Watchmen is the better technical book, DKR is the more emotional and engaging book.
Watchmen is tightly, meticulously plotted and directed. Moore and Gibbons planned out every bit of watchmen before ink hit the pages, Miller delayed DKR by months to rework the plot as new ideas came about.
This is of course, a generalization, and people will say they felt more emotional characterization in Watchmen or felt DKR had better technical merits. but I think they're interestingly at opposite spectrum, both of which very important as creative achievements.
Moore doesn't seem to understand geopolitics as well as he thinks he does. The details of how the world of Watchmen ended up the way it is don't line up with how things work in reality.
Also, the ending would never have actually worked. And Manhattan going along with it when he should have been able to see the future and see that it didn't work is such a plot contrivance. Hell, the whole thing is just a bunch of shit happening because Moore wanted it to happen and not because it logically even might have happened in its own established context.
He only “sees” his own future, and by “see” he sees what he himself chooses to do with no ability to change it. He doesn’t know that Veidt’s plan doesn’t work, only that he can’t risk Rorschach worsening it.
2 months ago
Anonymous
So he can see Rorschach "worsening" the future, but can't see the future?
You're moronic.
2 months ago
Anonymous
He assumed Rorschach would worsen it if revealing it. He doesn’t see anything but his own timeline, where he fricks off from planet earth forever
2 months ago
Anonymous
So Manhattan turns moronic at the end for no reason except Alan Moore arbitrarily wanted that ending, logic be damned?
Contrived plot confirmed.
2 months ago
Anonymous
Manhattan turned moronic at the end because he learned to value life, and didn’t want Rorschach to risk the death of more life.
You’re whining like a baby because you unironically are so stupid you didn’t understand how Manhattan’s powers work.
2 months ago
Anonymous
You're getting defensive because someone is pointing out how moronic your sacred cow comic book is.
2 months ago
Anonymous
“pointing out” how you didn’t understand an incredibly simple plotpoint that moore spent an entire chapter thoroughly explaining. Jon doesn’t see the future, he exists in his own past and future
2 months ago
Anonymous
LITERALLY THE SAME FRICKING THING
2 months ago
Anonymous
Literally not, moron. He sees where he js and what he will do, he has no say in this matter. He does not see anyone else or anything else than what he was doing and where he is.
2 months ago
Anonymous
So what if future him reads a newspaper or watches TV?
2 months ago
Anonymous
then he still can't do anything to change it. His timeline is set.
2 months ago
Anonymous
Imagine it like a comic book.
The events are already on the pages, and Manhattan can see all of them, but he cannot change anything.
>don't line up with how things work in reality.
almost like there are several other factors in the Watchmen world that caused it to diverge from reality
also Manhattan can't see the future outside of his own personal timeline and the entire ending is very clear that it's a temporary solution at best
Watchmen is better than The Dark Knight Returns, but they're both great.
The real question should be, if these are the greatest two, what's #3?
I think Watchmen is both technically and emotionally better, the latter because of the focused human element. What Dark Knight excels at is immortalizing a legend.
he deifies himself in spite of that. The book starts with him talking to the "bat" half of his personality like an old testament god commanding him to return, the book ends with him having recaptured his former mystery and glory by fighting superman and faking his death
I feel the opposite really. DKR is only interesting to me because of it's technique and storytelling where as Watchmen is good at that but also has a great story with compelling characters and meaningful themes that have stood the test of time better than DKR's edgy Batman.
Both are really cool but as a teenage boy i liked TDKR alot because of how violent it was and how everyone looked like a hulking caveman. Also batman/bruce waynes always cooler as an older gruff man. Its why the coolest iteration of bruce was in batman beyond
T. Adam wests ghost i still like adam wests batman BTW, but im of the opinion that i enjoy campy silver age batman and brooding edgy batman tho i prefer the later i still enjoy the former. Im one of the only anons here who actually likes batman and robin
I'm just kind of sick of seeing Batman completely burn all his bridges, destroy all his relationships and make a total mess of his life every decade or so. It's just a constant thing with him. His relationship with Dick is just completely bipolar as all frick. One minute they get along great, the next Dick can't fricking stand breathing the same air as him. Barbara too. She genuinely despises Bruce half the time. Bruce goes from being a decent guy to a horrible person who constantly ruins the lives of the people he's close to. To say nothing of his relationship with the Justice League. Batman was responsible for nearly destroying the Justice League twice in the course of five years back in the early 2000s.
