Time in the Gutter: Temporal Structures in Watchmen

KronoScope ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 51-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Barnes
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Nuclear Accident ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Sequential Art ◽  
Time Magazine ◽  
Personal Nature ◽  
Temporal Consciousness ◽  
Temporal Structures ◽  
Alan Moore

AbstractIn 1986 writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons produced a graphic novel called Watchmen. In 2005 Time Magazine produced a list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present. To many surprised readers a comic book was among the top ten. It was Watchmen. The story of former crime-fighters brought out of retirement to solve a world destroying mystery is told with a ruthless realism. The style is cinematic with repeating motifs, flashbacks and overlapping subplots. One of the characters in Watchmen, Jon Osterman, as a result of a nuclear accident, receives typical superhuman powers; more importantly to the character he begins to live in a quantum consciousness in which events occur simultaneously rather than sequentially. In chapter four of Watchmen, Moore and Gibbons brilliantly use the sequential art medium to express the subjective and personal nature of that consciousness. This paper will explicate and analyze the way they simulate Jon Osterman's non-temporal consciousness.

Computing Literary Surplus Value: Alan Moore and the Density of the Comic Book as Graphic Novel

2021 ◽  
Vol 139 (1) ◽  
pp. 195-223
Author(s):  
Alexander Dunst ◽  
Rita Hartel
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Text And Image ◽  
Specific Element ◽  
Surplus Value ◽  
Graphic Narratives ◽  
Textual Content ◽  
Alan Moore

Abstract The term graphic novel has increasingly functioned as a catalyst for understanding comic books as an emergent literary genre. This article focuses on one specific element within this historical process: the claim, made by artists such as Alan Moore, that graphic novels are characterized by greater formal complexity, or density, than serial comics. These claims are evaluated by combining computational text and image recognition of a corpus of 131 graphic narratives with sociological metadata on production and circulation. The results show that Moore’s own book-length comics, in particular Watchmen and V for Vendetta, rank among the densest graphic narratives in the sample in both their visual and textual content. Graphic memoirs, in contrast, only show an increase in textual complexity. With Pierre Bourdieu, the article understands complexity as a social and aesthetic strategy that aims at increasing the cultural capital of comics creators. At the same time, the article contextualizes computational results against the background of a changing marketplace for comics, in particular the decline of serial comics, the shift towards digital printing, and increased access to book distribution. This analysis shows that graphic narratives pursue both literary and popular aesthetic strategies, challenging Bourdieu’s account of a clear opposition between profit and prestige in cultural production.

scholarly journals A INTERTEXTUALIDADE COMO ELEMENTO FUNDADOR N'A LIGA EXTRAORDINÁRIA

2017 ◽  
pp. 204
Author(s):  
Ismael Bernardo Pereira
Keyword(s):  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Alan Moore

O presente artigo propõe a intertextualidade como um elemento fundamental na obra de Alan Moore, presente através de diversas abordagens que resultam numa reavaliação dos elementos referenciados. Ao analisar como esse elemento se manifesta em sua obra como um todo, pretende-se igualmente argumentar que na sua graphic novel A Liga Extraordinária, em específico, a intertextualidade tem um papel de elemento fundador, devido à complexidade e diversidade de seu uso. Como bibliografia central, utilizam-se os conceitos de intertextualidade, de Júlia Kristeva, e gêneros do discurso, de Bakhtin.

scholarly journals Tweeting disaster: an analysis of online discourse about nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (05) ◽  
pp. A02 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nan Li ◽  
Heather Akin ◽  
Leona Yi-Fan Su ◽  
Dominique Brossard ◽  
Michael Xenos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Power ◽  
English Language ◽  
Tohoku Earthquake ◽  
Nuclear Accident ◽  
Online Information ◽  
Environmental Implications ◽  
The 2011 Tohoku Earthquake ◽  
Engagement Strategies ◽  
Information Tools ◽  
Fukushima Daiichi

Of all the online information tools that the public relies on to collect information and share opinions about scientific and environmental issues, Twitter presents a unique venue to assess the spontaneous and genuine opinions of networked publics, including those about a focusing event like the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Using computational linguistic algorithms, this study analyzes a census of English-language tweets about nuclear power before, during, and after the Fukushima nuclear accident. Results show that although discourse about the event may have faded rapidly from the news cycle on traditional media, it evoked concerns about reactor safety and the environmental implications of nuclear power, particularly among users in U.S. states that are geographically closer to the accident site. Also, while the sentiment of the tweets was primarily pessimistic about nuclear power weeks after the accident, overall sentiment became increasingly neutral and uncertain over time. This study reveals there is a group of concerned citizens and stakeholders who are using online tools like Twitter to communicate about global and local environmental and health risks related to nuclear power. The implications for risk communication and public engagement strategies are discussed.

scholarly journals (Anti)Fascism and Superhero Comics: An Anthropological Examination of Innovativeness in Comic Books as Exemplified by "V for Vendetta"

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miloš Zarić
Keyword(s):  
Comic Books ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Semiotic Model ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Semantic Dimension ◽  
Alan Moore ◽  
The Way ◽  
V For Vendetta

The paper analyzes the V for Vendetta comic books, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd. These volumes are graphic novels whose characteristics place them in the literary genre of the critical dystopia, but they have also been associated with the genre of the superhero comic, which, according to a number of authors including Alan Moore, is inextricably linked to the ideology and practice of the political right, which in its extreme form assumes the form of fascism. The way that fascism is treated in that work, as well as in two other comics discussed in the paper (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns), is linked to the way in which the process of creativity/innovativeness functioned in the context of the revision/deconstruction of the superhero comic book genre in the 1980s, both on the collective (intra-genre) and the individual level, on the level of the thought structure of the British writer Alan Moore. Using the structural-semiotic model of analysis, the paper seeks to fathom the logic of this deconstruction procedure "broken down" into the three comic books discussed in the paper, with particular emphasis on the analysis of V for Vendetta, with the aim of establishing its "hidden", connotative semantic dimension. The study adopts a modern view of the comic book according to which the essence of this medium, which distinguishes it from other narrative and graphic forms of expression as well as from film, can be recognized in the specific, sequential way of combining its visual and narrative components, thus generating meanings whose interpretation depends on the intention of the author but also on the view of the reader.

