watchmen

Chris Knight's avatar

What. The. F?!??!?

(I came waaaaaay too close to writing out that full word, folks. Only the better angels of my nature intervened, but not nearly enough.)

“It’s a joke. It’s all a joke.”

Except it’s not. This is actually happening.

Why? Well from the story at IGN’s Comics News…

“It’s our responsibility as publishers to find new ways to keep all of our characters relevant,” said DC Entertainment Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee. “After twenty five years, the Watchmen are classic characters whose time has come for new stories to be told. We sought out the best writers and artists in the industry to build on the complex mythology of the original.”

DiDio and Lee don’t have an effin’ clue, do they? Makes me wonder if they’ve even read Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic graphic novel. Me, I’ve read Watchmen at least 200 times since ...

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If I can keep being a good boy until Christmas maybe Santa will put this in my stocking…

Even though I already own the Director’s Cut (and have recommended it to everyone instead of the original that came out in theaters earlier this year) I am already lusting badly for Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut. /Film has the succulent details about the DVD and Blu-ray releases. Here’s what you get on five discs for the DVD…

Disc 1:
– Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut Film
– Audio Commentary with Zack Snyder and Dave Gibbons

Disc 2: Over 3 Hours of Special Features
– The Phenomenon: The Comic that Changed Comics
– Real Super Heroes, Real Vigilantes
– Mechanics: Technologies of a Fantastic World
– Watchmen: Video Journals
– My Chemical Romance Desolation Row
– Under The Hood
– Story Within A Story: The Books of Watchmen

Disc 3: Digital

...
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Chris Knight's avatar

A week ago Watchmen arrived on DVD and Blu-ray. You have a choice between getting the original theatrical edition (when the movie debuted back in March) or you can opt for the Director’s Cut. There’s also another version coming out later this fall that incorporates the “Tales of the Black Freighter” animated material into the movie itself. I’ll most certainly be buying that when it comes out (‘cuz I’m such a Watchmen nut)…

…but if you’re wondering which version to get now, the Director’s Cut stands as the definitive adaptation of the Watchmen graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Don’t get me wrong: I loved Watchmen when it came out in theaters (read my original review here). But having watched the Director’s Cut three times now, I cannot help but believe that had the studio execs let Zack Snyder release his original vision from the getgo, ...

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Alan Moore’s Watchmen is rightly considered to be the most praised graphic novel of all time. And the long-awaited motion picture adaptation has introduced it to many who had never read it before (it’s currently the #1 selling book on Amazon.com). But have you ever wondered what Watchmen would have been like if it were written by someone else?

Like, say… Stan “The Man” Lee, co-creator of Spider-Man and Hulk and the Fantastic Four, among many other characters?

Comic book writer and commentator Kevin Church recently revisited his 2006 article “Just Imagine… Stan Lee Creating Watchmen“. It is a howling scream of a hilarious read!

Now all we need is for someone to show us what Watchmen would have looked like if Jack “The King” Kirby had drawn it 😛...

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Good friend, artist extraordinaire and fellow geek Phillip Arthur has turned in an EXCELLENT review of Watchmen. How excellent is it? I’m not ashamed to say that his is perhaps better written than my own. I went into Watchmen as one who has probably read the book way too many times, and that does affect a reviewer’s mind. Phillip casts a considerably more objective eye on the movie… and still gives it some praise:

Did I love Watchmen? No, but it is growing on me, and I most definitely want to see it again (in IMAX, if possible). There are moments during which the film was pure magic to me, and had I felt that sense of wonder the whole time this film would have garnered a higher rating. My friend Matthew commented that if the movie does nothing more than bring new readers to the graphic novel

...
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More than two hundred.

That’s the number of times that I’ve calculated I’ve read Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen since 1990.

I was on the cusp of sixteen in January of that year when someone suggested Watchmen. Said it was “the greatest graphic novel ever.” Amid the cultural hangover that was post-Burton Batman I took a chance, plunked down seventeen bucks for the Watchmen trade paperback and went home that cold and gray Sunday with my new book in tow. My appetite for comics as mature storytelling had been whetted the previous summer when I read Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns…

…but nothing could have possibly prepared me for Watchmen.

I read it after swim practice every afternoon that week. By Wednesday I was digging into it during free time in Spanish after I’d finished my assignments (along with Ender’s Game, Watchmen was the ...

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I have seen the Watchmen movie.

Six more words that I thought I would never write…

The unfilmable book has been filmed.

Want six more?

One of the greatest adaptations ever.

This has been an unbelievably awesome night. I’m just now getting in from it all. Going to crash, and then some business during the first half of the day and hopefully after that, I’m going to get to catch Watchmen again. And then, I’ll set to work on the movie review that I had also once thought I would never, ever be writing.

But for now: it’s very, very good.

(And I even totally dig that particular alteration to the ending.)

More later…...

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