I don’t quite know how to articulate my feelings about Watchmen. There’s a certain disconnect between my reading experience of the story and my overall feelings about it. Watchmen is an intricate multi-layered story. Sitting down and unpacking Watchmen’s Nixon-era Cold War politics and seeing how that was seamlessly melded into the history of superheroes was fascinating. Moore and Gibbons’ obvious love for superheroes and clear purpose to their storytelling made Watchmen satisfyingly cerebral.

Watchmen also genuinely challenged how I viewed sequential art and its capacity for rich, thematic storytelling. The art in this book alone is some of the most beautiful imagery I’ve ever seen. I particularly adored the way Dave Gibbons used the sequential nature of comics to create propulsive momentum. His use of split-screen storytelling and montage made the comic’s dynamic action come alive. I also have to credit John Higgin’s colouring as an instrumental factor in creating the mood and atmosphere of this story. His striking, bold colour palette is seared into my brain.

But, despite loving so much about Watchmen, I still found it particularly draining to read. Watchmen demands a lot from its readers. Holding all of its lore and backstory in my head while navigating the shifts in storytelling styles was often a slog. So, in the end, while Watchmen wasn’t always entertaining it was cumulatively a good read.