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Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. Originally published by DC Comics as a monthly limited series from 1986 to 1987, it is now available as a trade paperback, which popularized the “graphic novel” format.
To date, Watchmen remains the only graphic novel to win a Hugo Award, and is also the only graphic novel to appear on Time Magazine’s 2005 list of “the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.”
Watchmen is set in 1985, in an alternative history United States where costumed adventurers are real and the country is edging closer to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. It tells the story of a group of past and present superheroes and the events surrounding the mysterious murder of one of their own. Watchmen depicts superheroes as real people who must confront ethical and personal issues, who struggle with neuroses and failings, and who — with one notable exception — lack anything recognizable as super powers.
Watchmen’s deconstruction of the conventional superhero archetype, combined with its innovative adaptation of cinematic techniques and heavy use of symbolism, multi-layered dialogue, and metafiction, has influenced both comics and film.
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This oversized hardcover collection comes with an oversized price tag, but is worth the $75.00 for any serious fan of Watchmen. Each page of art has been restored and recolored by WildStorm FX and original series colorist John Higgins and approved by Gibbons to appear as originally intended.
Additionally, this hefty tome includes 48 pages of supplemental material produced exclusively for the Graphitti Designs Watchmen hardcover edition and not seen since their original publication.
Included therein is a cornucopia of rare and historically valuable treasures, including samples of Moore’s Watchmen scripts, the original Watchmen proposal, Gibbons’s conceptual art, cover roughs, and more. Just don’t spill anything on it.
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Click on a photo to enlarge |
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This 20th Anniversary Watchmen tribute book from Italian publishers Lavieri is a 240 page trade paperback containing twelve essays and new illustrations from a wealth of comics talent including Giuseppe Camuncoli, Eduardo Risso, Jay Stephens, Dave Hitchcock, Gary Spencer Millidge, and Chris Weston.
It was put together by, smoky man, co-editor of the book Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman, with all net profits from the book to be donated to AIMA, the Italian Alzheimer organization.
The two images on the top left show an original pencil sketch by Dave Gibbons and the finished cover which is the sketch painted over by artist Gabriele Dell’Otto. The bottom left images show the only two original illustrations I could dig up that appear within the book.
If you’re an insane completist of all things Watchmen, or you can read Italian, you can read more about it on the Lavieri Comics web site. You can also read the introduction to the book by writer Michael Moorcock over at smoky man’s blog.