• southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    20 days ago

    It’s an incredible work.

    A heads up though. A lot of what’s in The Watchmen was original, genre breaking, and changed the way comics are thought about as well as written.

    Which means that someone coming across it now can end up being disappointed in how ununique it feels. A lot of what makes it great was copied by other writers afterwards, so when you run across a trope, be aware that there’s a good chance the trope started there.

    • jacksilver@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      This is a great forward for anyone diving into watchmen. I personally think it still holds up really well though.

    • Hugin@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Casablanca is incredibly clichéd now. But it’s what started a lot of those clichés.

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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        19 days ago

        Oh well, not everything is going to work for everyone. But, at least you have a point of reference for it now, which is always worth the time spent, imo.

        What was it that made you put it down?

        • Kyle Judd@lemmy.autism.placeOP
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          19 days ago

          The lady’s mother showing her daugther pronography in a comic book and the usual subverted take on the superhero genre.

          • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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            18 days ago

            I mean, it was the subversion, we just talked about this!

            That said, I don’t like Citizen Kane for similar reasons. Oh, it’s a foundational work you say? That’s great that better films have been built off of it.

            Silk Spectre is supposed to be both a commentary on the Silver Age objectification of superheroines and a reference to these btw:

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tijuana_bible

          • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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            19 days ago

            Fair enough, for surr.

            Fwiw, the Watchmen is the source of much of the subversion that we’ve gotten used to now. At the time, there had never been anything that went so deep into the essence of hero comics and dug up the reasons why they existed, then turned them upside down before destroying them.

            I always wish that people that came into comics after that era could have a chance to experience not just the Watchmen with naive eyes, but all the other stuff like vertigo, milestone, and image that really broke the idea that comics had to be geared to kids and/or only simple subjects. It really was a time where everything got torn apart and rebuilt.