[In the following review, Harris-Fain praises Moore's narrative technique in Watchmen, noting that the work is “a fascinating experiment in broadening a limited genre which deserves wider attention that it has received.”]

The year is 1985: Nixon is still president, America won the Vietnam War, cars run on electricity, and super heroes are real. It is the existence of these heroes that Alan Moore uses for the premise of this alternative history, which appeared between 1986 and 1987 as a twelve-issue series from DC Comics.

Moore, whose earlier credits include 2000 A.D. and DC's Swamp Thing, teamed with artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins to produce this starkly realistic book. Critics noticing recent trends in the comics industry cite Watchmen as one of the examples of increasing maturity in the field.

This “maturity” can be found at several levels in Watchmen, particularly where theme, style, and intellectual content are concerned. This reflects an industry which in the past decade has attempted to upgrade its image, along with changes in comics which have allowed greater freedom for creators; more important, Watchmen reveals Moore's talent. Other comic book writers have done much to raise expectations for the medium through their work but their comics have often failed to transcend the level of sophisticated adventure and realistic storytelling. In my opinion Watchmen possesses a depth which makes it unique.

This uniqueness, however, depends not so much upon characterization or the story as it does upon the way the story is told. In addition to dialogue, Moore uses captions to provide multiple points of view—a narrative technique also employed by Frank Miller and Matt Wagner, among others. Another fairly innovative technique is the insertion of “outside” texts, such as a retired hero's autobiography or magazine articles. These are appended to each chapter (originally, the first eleven issues of the comic) and supply further perspectives upon the characters and action. One of these texts is mixed with the story itself: a pirate comic, read by one of the supporting characters, which parallels both the words and images against which it is juxtaposed.

There are many verbal and pictorial bridges in Watchmen, relating two strands of plot or providing the transition to flashbacks revealing the historical context of this world and its heroes. Through these flashbacks the book manages to cover more than half a decade, even though the story occupies only two and a half weeks.

More interesting is the way Moore often returns to an event but through a different point of view by means of his multiple narrative technique. This shift in perspective is usually physical as well (a feat available to film but not to standard “literary” texts), and Gibbons deserves admiration for the way he makes these scenes work. In returning to events and changing the emphasis, along with the narrative technique involving multiple points of view, Moore shows the reader a many-faceted world where reality is more a matter of perspective than universal truth. In other words, Watchmen uses substantially innovative techniques both unique within comics and in comparison with other narrative types to raise epistemological questions in addition to telling a story.

Despite the sophistication of Watchmen, the book has enjoyed popular success as well as critical acclaim, although both have occurred within a limited scope. It's possible to find Watchmen in a trade paperback edition at Waldenbooks or B. Dalton, for instance, but most readers are already faithful comics devotees rather than proselytes. Comic books have gained new respect in recent years thanks to efforts such as Watchmen, yet the audience for the most part remains the same—i.e., comics readers in their teens and twenties.

Consequently, the various manifestations of Watchmen are likely bought by collectors instead of general readers or libraries, even though the trend of limited series (themselves a recent phenomenon) appearing as trade paperbacks and even as hardcover books allows libraries to build a collection of comics whenever they choose to begin, solving earlier problems of storage and cheap copies. (Another fortunate development in comics lately is the selective use of better-quality paper instead of the standard pulp; all editions of Watchmen, including the original comics, are on improved paper.)

Moreover, comics publishers seem to be catering to the collectors, although a hardcover edition is available to a wider audience through the Science Fiction Book Club. However, the standard edition of the book is the trade paperback, published in 1987 after the series was completed in July. It sells for ＄14.95.

There is also a deluxe hardcover edition of Watchmen, slipcased and bound in leather with a ribbon bookmark and over forty pages of notes and artwork by Moore and Gibbons pertaining to the development of the book. Published in 1988 by Graphitti Designs with DC Comics, this is a collector's item: I paid ＄60 for it, and by now it may be worth more. Again, this is a new development in comics: there are also deluxe hardcover editions of Matt Wagner's Mage (although the review, Extrapolation, Winter 1988, claims no hardcovers exist), and other special editions designed for collectors but available to libraries or general readers abound.

Nevertheless, Watchmen is not simply a comic book phenomenon, but a fascinating experiment in broadening a limited genre which deserves wider attention than it has received.