Watchmen as Literature

Watchmen as Literature
Author: Sara J. Van Ness
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2014-11-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0786490071

Watchmen has been hailed as the quintessential graphic novel and has spawned a body of literary criticism since its 1986 initial appearance in installments. This work explores the graphic novel's reception in both popular and scholarly arenas and how the conceptual relationship between images and words affects the reading experience. Other topics include heroism as a stereotype, the hero's journey, the role of the narrator, and the way in which the graphic layout manipulates the reader's perception of time and space. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Watchmen and Philosophy

Watchmen and Philosophy
Author: William Irwin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2009-05-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0470730307

Alan Moore's Watchmen is set in 1985 and chronicles the alternative history of the United States where the US edges dangerously closer to nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Within this world exists a group of crime busters, who don elaborate costumes to conceal their identity and fight crime, and an intricate plot to kill and discredit these "superheroes." Alan Moore's Watchmen popularized the graphic novel format, has been named one of Time magazine's top 100 novels, and is now being made into a highly anticipated movie adaptation. This latest book in the popular Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series peers into Moore's deeply philosophical work to parse and deconstruct the ethical issues raised by Watchmen's costumed adventurers, their actions, and their world. From nuclear destruction to utopia, from governmental authority to human morality and social responsibility, it answers questions fans have had for years about Watchmen's ethical quandaries, themes, and characters.

Watchmen Companion

Watchmen Companion
Author: Ray Winninger
Publisher: DC Comics
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2019-12-24
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1779502400

The Watchmen Companion collects for the first time long-out-of-print, rarely seen material based on the landmark comic book series! The Watchmen Companion includes the Watchmen: Watching the Watchmen and Watchmen: Taking out the Trash game modules, along with the Watchmen Sourcebook, released in 1990 as part of the DC Heroes role-playing game-sanctioned by Alan Moore, including illustrations by artist Dave Gibbons created especially for the game, and expanding on the mythos of the Watchmen series. This volume also collects pages from Who's Who in The DC Universe featuring the Watchmen and Minutemen characters, The Question #17 (guest-starring Rorschach!) and a page from the rare, promotional DC Spotlight #1 from 1985 that marked the very first appearance of the Watchmen cast in print!

Watchmen (2019 Edition)

Watchmen (2019 Edition)
Author: Alan Moore
Publisher: DC Comics
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2019-06-18
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1779501838

Soon to be an HBO original series, Watchmen, the groundbreaking series from award-winning author Alan Moore, presents a world where the mere presence of American superheroes changed history--the U.S. won the Vietnam War, Nixon is still president, and the Cold War is in full effect. Considered the greatest graphic novel in the history of the medium, the Hugo Award-winning story chronicles the fall from grace of a group of superheroes plagued by all-too-human failings. Along the way, the concept of the superhero is dissected as an unknown assassin stalks the erstwhile heroes. This edition of Watchmen, the groundbreaking series from Alan Moore, the award-winning writer of V For Vendetta and Batman: The Killing Joke, and features art from industry legend Dave Gibbons, with high-quality, recolored pages found in Watchmen: Abslolute Edtion.

The Watchman in Pieces

The Watchman in Pieces
Author: David Rosen
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2013-06-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0300156642

DIV Spanning nearly 500 years of cultural and social history, this book examines the ways that literature and surveillance have developed together, as kindred modern practices. As ideas about personhood—what constitutes a self—have changed over time, so too have ideas about how to represent, shape, or invade the self. The authors show that, since the Renaissance, changes in observation strategies have driven innovations in literature; literature, in turn, has provided a laboratory and forum for the way we think about surveillance and privacy. Ultimately, they contend that the habits of mind cultivated by literature make rational and self-aware participation in contemporary surveillance environments possible. In a society increasingly dominated by interlocking surveillance systems, these habits of mind are consequently necessary for fully realized liberal citizenship. /div

Considering Watchmen

Considering Watchmen
Author: Andrew Hoberek
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2014-10-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0813572967

