Sequential Art and Hollywood Pact!

What if some of the finest works in literature are shelved in comics section where one would fear to be spotted and mistaken for a giant kid? I must eventually confront my onlooker. So, I call him forth and point to him the tag at the back of the cover that reads “Suggested for Mature Readers,” and The Comedian molesting Silk Spectre from the pages of Watchmen or Dream Lord cutting Lucifer’s wings off from Season of Mists, and read from Rorschach's Journal in Watchmen, “The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'Save us!' And I'll look down, and whisper 'no.'” Now you may wonder if such materials are thus shelved. Yes, I am positive, and I am thinking a great deal telling the shop guys to put such titles in the top shelf where it is unreachable to a kid except, of course, if he be a giant. Graphic Novel, the pioneer of the medium Will Eisner suggested it to be called, so they now call it: a genre directed towards adult readers.



Hollywood’s pact with this medium is history in itself. A work that serves as storyboard to the other no surprise must be in its hunting A-list. Alas! But there was something devised by the god of that art form that made it so unique left the other yet cracking the code. When discussing the nature of comic art in an essay written in 1985, Alan Moore asked: Rather than seizing upon the superficial similarities between comics and films or comics and books in the hope that some of the respectability of those media will rub off upon us, wouldn't it be more constructive to focus our attention upon those ideas where comics are special and unique? Rather than dwelling upon film techniques that comics can duplicate, shouldn't we perhaps consider comic techniques that films can't duplicate?

Nearly all of Moore’s works translated to films have turned out to be tragedy, From Hell to Constantine, excepting V for Vendetta to an extent. Now, his seminal work Watchmen is being filmed, a work that once was said loudly to be un-filmable by screenwriters. This Graphic Novel—a heavy meditation on the pitfalls of masked vigilantism, impending nuclear warfare, amorality of so-called heroes, and the corruptibility of power set in the backdrop of an alternative America that had won Vietnam War; one giant twisted beast containing in itself brilliant panel-to-panel transitions, red herrings, tongue-in-cheek characterization, overlapping storytelling tricks—for all my worthy bets must take a trilogy to flesh out faithfully on silver screen. To do it in one film, and even portray half the brilliance the original work has, should be nothing short of a miracle and a stroke of genius.



For now, I must wait and watch.