“Who Watches The Watchmen”
I remember being required to read the 1986 graphic novel The Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons for a Comic Book Literature class. I was never much of an American comic book reader until I took the class and then especially realized how profound it was in shaping our views of superheroes while reflecting back to us parts of our human condition that, at the time, were not otherwise shared in mainstream media.
What was reflection?
First, we must consider that as people, we do not live in binary just as no one person is purely introverted and purely extroverted. Black and white just does not exist in our world. The series The Watchmen set a precedence to challenge the idea of good versus evil by having many of the main superheroes embody a variety of different philosophies. One example is Rorschach who is a rough-around-the-edges, morally shrewd type of guy whose vigilante style form of justice is not palatable for the form of super-heroism that America is used to. He is almost an “anti-Batman” if you will: poor, abused upbringing, revenge-seeking, violent, vulgar, unkempt. The only thing they both have going for them are being white men with trauma.
The disruption that this character is important because we are getting the character of a man who is someone we have met, known, or even dealt with. In the series, we see the phrase, “Who watches the Watchmen”. This points to how as people, no matter our status in life, even super heroes need heroes.
I have thus far, began writing about writing your own story, but sometimes, we deal with our incendiary capacity to err. Therefore, by embracing that part of ourselves, we embrace the most complete versions of ourselves to grow what is there rather than expect what is not.
Perhaps this post is about self-care.
Perhaps this post is a post about embracing realism.
Perhaps it is about believing in the unbelievable within the realm of what we know we are while challenging what we think we may know.
It’s all a trip because we don’t live in black and white. I think I, like any story character, is trying to see where this all goes, whether there may be someone looking for me or not.
