That was a very welcome and interesting change of pace. I’m not sure what I was expecting really, but I was surprized by how dark it was. I mean, I wasn’t expecting it to be any kind of classic superhero story, but there were definitely a lot of turns I didn’t see coming, which was great. There were still some clichés of course, the misunderstood hero, the battle against time to save the world. But there were twists. The heroes weren’t all good, and to a new extreme. They were in some cases just as cruel as the villains. People die, heroes die. It was both in our world and completely out of it. I had a little trouble at first trying to figure out just how alike it was to our world this one was, like what the limits were in it. There’s Dr. Manhattan who seems to be able to defy pretty much every law of physics, but normalities are also there. Similar but different. Monstrous? Hmm. I haven’t read a lot of comics, or graphic novels before, but I still know most of the big superhero stories, largely because of my brother who was really into them. So I know a little more than just what happens in the movie versions, and I could really appreciate a different take on heroes.
I was intrigued by the significance of masks. I found myself thinking of Anonymous, the “hacktivist” group. I remember not all that long ago, when there was actually an attempt to ban masks in protests in Canada I think, and a big reason for that was because of the Vancouver riots, but it was also almost applied to protests I think… My memory is a little vague, but I remember that was an issue, because with the Anonymous movement has come a spike in wearing masks, especially the Guy Fawkes masks. There’s this whole bit about the person behind the mask, and are they the same with or without it? It’s reminding me of Plato, and the invisibility ring, and the question of justice and good and bad. Masks serve a similar purpose of invisibility.
Great text to end the year with, I really enjoyed it.
