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Set in 1985 in New York, the Cold War is still very much alive, Nixon is settling in for yet another term as President, and masked vigilantes are considerably ±è²¹²õ²õé. Since the costumed adventurers of the 30s and 40s called The Minutemen disbanded in the 50s, masked vigilantes became increasingly unpopular right up to the Keene Act of '77 which made it illegal. The only one who persists is Rorschach, and everyone knows he's not exactly mentally stable.

This second generation of retired crime fighters consists of Nite Owl (Daniel); the Silk Spectre (Laurie); who's boyfriend is Dr Manhattan (Jon), the only "real" Super-hero since a science lab accident turned him into a big, muscular blue genius who likes to stay naked and isn't at all ashamed of his unimpressive genitalia (yes, there is full-frontal male nudity of the blue variety); Rorschach, of course; Ozymandias (Adrian Veidt, the "smartest man in the world" who, since retirement, has turned himself into a marketable commodity); Captain Metropolis; and the Comedian, one of the original Minutemen who took a government job and is far from a barrel of laughs.

Now the Comedian is dead, and Rorschach thinks someone's out killing masked heroes. His warnings to his fellow, now ex, vigilantes falls on deaf ears: they all have their own problems to contend with. Laurie is fed up with being Jon's plaything - he lacks a "human" perspective now that he's a super-being - and hooks up with Daniel, who essentially needs to be in costume to get his rocks off.

Then someone tries to shoot Adrian, Rorschach is caught by the police, and Jon has teleported himself to Mars where he builds a crystal palace and contemplates the meaning of life and time. With Jon, America's not-so-secret weapon, out of the picture, the Soviets' attack on the U.S. becomes imminent and World War III is widely predicted. Frankly, it's a bit of a complicated mess - and no one notices the artist and writer and others missing, no one comes close to predicting the awful, gory destruction headed their way. Tick-tock, Time's. Running. Out.

Originally published in twelve individual comics, each ends with about four or more pages of "primary documents" in non-comic form: a section from Hollis' book; an interview with Adrian Veidt; psychiatrist reports on Rorschach; and so on. Some are interesting and fun to read, while others are incredibly dull and easily skipped. Those would be mostly for the die-hard fans to enjoy, as they do divulge - or support - even more about the characters than the story itself.

The cover doesn't make sense until you start reading it, and then you get one of those "Aaahhhh" moments, so I'll just tell you: it's a drop of blood on a smiley-face badge that one of the characters always wore. It pops up again at the very end, as a spot of tomato sauce (ketchup) on a guy's smiley-face t-shirt. There are quite a few parallels and neat little visuals like that throughout the novel.

It's not an easy book to read, despite being a graphic novel (less text to read). It jumps back and forth in time, even panel-to-panel, and you need to try to keep track of all the conversations and all the small details in the illustrations because everything's important! It made me quite dizzy at times. It's quite ingenious really, but that doesn't necessarily make it amazing. Clever, but not likeable. As is often the way.

My favourite character was Rorschach - complicated, twisted, scarred, violent, screwed-up, strangely honourable and determined. Chapter 6, "The Abyss Gazes Also", is his story, and as with all the chapters, the graphics and text interweave brilliantly to reveal more than is directly told. It's also the chapter where you get to see what he really looks like, what his real name is, his history, his motivations. Later, a minor character - a newspaper vendor - mentions that Rorschach was one of his customers, and I have to admit I'd lost that thread entirely and had to flip back. I'm like that with real people too though: change your clothes, your hairstyle, and I have trouble recognising you. I also had too many long gaps between readings of this book, which made it hard to remember all the details.

The graphics are very clever, full of symbolism and little revealing clues. There's an ongoing parallel story of a kid reading an old comic book about a pirate who's stranded on an island, makes a raft of all the dead bodies around him, is attacked by a shark and kills it, makes it back to his home and - well, I'll let you read it to see. The captions of this overlay the "real" story going on around the kid, who's sitting next to the newspaper vendor's stall, and when it shows the panels they're in that old pixelated style, with the washed-out colours made of tiny little dots.

There is a mystery here, one that you have to wade through all the background stories, side-plots, musings and messy violence to get to. The last two chapters are probably the most coherent and lineal. "Who Watches the Watchmen?" is the unofficial sub-title, and it's very fitting. There is a lot of gore, violence, an attempted rape (on Laurie's mother when she was the original Silk Spectre in The Minutemen), Jon's less-than-modest willy popping up here and there, murder and mayhem in the book. And some very daggy costumed vigilantes. They are a bit of a sad bunch, full of aspirations or dreams of glory but who look so ridiculous it's amazing they were ever taken seriously by the criminal underworld.

In a way, Watchmen is a tribute, a homage, to the old Superman et. al. comics of the early 20th century, but I can't be sure it isn't mocking them too. Or perhaps mocking us, for our superhero dreams and aspirations and wish-fulfilment fantasies.