And it all goes back to this, The Dark Knight Returns. Bruce's horrible relationship with Dick, his utterly callous way of treating the people around him, his general failure to protect Gotham to the point where for all his superheroism Gotham is worse off than it ever was, his antagonistic relationship with Clark. Bruce's actions caused Alfred to have a heart attack and die. Bruce does not give a shit. He's a genuinely unlikable human being, and this has completely enveloped his portrayal across so many mediums.
There were many stretches throughout the past thirty-odd years where it's hard to call Batman a hero. And it's all The Dark Knight Returns' fault.
See this is where I see the split in the fandom. Batman fans who read comics tend to appreciate Bruce's supporting cast but the other fans (you know who I mean, only know Bruce through games and movies) have always only seen him portrayed as a dickhead loner and that's why they like him ("one man against the world, no one else can have this burden" type deal), so even introducing Grayson would interfere with that. Most of this group don't read comics and so don't care about the rest of DC. The Batfam and JL to them are just props to show how cool Bruce is, if they should exist at all.
No way man.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_Batman_franchise
Homosexual undertones were being inferred in Batman since the 50s in ‘seduction of the innocent’. ‘Twilight of the Idols’ by Christopher Sharret has an interview with Frank Miller where he said Batman and Joker are seemingly sublimating their sexual urges into fighting one another. That’s why he was the first author to have Joker go on long monologues how much he “loves” Batman and does it all for a pseudo-romantic connection with him. Originally dkr Jason was gonna be revealed as having been raped to death by Joker (later alluded to again in The Last Crysade)
>Miller was the start of Batman/Joker being officially gay undertoned, since that was a cultural thought forever and he was a believer in it
Miller literally made Robin a girl in DKR to crush the whole "Batman is a pederast with Robin" thing. The 50's Batman / Detective Comics did themselves no favors inspiring innuendo.
Watchmen suuuuuuucccckksss. It's more proof that a deconstruction coming from someone that doesn't like the subject are immensely boring.
The new Star Wars movies had this same problem, it was written by people that did not like Star Wars.
Watchmen isn't really deconstructing anything. That's just kind of Cinemaphile's latest current meme word. There's people on here who'll call virtually anything a "deconstruction".
I feel it deconstructs quite a few things about comics
The idea of heroic superheroes and clearly evil villains
The thought that complex issues like world peace can be solved with fistfighting clear targets, or that action should be the focus of a story
The idea of america’s nobility, or that a (nuclear) superpower wouldn’t let their power go to their head
It’s not boring at all though, it deconstructs superheroes to use them for wider themes of politics and the human condition
To quote (read: paraphrase) Alan Moore: "Watchmen and Dark Knight represent the points in Miller and my own careers where we passed each other going different directions".
Not a debate really. TDKR is just one of Miller's many good cape stories (Year One, Born Again, TMWF and others), while Watchmen is one of the greatest comics ever made, and definitely Moore's best work (though not my favourite, I'm more of a LoEG fan). It's one of the medium-defining works, along with Maus, A Contract with God, possibly Sandman and a few others, it's a deconstruction of all Silver/Bronze Age superhero tropes and a cape genre as a whole, while TDKR is just a deconstruction of Batman.
If either of these two books are your actual #1 or #2 superhero comics of all time, you don't like superheroes. Superheroes are supposed to be dumb fun slop like Walter Simonson's Thor, Geoff Johns's Green Lantern, Batman: No Man's Land, the Annihilation saga, Byrne's Fantastic Four, Claremont's X-Men, JMD's Spider-Man, etc.
