T3h B3$t3$t p13z of P0pz0r Pr0duzd?

If you felt fucked after Spider-Man 3, think about how the geeks feel right now about "The Watchmen."

I remember when "the Watchmen" came out and people were going ape shit about it. Well, kind of. I was just a kid, and we heard about "The Watchmen" but it looked like a cheap rip off of real superheroes, and we didn't get for a second what "The Watchmen" was supposed to be. Back then, a graphic novel was just a really long comic or an anthology bound in a single edition. Plus, when you're busy bowing to Batman, there's no time for something like "The Watchmen."

Now, if you want to boost your geek cred and impress your friends, you can pick up a copy of it at your local bookstore or have a more exciting time finding your local comic shop and watching the roll their eyes as they show the hundredth person where to find Alan Moore's masterpiece. The blurbs make it sound like the most amazing shit you'll ever read. I don't know if it really is "the greatest piece of popular fiction ever produced," but it is a very unique experience as far as literature goes, and I think that's why professors at top-ranking universities are finally discovering it and sneaking it into the canon 23 years after its birth.

The guy who directed the atrocity that was "300" is directing the live-action film adaptation of the graphic novel that defined the term "graphic novel," and people who worship the book are already crying bloody murder. Magazines are calling it the hardest comic to adapt to film, and fanboys everywhere are making claims akin to those of Islam over those Danish comic strips a few years ago.

I have to say that it is a pretty amazing work of art. It achieves what many novelists try to accomplish with words alone, switching modes of narrative. If you read it, you'll know what I mean because it isn't 'just' a comic, and it isn't just a 'graphic novel'; it's a novel like any other except it happens to use some of the newest and most exciting tools to tell a story. And the story is compelling.

I'd recommend reading it before the movie comes out, though. If it sucks, you might end up like all those people who never had a chance to imagine what a Balrog looks like before Peter Jackson decided for them.