Monday Bookworms: Watchmen

Watchmen, by Alan Moore and David Gibbons

Back in the late fall/early winter when Jon and I were going to the movies pretty much every week before every movie we saw a preview for the movie Watchmen. After seeing like the 5th preview for Watchmen I finally turned to Jon and said, "I think I would like to see this movie...". I mentioned this to both my Uncle Joe and my future brother-in-law Josh and they recommended that I read the book first. I won't lie I was skeptical about a graphic novel but I was also excited about branching out and experiencing a whole new genre of reading! My Uncle Joe lent me the book and thus I began....

Watchmen is the story of costumed/masked super heroes. At the beginning of the book we learn that The Comedian has died and another masked man Rorschak is trying to find out who is behind his murder and why. As the novel unfolds we learn the hisotry of the costumed/masked super heroes and what happened to them. The novel goes between the present and the past to unravel the mystery of who would be behind getting rid of the costumed/masked super heroes and why.

There are 12 chapters in all and each chapter consists of about 25-30 pages of graphic novel and then 4 pages of "regular book writing" which provides the reader with information about the person featured in that chapter or additional "historical" information about the time that was discussed.

I will admit that it definitely took me 2 chapters to really get into a rhythm of reading this book because it's just so different. You have to train your eyes to read the bubbles in each box, take in the pictures in each box (especially because sometimes the writing & the picture do not directly correlate) and process the information to make the story in your head. Once I got into a rhythm though I was turning the pages until the end. I actually ended up finding the graphic part more interesting and easier to read in the end then the journal entries at the end of each chapter.

Overall, I would rate this book 4 stars. I enjoyed it, it was very different from anything I am used to, and I thought the story was interesting. I don't think that I'll become a die-hard graphic novel fan but I could definitely see myself picking one up every now and again for a change.

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Have you ever read a graphic novel? If so, which one? Did you like it?