Fresh Loaf

A testament to both the popularity of the original Watchmen graphic novel and the excitement over the new movie version (released today and reviewed here) is the sheer quantity of Watchmen homages and parodies in cyberspace. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it since Snakes on a Plane-mania of 2007, which seemed to abruptly end when Snakes on a Plane finally opened. One of the cleverest, most widely-diseminated Watchmen riffs I’ve seen is this clip, which envisions the story as a 1980s kiddie cartoon:

Other video parodies include a pretty good one that spoofs “Two and a Half Men” and a weaker sitcom riff, “I Love Rorschach.”

More esoteric quips: Comics Critics wonders “What if there were a Watchmen video game?” Boingboing envisions “Watchpeanuts,” as if the comic book were drawn by Charles Schulz of “Peanuts” fame. The New Yorker magazine’s on-line cover contest re-imagines its mascot Eustace Tilley as “Rorschach Tilley.” Someone Photoshopped the official poster into Swatchmen. Plus I have to mention that several years ago, “The Simpsons” made a passing reference to “Watchmen Babies: V For Vacation.“

Update: I’ll add more as they come up, like Ombudsmen (Popeye as Rorschach). Slate wonders What if Woody Allen directed Watchmen? (Kind of tepid, but Slate seems to hate the movie and the graphic novel alike.)

(Thanks to Allison Keane for drawing my attention to some of these.)

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LOVE IS DA BOMB: Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman, left) and Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson)

Upon its publication in the mid-1980s, the 12-issue graphic novel Watchmen earned a reputation for being “the Citizen Kane of comic books.” That’s not just hyperbole: Both works feature multiple narrators trying to piece together an enigmatic death, although in Watchmen, the ensemble happens to be former masked heroes, sleuthing against a backdrop of impending nuclear war.

Like Orson Welles, Watchmen writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons drew on seemingly every stylistic innovation in their respective media and shot them with lightning, raising the bar for a popular but increasingly sophisticated art form.

Zack Snyder’s long-awaited film adaptation of Watchmen is not a classic worthy of Citizen Kane. Thankfully, it’s not a bomb on a par with Howard the Duck, either. It comes close to being something like A Clockwork Orange for superhero movies — a dystopian satire marked by meticulous craftsmanship and sluggish pacing, of incongruous music and horrific violence, of heavy-handed sermonizing and astonishing imagery.

(more…)

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