I was lucky enough to read WATCHMEN about a year after it first came out, the night before my 16th birthday. I read the entire thing that day, the second half of it in one 10pm-to-dawn sitting. When I was finished, I was just stunned. Literaly stunned. I just sat there for awhile with the book in my hands, looking at the picture of Alan Moore on the back cover, my teenage brain running red-hot, my thoughts and emotions whirling around in a frenzy.

It’s difficult to explain just what a seismic shift WATCHMEN was back in ’86. No one, and I mean no one, had attempted anything of it’s scale, ambition, and psychological complexity in comics. No one has since, either, to be honest. It’s been ripped off again and again,in every entertainment medium,in big ways and in little ways, from the stupid HEROES to the overated THE INCREDIBLES, and still none of the imitations ever even come remotely close to capturing what made the original special.

No matter how good the movie is, and the early peeks are encouraging, it’s still going to be nothing but a hollow shadow of the original graphic novel, which remains of the major cultural signposts of 1980’s America and one of the greatest works of popular fiction ever written. If you have never read WATCHMEN before… it is The Real Deal, the rare work that really does live up to the hype, and you are in for something truely special.