Watching the Watchmen

This is a companion book for the graphic novel "Watchmen" - by the artist, Dave Gibbons, who worked on this 12 issue comic book series. It's a large, hardback book (with a dust-jacket). It's nicely presented, and offers insider-knowledge on the creation and development of the graphic novel.Given that Gibbons is an artist, this book focuses on the art work! He explains the process he went through to conceive and design the characters and locations featured in the graphic novel. At over 270 pages, there's plenty of material presented here ... concept art, draft material, alternative drawings, etc..As a fan of "Watchmen" (both the graphic novel and the movie), I enjoyed this book. It's unfortunate that it deals only with the artwork ... as Alan Moore, the writer of the comics, did not contribute to this companion book.Nonetheless, it's well written and informative.

Dave Gibbons didn't get the credit or the money he deserved from Watchman so put that right now and buy this book. Very nicely put together.

thankyou

Great Book with a lot of insight and art prior to the comics release, notes from Alan Moore and rough sketches & layouts from Dave Gibbons. Highly recommend for any comic book fan, and a ultimate must for any Watchmen fans.

Excellent script.....

great book. so much info and behind the scenes of the original graphic novel. worth every penny. a must read

Lots and lots of artwork of course as this is from the artist of The Watchmen. This is mostly in the form of sketched pages that became the real thing. There is really nowhere near enough written in the book: minus the drawings, the writing comes to just a few pages.I like the Watchmen artwork but it had nowhere near the impact of the artwork of, say, Batman, the Dark Knight Returns or The Kindly Ones book in the Sandman series, for instance. In those books, the writing was brilliant and the artwork too, whereas in The Watchmen, the writing was brilliant and the artwork showed what the writer needed it to rather than being a stunning force unto itself.

The media could not be loaded.  With the movie coming, it seems that a lot of Watchmen related books are coming out. This is one of them. Judging by the number of reviews on Amazon, this book is looking pretty popular.The construct of the book is great. It's hardcover with a dust jacket. The paper stock is good, thick and low gloss.Inside the book are tons of initial sketches, designs, storyboards, comic panels, scripts and scribbles. Dave Gibbons really packed in a lot of stuff from their sketchbooks. The scans are so high in resolution you can see the texture of the sketchbooks' paper grain.The book starts off with the background story on the history of Watchmen, when Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore first met. Then there's the process of creating the comics, getting the readers reactions (one sent in a fan note using plastic bag), to the sending of the last pages off in an overweight parcel to the publisher.Everything is written in a very condensed manner, the way magazines write their articles. That's not a bad thing though. But for a graphic novel of such caliber, I'm very sure they left out a lot of things.Also, nothing is mentioned about the plot and the character development. I can't believe they actually left out the story about the story, which is what made Watchmen so popular.My reservation about the book is on the perceived lack of depth. Overall, this book is strictly for fans of Watchmen.There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.