Favourite Comics covers - 'Watchmen'

This week features another series written by Alan Moore, this time with art by Dave Gibbons and colourist, John Higgins.

‘Watchmen’ was first published monthly by DC in the mid-1980s before they released a single-volume edition.

In his story proposal, Moore had initially planned on using characters from Charlton Comics, which had been purchased by DC.

The story progression, however, would have left many of those characters unusable for future stories, so Dick Giordano, DC’s managing editor, convinced Moore to create original characters for his story.

Moore gives us an alternate history where actual superheroes existed in the 1940s and 1960s.

While their presence led to America winning the Vietnam War, interestingly, the Watergate scandal was not exposed.

The story is set in 1985 with America edging toward World War III with the Soviet Union.

Former superheroes have either retired or are working for the government, but any freelance costumed vigilantes have been outlawed.

The story opens with the murder of a government-sponsored superhero, which brings the retired superheroes, the main cast, out of retirement, and the story focusses on their personal lives and the moral dilemmas they’re forced to face as uncomfortable issues are uncovered.

‘Watchmen’ is quite the eye-opening read, and subsequent re-reads haven’t lessened the story’s impact for me.

I did watch the film of the same name and, while a couple of aspects were enjoyable enough, overall, I wasn’t impressed with it.

While each cover is attention-grabbing, these are my favourites, including issue #1 at the top.