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen has been widely hailed as a landmark in the development of the graphic novel. It was not only aesthetically groundbreaking but also anticipated future developments in politics, literature, and intellectual property. Demonstrating a keen eye for historical detail, Considering Watchmen gives readers a new appreciation of just how radical Moore and Gibbons’s blend of gritty realism and formal experimentation was back in 1986. The book also considers Watchmen’s place in the history of the comics industry, reading the graphic novel’s playful critique of superhero marketing alongside Alan Moore’s public statements about the rights to the franchise. Andrew Hoberek examines how Moore and Gibbons engaged with the emerging discourses of neoconservatism and neoliberal capitalism, ideologies that have only become more prominent in subsequent years. Watchmen’s influences on the superhero comic and graphic novel are undeniable, but Hoberek reveals how it has also had profound effects on literature as a whole. He suggests that Watchmen not only proved that superhero comics could rise to the status of literature—it also helped to inspire a generation of writers who are redefining the boundaries of the literary, from Jonathan Lethem to Junot Díaz. Hoberek delivers insight and analysis worthy of satisfying serious readers of the genre while shedding new light on Watchmen as both an artistic accomplishment and a book of ideas.

Watchmen: The Deluxe Edition

Watchmen: The Deluxe Edition
Author: Alan Moore
Publisher: DC Comics
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2013-06-04
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 140124551X

In an alternate world where the mere presence of American superheroes changed history, the US won the Vietnam War, Nixon is still president, and the cold war is in full effect. WATCHMEN begins as a murder-mystery, but soon unfolds into a planet-altering conspiracy. As the resolution comes to a head, the unlikely group of reunited heroes-Rorschach, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias-have to test the limits of their convictions and ask themselves where the true lineis between good and evil. In the mid-eighties, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created WATCHMEN, changing the course of comics' history and essentially remaking how popular culture perceived the genre. Popularly cited as the point where comics came ofage, WATCHMEN's sophisticated take on superheroes has been universally acclaimed for its psychological depth and realism. WATCHMEN is collected here in deluxe hardcover, with sketches, extra bonus material and a new introduction by series artist Dave Gibbons.

Hench

Hench
Author: Natalie Zina Walschots
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2020-09-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062978594

“This book is fast, furious, compelling, and angry as hell." -- Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author The Boys meets My Year of Rest and Relaxation in this smart, imaginative, and evocative novel of love, betrayal, revenge, and redemption, told with razor-sharp wit and affection, in which a young woman discovers the greatest superpower—for good or ill—is a properly executed spreadsheet. Anna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help and she needs a job. Working for a monster lurking beneath the surface of the world isn’t glamorous. But is it really worse than working for an oil conglomerate or an insurance company? In this economy? As a temp, she’s just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called “hero” leaves her badly injured. And, to her horror, compared to the other bodies strewn about, she’s the lucky one. So, of course, then she gets laid off. With no money and no mobility, with only her anger and internet research acumen, she discovers her suffering at the hands of a hero is far from unique. When people start listening to the story that her data tells, she realizes she might not be as powerless as she thinks. Because the key to everything is data: knowing how to collate it, how to manipulate it, and how to weaponize it. By tallying up the human cost these caped forces of nature wreak upon the world, she discovers that the line between good and evil is mostly marketing. And with social media and viral videos, she can control that appearance. It’s not too long before she’s employed once more, this time by one of the worst villains on earth. As she becomes an increasingly valuable lieutenant, she might just save the world. A sharp, witty, modern debut, Hench explores the individual cost of justice through a fascinating mix of Millennial office politics, heroism measured through data science, body horror, and a profound misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.

Go Set a Watchman

Go Set a Watchman
Author: Harper Lee
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2015-07-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062409875

#1 New York Times Bestseller “Go Set a Watchman is such an important book, perhaps the most important novel on race to come out of the white South in decades." — New York Times A landmark novel by Harper Lee, set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch—“Scout”—returns home to Maycomb, Alabama from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise’s homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town, and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past—a journey that can only be guided by one’s own conscience. Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of the late Harper Lee. Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humor, and effortless precision—a profoundly affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird, but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth, context, and new meaning to an American classic.