For years, the thing that most kept me out of comics, more than the notion of it being for children, was the issue of continuity. It’s hard enough to collect comics as is, but studios force you to not only keep up with a character but drastically alter that character’s origin, life, and mannerisms on the whims of writers and the players at the top who see nothing but green in the potential for overhauls to sell. This places the burden square on the consumer, and it’s probably why DC Comics started slipping to Marvel, whose characters weren’t as old and thus didn’t require updates from old heroes who mostly existed to be World War II propaganda. To fix it, writers initially created two Earths; Earth-One was for the Silver Age heroes, the rebooted, younger versions of the original Golden Age heroes. Those guys were given Earth-Two. And the editors saw that it was good.

This move was a great short term fix, but anyone with a modicum of foresight could have seen the inevitable coming; if another Earth could be created, then why not another? And another? Soon, everyone and his brother had a baker’s dozen of slightly different versions of himself, and only people who had been reading long enough saw all this happen and thus could adjust easier. However, varying origin stories posed an issue to new converts: I want to start with definitive stories, but there is more than one Superman. Do I find each one’s great stories, or do I pick one or two? Is he really dead or is this just some lame copy? So, to sort it out- and make a nice profit in the process- DC hired Marv Wolfman to write a miniseries that would at least try to sort out DC’s glaring continuity issues for their 50th anniversary. The result was Crisis on Infinite Earths.

**spoilers and more after the break**

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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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