes coming together, an all-powerful blue-skinned being, and humanity’s existence hanging in the balance.īut slowly, Watchmen unfurls into something much darker and keener: a story that, while rife with ostentatious characters like mad genius Ozymandias and all-powerful Doctor Manhattan, is much more grounded in showing us what it’s like to be powerless. Watchmen hinted that it wouldn’t be anything like the superhero comics status quo before a reader even started leafing through an issue. No characters appear on the covers, nor are there any fight scenes or scintillating imagery to lure the reader in, a break in ranks for superhero comic books.

The title, written in all caps, traces up vertically on the left, near the spine. The covers for all 12 issues of Watchmen - released just over 30 years ago, from 1986 to 1987 - balk at this. But superhero comic book covers tend to be superheroes striking poses fighting evil or supervillains striking poses fighting good, with a certain strategy to their art: According to the 2017 annotated version of Watchmen, because of the way comic books are displayed in an overlapping pattern in comic book stores, the trick is to push titles toward the center and keep the imagery to the center and right of the cover page. Watchmen was never meant to be a regular superhero comic book, and it made its intentions clear right from the jump.Īverage readers might not notice what makes Watchmen so different.

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