The reason Watchmen warrants a lecture is because it is the prime example of the perfect marriage of the script and the visual representation of the dreams presented in the text. Mssrs. Moore and Gibbons achieve storytelling perfection in terms of pacing, cast of characters, originality, coloring, directing and camerawork, super hero noir, sex, humor, horror, murder, suspense, mystery, irony, tragedy and some form of triumph. It is a tour de force of the comics medium and a genuine graphic novel. As I was reading Watchmen as it was being released in 12 parts, it was like watching a movie and the medium was becoming perfectly visualized screenplays.

Thank you very much for this. Learned a lot.

I enjoyed the lecture...thanks

So, this school made every student buy this book? How can I get schools to require that people buy my books?

i like how his tie is on backward.

Would you consider that Dr. Manhattan could be both a character and a reader of the graphic novel? He perceives time as a series of fixed moments which already exist, past, present and future. I interpret his understanding of time like the panels of the graphic novel. They are already drawn even if we aren't currently reading them. They still exist, even if (from our perspective) they haven't happened yet. They are there waiting for us to read/experience. The panels we have already read are behind us, but they still exist. I first read the book in 2017, or as Dr. Manhattan might put it: It is 2017. I am reading Watchmen for the first time. It is 2020. I am watching a video on KZfaq about a book that changed my way of reading a form of media which I spent most of my life believing to be juvinille and without greater substance than hollow entertainment. It is 1986. A graphic novel is being released which will change the medium forever. It is 2017. Dr. Manhattan is on Mars explaining the time it takes for the light from stars to reach our eyes. We only see their old photographs. I realize that these words and images were written over 20 years ago, I am only seeing their old photographs. Dr. Manhattan can see the future (You're about to tell me that you're sleeping with Daniel), but he can't change it. It has already happened, he just hasn't arrived there yet (You're sleeping with Daniel?). Like Dr. Manhattan, I can flip to the end of the book and see a giant squid monster destroy New York. I have that power. Like Dr. Manhattan, I cannot prevent this. It has already been drawn. It has already happened. I just haven't arrived at that point in the story yet. Like Dr. Manhattan, I am shocked at the end of the story, but I care little for the characters. They are fictional. They are beneath me. Less than I am. When I finish the book I close it. I consider writing a shitty short science fiction story about an astronaut who dies after being pulled into a black hole, but due to its gravity, his ghost cannot escape, and though God knows he is stuck there, He dares not attempt to rescue him as He knows that he too could never escape. Like Dr. Manhattan, I leave the world of Watchman with the intention of creating life elsewhere.

When you read a comic your brain must animate between the panels. Novels have a theatre of the mind. Movies are fully animated. Comics are in between. You have these panel checkpoints and you have to fill in the space in between. It's interesting. It's not as creative as a novel. It's not as passive as a movie. It's in between, in a weird way. Your mind has to engage, but must do so in a very predictable way. Look at the people who make comics. It's not coincidence that they pick this medium.