Chatterbox- Comic Books

Watchmen > Kingdom Come.

Except the art. Alex Ross is soooo good.

I love how you're all pretending any of this is anything less than completely subjective.

Isn't that the point?

Well, you could make an objective argument about the art in the two stories.

I dunno.

Also, Kingdom Come is now on the holdshelf. I shall retrieve it tomorrow after school.

I re-read Kingdom Come recently and find myself incredibly baffled as to why it's regarded so highly; it's got pretty art, and a lot of in-jokes, but the story is really preachy and one-sided. It bothers me how all the characters in Magog's camp are inept psychopaths, and the problem with the old heroes is that they've lost touch with the way they used to be, as opposed to losing touch with the way things actually are.

In comparison to Watchmen, it pales because Kingdom Come only has any real substance for fans of superhero comics who are familiar with the " Thou Shalt Not Kill " debate and get the art references, whereas Moore and Gibbons' work operates on many more levels.

Precisely!

"In comparison to Watchmen, it pales because Kingdom Come only has any real substance for fans of superhero comics who are familiar with the " Thou Shalt Not Kill " debate and get the art references, whereas Moore and Gibbons' work operates on many more levels."

I have to call Watchman not needing as much reference. If you aren't familiar with most of the tropes being deconstructed, or many of the subtler aspects being nodded to, one can easily get confused by it.

Compared to Kingdom Come though? Watchmen requires some degree of familiarity with superheroes in general, and to some degree cold war logic, Kingdom Come requires intimate familiarity with the DCU and 90's comics in particular. A far more restricted subset.

I'm still calling that. You seem to be putting the backstory as more important to getting it than it actually is.

When i first (I've since re-read it) read Kingdom Come my sole exposition to the super hero genre had been a few spider-man comics as a kid, an old paperback of Silver Age Superman stories, Watchmen and Winick's run on Exiles, as well as the occasional cartoon.

Watchmen was infinitely more accessible. Which I, as mentioned, read before Kingdom Come and thus had even less of materiel to draw on.

Watchmen is a self-contained story while Kingdom Come is a DC story. The second requires much more specific knowledge than the former.

No, that only means you found it that way. You can't use just your own personal experience as an objective metric.

Thus far you've been the one making assertions. I've made indications of why Watchmen is far more accessible (it requires only "general" rather than "specific" knowledge, and is far less bound by the circumstances of it's particular time and particular media) the art-style, while not as "pretty", is also much more "clear" and the lettering and coloring is far less clashing which makes it much easier to read. (Kingdom Come has a particular fondness for putting colored narration boxes on similarily colored backgrounds)

Now, Watchmen *is* the more complex story (in that it has more narrative threads) but it is ultimately self-contained in a way that Kingdom Come is not (in fact, KC's overwhelming use of references and DC discussions are really hard for a new reader because you have no idea what is relevant or not, there's really nothing irrelevant in Watchmen while a lot of Kingdom Come is simply Continuity Porn)

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, feel free to argue that KC is the better work of art (I'll disagree, but that's a different discussion) but to claim that it is easier and requires less background knowledge is just silly.

edited 17th Dec '09 2:17:24 AM by Arilou

I've not read Kingdom Come (and I don't know if I could bring myself to read it— I strongly dislike Alex Ross' art and I disagree with everything Ross stands for re: superhero comics). If the book had an artist I liked there's a good chance I'd be willing to give it a try; I'm very much aware that there's a natural bias on my part where that book's concerned.

On the topic of Watchman, I think the story from beginning to end is ambiguous enough that different people can take from it something different. My father, for example, after seeing the film compared Veidt's plan to the kind of the stuff they do on 24. I don't think Watchman favors one side over the other at all or presents the mass murder as inherently "right".

All I know is Moore made it clear you're not supposed to condone Rorshach. I feel sorry for him, because he was mentally ill, but I don't think the things he did were ok. He killed bad guys at every opportunity — not just the Complete Monsters but the lame villains too - ex. the "dropped him down an elevator shaft" anecdote.

That's just my thoughts. Obviously YourMilageMayVary

"EDIT: Don't get me wrong, feel free to argue that KC is the better work of art (I'll disagree, but that's a different discussion) but to claim that it is easier and requires less background knowledge is just silly."

I wasn't. I was just calling that it requires the specific references you claim.

All the knowledge Kingdom Come really requires can be gleaned from a few episodes of Justice League, or even the Superfriends.

And that's still significantly more than what is required for Watchmen.

Even though Watchmen can be very hard for non-comic readers to comprehend at first, those who tough it out will find a story that's very relevant to the real world of Cold War America, as well as any parallels one can find with the real world of today. Watchmen is the sort of comic that can be talked about in literature classes, because of all the historical references, storytelling nuances, and ethical quandaries.

Kingdom Come isn't really much more than a decent Alt. U Superman story with a bunch of mythology gags thrown in by comparison.

WE NEED A NEW TOPIC

Has anyone else here checked out Earth X? So, so good. There's a lot of comparisons drawn to Kingdom Come (or so I heard), but I like Earth X a lot more.

Anyone read the Artemis Fowl adaptations? They're pretty good stuff.

I never liked Earth X. It just never felt particularly meaningful.

So, new train of thought, were is a particularly good place to hop in if I want to get into Batman comics?

^ I read The Killing Joke first, then The Long Halloween. 'Cos the The Dark Knight was allegedly inspired by them, I admit.

I also read Batman Year One, I can't remember the order I read them in though.

edited 17th Dec '09 11:26:25 PM by melloncollie

Anyone else here besides me ever read Northlanders?

Also, anyone read the new Max Brooks graphic novel?

"And that's still significantly more than what is required for Watchmen."

Knowing most of the major comics or superhero tropes is significantly less than few episodes? You make it seem as though Watchmen can be understood out of the blue.