Danger, Disease, and Death in the Graphic Urban Imagination

2019 ◽  
pp. 174-216
Author(s):  
Benjamin Fraser
Keyword(s):  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Alien Invasion ◽  
Urban Imagination ◽  
Alan Moore ◽  
The City ◽  
Jack The Ripper

This chapter explores how diverse storytelling modes invoke the modern discourses of urban threat. The Eternaut, created by writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld and illustrator Francisco Solano López, stages an alien invasion in the city of Buenos Aires. Dengue by Rodolfo Santullo and Matías Bergara tells a story of invasion and disease transmission in Montevideo. Urban detective literature and the mystery/occult story are fused in Jacques Tardi’s The Extraordinary Adventures of Ade`le Blanc- Sec, whose action unfolds in Paris. Created by Japanese artist Tsutomu Nihei, Blame! fictionalizes the verticality and immense scale associated with Tokyo in a visual dystopian tale. Adapting a now discredited theory on the Jack-the-Ripper serial killings, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s graphic novel From Hell links the slums, architecture, and patriarchal violence of Victorian London. Fábio Moon, and Gabriel Bá’s Daytripper treads fearlessly into serial confrontations with mortality in and beyond the context of São Paolo.

Villain Becomes Hero

2019 ◽  
pp. 137-144
Author(s):  
Allan Metcalf
Keyword(s):  
Young Woman ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Role Model ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Fascist Regime ◽  
Alan Moore ◽  
Second Coming ◽  
V For Vendetta

Another diversion is necessary to acknowledge the return of Guy Fawkes in the present day. No, it’s not his Second Coming, but there is awareness of Guy Fawkes as a role model for modern-day activists and protesters. It has come particularly from Alan Moore and David Lloyd, creators of the graphic novel “V for Vendetta,” a serial first published as a book in 1988. It imagines a ruthless Fascist regime in England in the 1990s, opposed by a lone rebel who calls himself simply V, and who always wears a mask that is a simplified adaptation of the sketches of Guy Fawkes back in the 1600s, but with a smile. The resemblance to Fawkes is emphasized at the very beginning, where unlike Fawkes he casually blows up the houses of Parliament after reciting “Remember, remember, the fifth of December” to a young woman he has just rescued from the police. The story became a movie with Hugo Weaving as V and Natalie Portman as the rescued girl Evey. The masks were used by Occupy protesters and others early in the 21st century. Rather than an arch-villain, V and the mask now signal opposition to government tyranny. This chapter briefly cites Guy Fawkes’s 19th-century adaptations and references, including the beginning of Thomas Hardy’s 1888 novel, Return of the Native.

Men of Steel? Rorschach, Theweleit, and Watchmen's Deconstructed Masculinity

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (01) ◽  
pp. 104-107
Author(s):  
Mervi Miettinen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sexual Dysfunction ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Alan Moore ◽  
The Way

Watchmen(1987), written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, is a 12-part graphic novel that portrays real-life superheroes in a fictional United States of the 1980s. An alternate universe where ordinary people without superpowers were inspired by superhero comics and took on the crime-fighting in tights in the 1940s, the comic portrays an America vastly different from our reality. Since its publication more than two decades ago, the comic has been the subject of extensive study due to its breathtaking narrative structure as well as its acute deconstruction of the superhero genre itself. Indeed, one of the text's most brutal deconstructions comes from the way it addresses superheroic masculinity, from the misogynistic vigilante Rorschach to the emasculated ex-hero Nite Owl. Through its cast of male heroes,Watchmendeconstructs the superhero genre by rewriting masculine tropes such as vigilantism and patriotism and by exposing the inherent contradictions within these gender-bound tropes from the fascist undercurrents of violent patriotism to the often-hinted sexual dysfunction of the costume-fetish variety.

scholarly journals Histórias em quadrinhos como fonte de pesquisa: uma análise sócio-histórica acerca do graphic novel “Batman: a piada mortal”

Diálogo ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Ailton Da Costa Silva Júnior
Keyword(s):  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Alan Moore

Este trabalho propõe uma discussão acerca da utilização de histórias em quadrinhos (HQs) como fontes de pesquisa sócio-histórica. Tal debate promoverá uma análise sobre alguns aspectos referentes à criação do graphic novel Batman: A Piada Mortal de Alan Moore como ponto de referência. A criação, e sua estética e ainda uma reflexão sobre alguns personagens principais da trama exposta nesta história em quadrinhos permitirão uma observação mais detalhada da relevância existente em sua narrativa, e sua importância como fonte documental. Para este fim, será realizada uma investigação sobre a arte sequencial mediante um estudo nos campos científicos da história, com Chartier e da semiologia, com Barthes, com o objetivo de demonstrar como os aspectos visuais e “não visuais” (escrita) interligam-se na construção de diferentes sentidos.

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