HBO is bringing out a remixed version of the Watchmen and it brings back some very fond memories.

When I first saw Zack Snyder’s Watchmen I had never heard of Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman. I had seen Snyder’s flashy, extreme slo-moed, over the top 300 which, if nothing else, was an enjoyable watch. I did enjoy watching Watchmen too, but unlike 300, Watchmen was a revolutionary movie for me as it introduced me to the genre of graphic novels.

I hardly read any comics growing up. My introduction to superheroes was mainly through television, which I immensely loved. Many of my childhood memories are about cartoons. But even as a child I was mature enough to understand that the cartoons (and by extension comics) were just fun and were not to be taken seriously (with the exception of Batman, The Animated Series). This opinion was further strengthened by the then superhero movies like spiderman and hulk (again, with the exception of Dark Knight).

But Watchmen was something else. I do not know of a book that takes superheroes so seriously, that deconstructs the entire genre without taking it to nihilism. Though it is set in a fictional dysfunctional world, the world in it is not indistinguishable from our very own and so the dilemmas its characters suffer from feel very much real. From Rorschach highly moral uncompromising worldview to the Comedian’s villainously narcissistic character, from Ozymandias megalomania to Dr. Manhattan’s ascendancy to godhood; these all feel like something that our world might go through if it were to tip a little beyond a point of sanity. Within the confines of their self-constructed moral boundaries, these characters struggle to make sense of meaning and relevance of their existence while being aware of the existence of a god amongst them.

In retrospect, I understand why it was not a good idea to turn Watchmen into a movie. A movie is fleeting, it is a spectacle. A book stays with you, it lingers, it’s a companion. As you read the words in the speech bubbles you are speaking the words in your own mind, and doing so you become the character, and you are becoming all the characters, all at once. A movie lets you empathize with the characters, a book lets you identify with them. A movie is evocative, a book is revelationary. A movie is an experience, a book is a journey. The only way to understand and appreciate Watchmen is to absorb it, to carry it with you thereafter.

I have since spent some time reading several other graphic novels by Moore, Frank Miller, and Neil Gaiman, and most recently the Umbrella academy.

I also think that graphic novels are designed for a very different kind of audience. These novels tend to be brutal and extremely incisive and morally ambiguous. By contrast, the screen adaptations are usually mollified versions meant to keep things digestible for the general public. I especially remember being severely moved by Chapter 5 in Moore’s V for Vendetta, where V drives Prothero crazy by torturing him in his dungeon but in the movie he’s simply poisoned. Even V’s central message of anarchy is modified to anti-establishment to make it more palatable. Even GoT, for all its gore and twists and bloody politics, is nothing more than a roller coaster ride in comparison.

I wonder if anybody can truly adapt a graphic novel to the screen while being true to the essence. Perhaps one day.