Separated At Birth?

Commander USA


and The Comedian from Watchmen:


Rats, I wasn't the first to notice this.

I'm looking forward to the Watchmen movie about to come out. It's hard to believe it's been over 20 years since the "Illustrated Novel", i.e. comic book appeared. I bought it in the late 80s as a gift for my sister and co-blogger. But then I read it, then passed it around to friends. It never did make it to my sister. Sorry sis!

Last time I saw my copy was about 8 years ago. I read it again, then gave it away to a friend. What struck me was how dated much of it seemed. Jonah Goldberg is spot-on:

Much of the political vision of Watchmen – and Watchmen was a deeply political piece of work – is horribly outdated today and was, in the grand scheme of things, just plain wrong when it came out. Moore intended the book to be at least in part a biting indictment of Reagan and Thatcher and the Cold War in general. He saw the book as explicitly anti-Reagan, if not necessarily anti-American (Reagan doesn’t actually appear in Watchmen).

...

But the existential angst and moral nihilism that serves as the spine of the book isn’t a product of Reaganism, but of the left’s ill-advised, ahistoric, and self-indulgent response to Reaganism. And, oh yeah: let the word go forth that Reagan’s vision proved correct barely a few years after Watchmen’s release. Meanwhile, Moore’s political vision – in part because it was so wrong – seems like 80’s kitsch today, which may be one of the reasons so many people believe the book is untranslatable to the big screen.

Still, I'm interested to see how they've tried.

Sis says: Well, it's the thought that counts!