Monday, January 19, 2009

Book Review: Watchmen (Absolute edition)

Seeing that the Watchmen movie is coming out soon, I figured I had to put up a review on the book. It is the first time I'm reading the Watchmen and it took me 2 days.

Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons has created a wonderful dark mystery thriller. This isn't really a superhero story since only Dr Manhattan has supernatural powers. That really surprised me a bit because why are there costume adventurers? The best part has got to be the storytelling, unveiling of events and character interactions. At the end of each chapters includes back stories like letters, biography (The Owl), newspaper reports from inside the comic world.

For the Absolute edition, John Higgins is colorist and he has done a superb job at recoloring the whole series. The atmosphere created is really great and feels like the war is looming all the time.

So what's different about the Absolute edition, compared to the hardcover or the paperback? Well, this book is huge and that makes the panels easier to read. The paper quality is thick, white and reproduces the colour brilliantly. Right at the end, there's lots of extra goodies like writeup on the creation process of Watchmen and its characters, some pages of scripts and rough panels developed for them, unpublished promotional posters and other stuff.

Comic readers should seriously consider getting the book. It's currently the top seller on Amazon.

I would recommend reading the book first before watching the movie. It's really hard for movie adaptations to be better because books offer subtlety so much better.

Oh, and check out Watching the Watchmen, which is making-of for this book.

Special thanks to Jonrob for providing the book for this short review.



Absolute Watchmen

Absolute Watchmen

Absolute Watchmen

Absolute Watchmen

Absolute Watchmen

Absolute Watchmen

Absolute Watchmen

Absolute Watchmen

Absolute Watchmen

Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.

Country-specific Amazon links for this book:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de

1 comment:

  1. I have "Watching the Watchmen" as i'm a fan of the art. I may get this also.

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