The start of my journey into comic collections can probably be traced back to two people: Alan Moore and Joss Whedon. Alan Moore’s novels V For Vendetta and Watchmen were two of the three comics I started with (the third being The Dark Knight Returns), but it was Whedon who sustained my interest. In the few months since I renewed my comic book readings, a large portion of the stuff I’ve read has been Whedon-penned titles; Astonishing X-Men, Buffy Season 8, and Angel: After the Fall (which, granted isn’t written by Whedon, but it’s his property and he has final say) have been consistently witty, action-packed, and all-out entertaining even in their weakest moments. Now, since the current Buffy arc has a crossover, I cracked open Joss’ first major foray into comics, Fray.

Set 200 years into the future, Fray takes Joss’ own slayer mythos and turns it on its head. In this future, magic has somehow been erased from the Earth, but vampires and other beasties still remain. Greatly reduced in number, vampires- called “lurks” in this futuristic mega-city- have largely been relegated back into children’s stories, though they are slowly gaining in numbers. Stranger still, a Slayer hasn’t been seen in over a century.

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As someone fairly new to comics, I’ve been mainly sticking to picking up the classics first and only venturing into modern fare to read Buffy Season 8 and Angel: After the Fall, but that is of course out of fanboy love for Joss Whedon’s seminal TV shows. But one comic is being routinely mentioned in the same breath as established classics, appearing on lists alongside Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns as a must have. Well, I’m 5 trades in, and I gotta say, people are right about Y: The Last Man.

Y: The Last Man reads like a film, and it’s the best and most thoughtful piece of science fiction since perhaps Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Brian K. Vaughan wastes no time crafting a surprisingly personal science fiction story seemingly effortlessly: he uses the plague to highlight the jarring gender gap in major positions (spouting out figures like 95% of all American plots were male, almost all local and federal government officials, etc.) but also has a lot of humor strewn about (converting the a phallic monument into a memorial for the men lost made me laugh for minutes on end).

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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.

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