HBO's 'Watchmen' totally misses the point of Watchmen

Comic books are an incredibly diverse medium, covering genres as disparate as humour and horror, sci-fi and superheroes. Created by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons, Watchmen was conceived as a vehicle for publisher DC's recently acquired assortment of Charlton Comics characters – Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, Peacemaker, Nightshade, The Question, and Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt. Yet Moore's and Gibbons' plans to use the familiar imagery and language of superheroes to explore real-world political tensions and social pressures were considered so radical – the text covers the impact costumed heroes have on geopolitical history, against a then-pertinent backdrop of impending nuclear conflict between the United States and Russia, and involves rape, murder, genocide, and a Nazi sympathiser as a central figure – that they would have rendered these potentially marketable characters unusable by the end of the story. In 2009, cinemas hosted director Zack Snyder's almost shot-for-shot adaptation of the comic – slavishly accurate but for a major change at the end – and in 2012, the comics division launched Before Watchmen, a range of nine mini-series set prior to Moore and Gibbons' series. Moore's scripts delved back to the 1940s, establishing precursors to the 1980s Watchmen characters, establishing heroic legacies – the Nite Owl of Watchmen is the second to use the name – and deeply exploring connections between the characters.