Well, a lot of people apparently.  A few days ago on my way home there was a clean cut bald black man in a turtleneck sweater reading a very beat-up copy of the Watchmen paperback.  I thought it was a tad bit strange since he didn’t really look like the type of guy that would be into reading “low brow” literature.  Today while browsing AltonBrown.com I checked out his reading list out of curiosity.  Lo and behold at the very bottom is Watchmen.

What is it about this book that it still holds water 20 years later (something that only a handful of mainstream comics have done – and no Kingdom Come isnt one of them.)  The political overtones are quite obvious and echo the current situation in the United States.  Using violence solving the problems of violence being a futile endeavor is a universal theme that  has been used in many works of fiction.  Watchmen just seems to ring clear to a generation of people that either grew up when comics were still relevant in the mainstream (The early 1960s Spider-Man, Hulk and X-Men titles for example) or grew up in their second hand media success thanks to big budget films.  Many will scoff at American or British comics as trash while browsing the Manga section for a new harlequin style romance.  There is a place for social and political commentary in comic books but after almost 100 years the art form has only seen a slight few take this idea into a successful mainstream publication.

Ask yourself this; When was the last time you saw a book as striking as Watchmen that didn’t involve an already established (superhero) character.