The mid 80s were a good time to be a geek. In the music world, metal was revolting against its glam stars and producing a host of thrashers who put out the best stuff since Sabbath; Master of Puppets, Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying?, and Reign in Blood were sure to be spinning in the record players and tape decks of every acne-scarred social outcast in the country.

And what do social outcasts read? Comic books, that’s exactly right. We’re a hated and mocked breed, but anyone who read them in this era was about to have their reading material finally “legitimatized.” A new breed of writers was revolutionizing the medium, removing the redundant and intelligence-insulting wordiness that plagued comics at the point and replacing it with more concise and more adult language as well letting the art tell the story. And chief among them were two men, each from one side of the Atlantic: Alan Moore and Frank Miller.

**spoilers after the jump**
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OK, I admit, I’m a comic book newbie. I haven’t been reading them very long and all but a handful of the ones I have read have been older classics. But you know what, more and more people are going to be getting into comics in the near future, and most of them will convert thanks to the upcoming Watchmen film. So, in an effort to blog about what I’m currently reading as well as maybe help a fellow neophyte out, I’m introducing my own mini-feature: Classics Corner. Each entry will be about an established classic in the medium: its historic importance, how well it’s held up, and just plain how good it is. Some will be more spoiler-ish than others, but all of them will feature at least basic plot discussion and analysis. And what better place to start than the graphic novel that is universally regarded as a masterpiece and has been (and, from the looks of it, will continue to be) a gateway for many into comic books?

Watchmen is a 12 issue miniseries from comics god Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons that depicts a realistic world that must contend with real masked men. It’s an expansion of an idea that Moore first toyed with on the seminal (and woefully out-of-print) Miracleman, and it ends up being a nice foil for his first great graphic novel, V For Vendetta. V posed socio-political questions, while Watchmen is more of a personal, psychological profile. It realizes that anyone who would put on a costume and mask to pummel thugs is inherently insane, not heroic. Over the course of its 12 issues, the book evolves from a whodunit about a killer possibly targeting former masked heroes into a commentary on the thin line between vigilantism and crime and how a hero’s quest to save others can ultimately turn him into the world’s biggest threat. It manages to be twisted, deep, thought provoking, suspenseful, thrilling, darkly funny, and tragic, often at the same time.

**potential minor spoilers and more after the jump**

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