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It's a jungle out there

Minor flaws don't take away from this--the ultimate collection.

A long road ahead

Or why you never want to play a tree in a school production of The Wizard of Oz

Jeff Kinney Strikes Again! PYP Funny!

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes (Who watches the watchmen?)

The brainchild of writer Alan Moore ("Swamp Thing," "V for Vendetta," "From Hell") and artist Dave Gibbons ("Rogue Trooper," "Doctor Who," "Green Lantern"), "Watchmen" was originally published by DC Comics in twelve issues in 1986-87. Moore and Gibbons won the Best Writer/Artist combination award at the 1987 Jack Kirby Comics Industry Awards ceremony. The central story in "Watchmen" is quite simple: apparently someone is killing off or discrediting the former Crimebusters. The remaining members end up coming together to discover the who and the why behind it all, and the payoff to the mystery is most satisfactory. But what makes "Watchmen" so special is the breadth and depth of both the characters and their respective subplots: Dr. Manhattan dealing with his responsibility to humanity given his god-like powers; Nite Owl having trouble leaving his secret identity behind; Rorschach being examined by a psychiatrist. Each chapter offers a specific focus on one of the characters, yet advances the overall narrative.

Beyond that the intricate narrative, Moore and Gibbons offer two additional levels to the story. First, each chapter is followed by a "non-comic" section that develops more of the backstories, such as numerous excerpts from Hollis Mason's autobiography "Under the Hood" or Professor Mitlon Glass' "Dr. Manhattan: Super-Powers and the Superpowers," an interview with Adrian Veidt, or reports from the police files of Walter Joseph Kovacs. Second, almost every issue has scenes from "Tales of the Black Freighter," a comic-book being read by a kid near a newsstand, which offers an allegorical perspective on the main plot line.

"Watchmen" certainly nudged the comics industry in the right direction towards greater sophistication and intelligence, although a full appreciation of its significance is always going to be lost on the bean counters. The Book Club Edition of "Watchmen" offers the teaser: "He's America's ultimate weapon . . . and he's about to desert to Mars." As a representation of the work as a whole that description is simply stupid, especially since it is followed by a glowing recommendation by Harlan Ellison that concludes "anyone who misses this milestone event in the genre of the fantastic is a myopic dope." If you ever spent time reading and enjoying any superhero comic book, you will appreciate what you find in "Watchmen."

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Die Laughing, or: Our World in Greasepaint

Illustrator Brian Bolland has touched the limits of what can be done in the mainstream comic medium, surpassing even Dave Gibbons in *Watchmen* (that undisputed *Citizen Kane* of graphic novels). I've counted roughly 230 individuated facial expressions in this book's 48 pages, every cameo and minor character penciled, inked, colored, storyboarded into life, the backdrops brimming with nuance and articulated detail, the coloring as lurid and suggestive as Steven Soderbergh's color-coded triple-narrative in *Traffic*. The Joker alone is granted 62 articulated facial expressions (19 during the course of his pre-Joker psychodrama), ranging from bright, sportive lunacy (each facial shot individuated) to an almost genuine grief and sadness towards the end. The spinal-paralytic Barbara Gordon, who appears in only 26 panels, is granted a dramatic reality remarkable given her minor role in the story. The portrait of her staring in bemused horror at the Joker (standing in the hallway with Hawaiian shirt, camera, and revolver), while the scene turns "orange" in anticipation of bloodshed, is the most memorable facial expression I've ever seen rendered in a comic book. As a close runner-up, the Joker's hang-dog look on page 41, as he asks Batman sincerely, "Why aren't you laughing?", is the only *convincing* moment of unfeigned sadness the Joker has ever given us, in any comic book.

The blocking and visual narrative is perfectly tuned, each panel calculated for sleek momentum and smooth dramatic economy. *The Killing Joke* is eye-candy from start to finish, and is over before you know it, leaving one to ponder the perfection of its design. As someone who once aspired to write for comics, I've meditated long and hard on how it might be "one-upped," while remaining in a commercial format, resisting the temptation for self-indulgent surrealist excess (i.e. *Arkham Asylum*). Needless to say, I've yet to come up with a solution.

There is no other comic book that's done so much for the Joker, that's made him as "real," as darkly appealing a figure (almost sentimentally so). The difficulty of representing so hyperbolic a personality, and making him seem refreshingly "human," is a testament to Moore's script and Bolland's incredibly articulated visual style. The duality between Batman and the Joker is a psychodrama I'm always eager to see re-rehearsed, but by 1988, in *The Killing Joke*, the leitmotif may have reached its limit. Even *Arkham Asylum* couldn't overtake it. (And let's face it, *The Dark Knight Returns* just prostituted the Joker for an uninteresting subplot.)

In the mad bacchanalia of our postmedia funhouse-culture, the Batman has become obsolete, an aging revenant that cannot keep up with the Joker's all-too-knowing take on media pathology and American theme-park culture. As Mark Dery points out, the Joker may be (superficially anyhow) Deleuze-Guattari's ideal schizophrenic, a de-centered whirlwind of morbid indulgence who never records "the same event in the same way." As the Joker confesses over the funhouse P.A. system: "Something like that happened to me, you know. I...I'm not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another. If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha!" But now I'm just being cheeky. The reader must decide for himself whether I am "overstating" the Joker's case.

Moore's rough draft for the Joker was Edward Blake (a.k.a. the Comedian) in the aforementioned *Watchmen*. But despite the dramatic achievement of that character appearing drunk in Moloch's bedroom, confessing terror and obsolescence to his old enemy, Moore's Joker is far more chilling, far more suggestive, and as I mentioned, dangerously appealing. The duality between this harlequin in toxic greasepaint and that billionaire-criminologist who "dress[es] up like a flying rat" reminds me of a certain line from Cervantes: "Don Quixote is a madman and we are sane, yet he goes away sound and laughing while your Grace is left here, battered and sorrowful. I wish you would tell me now who is the crazier: the one who is so because he cannot help it, or he who turns crazy of his own free will?" Batman turns crazy to put himself on the wavelength of the villains he tracks and combats, and the consequences for him (and those he protects) are real and immediate.

If Moore's thesis is correct, then it would seem that Batman *needs* the Joker, if not to rehabilitate him, well, then, simply to *contain* him, as a talisman held up in uneasy triumph against the impending waves of fin-de-millennial mass dementia. In one scene, the Joker boasts: "I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day." John Wayne Gacy would be proud.

*The Killing Joke* succeeds because it is able to cloak its pretentions in a commercial format, allowing us to put our guards down just long enough for Moore and Bolland to hit us hard. It may seem silly to try and "intellectualize" comics, but as the medium develops, a more sophisticated criticism is required to play catch-up with its images and explorations, and Alan Moore has long been a figurehead worth catching up to.

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Best "comic" I have ever read