Review of Watchmen

What can unite humanity? This is a question pondered by philosophers and leaders throughout history and, appropriately, one that Alan Moore deals with in this gritty take on the neurotic life of a superhero. And what a cast of heroes they are—Dr. Manhattan, Rorschack, Ozymandias—all illustrated and colored in a 1940’s retro style captured brilliantly by Dave Gibbons and John Higgins. Their lives are complicated, messy, and with the Golden Age of the superhero behind them, purposeless. Rorschack never gave up his dual life, and never would. Which, despite his slight insanity, is oddly comforting. But sometimes it takes a madman to see the truth that’s coming—a force so unknowably evil that it will inevitably bring humanity to the brink, pivoting on one final question: will we run away and live in fear, clinging to the last bits of our short lives, or will we unite?