>supposed to be
There is no "supposed." There is "I like" vs "I don't like", and "In good faith" vs "in bad faith", and "intended for me as the target audience" vs "hostile towards me as the target audience," but no "supposed to."
Yep. Was reading it just last week and it's one of the greatest comics ever (possibly the greatest). DKR is more bombastic and pop culturey so I guess it makes sense that it's the more famous.
Watchmen is the better technical book, DKR is the more emotional and engaging book.
Watchmen is tightly, meticulously plotted and directed. Moore and Gibbons planned out every bit of watchmen before ink hit the pages, Miller delayed DKR by months to rework the plot as new ideas came about.
This is of course, a generalization, and people will say they felt more emotional characterization in Watchmen or felt DKR had better technical merits. but I think they're interestingly at opposite spectrum, both of which very important as creative achievements.
>Watchmen is the better technical book
No, it isn't. The story doesn't make any sense and the characters are Freudian pop-psychology cliches.
>The story doesn't make any sense
Explain
Moore doesn't seem to understand geopolitics as well as he thinks he does. The details of how the world of Watchmen ended up the way it is don't line up with how things work in reality.
Also, the ending would never have actually worked. And Manhattan going along with it when he should have been able to see the future and see that it didn't work is such a plot contrivance. Hell, the whole thing is just a bunch of shit happening because Moore wanted it to happen and not because it logically even might have happened in its own established context.
Manhattan doesn’t fricking see the future, JSChrist
He basically does though.
He only “sees” his own future, and by “see” he sees what he himself chooses to do with no ability to change it. He doesn’t know that Veidt’s plan doesn’t work, only that he can’t risk Rorschach worsening it.
So he can see Rorschach "worsening" the future, but can't see the future?
You're moronic.
He assumed Rorschach would worsen it if revealing it. He doesn’t see anything but his own timeline, where he fricks off from planet earth forever
So Manhattan turns moronic at the end for no reason except Alan Moore arbitrarily wanted that ending, logic be damned?
Contrived plot confirmed.
Manhattan turned moronic at the end because he learned to value life, and didn’t want Rorschach to risk the death of more life.
You’re whining like a baby because you unironically are so stupid you didn’t understand how Manhattan’s powers work.
You're getting defensive because someone is pointing out how moronic your sacred cow comic book is.
“pointing out” how you didn’t understand an incredibly simple plotpoint that moore spent an entire chapter thoroughly explaining. Jon doesn’t see the future, he exists in his own past and future
LITERALLY THE SAME FRICKING THING
Literally not, moron. He sees where he js and what he will do, he has no say in this matter. He does not see anyone else or anything else than what he was doing and where he is.
So what if future him reads a newspaper or watches TV?
then he still can't do anything to change it. His timeline is set.
Imagine it like a comic book.
The events are already on the pages, and Manhattan can see all of them, but he cannot change anything.
You’re an idiot. Manhattan doesn’t see the future, he works on slaughterhouse-5 rules
>don't line up with how things work in reality.
almost like there are several other factors in the Watchmen world that caused it to diverge from reality
also Manhattan can't see the future outside of his own personal timeline and the entire ending is very clear that it's a temporary solution at best
Watchmen is better than The Dark Knight Returns, but they're both great.
The real question should be, if these are the greatest two, what's #3?
I think Watchmen is both technically and emotionally better, the latter because of the focused human element. What Dark Knight excels at is immortalizing a legend.
Watchmen’s more subtly emotional and better at it overall, Miracleman also. DKR is dramatically emotional
>What Dark Knight excels at is immortalizing a legend.
Bruce is a very human character in DKR. He's having a crisis over his aging and mortality.
he deifies himself in spite of that. The book starts with him talking to the "bat" half of his personality like an old testament god commanding him to return, the book ends with him having recaptured his former mystery and glory by fighting superman and faking his death
I feel the opposite really. DKR is only interesting to me because of it's technique and storytelling where as Watchmen is good at that but also has a great story with compelling characters and meaningful themes that have stood the test of time better than DKR's edgy Batman.
Whats up with all these Watchmen threads an hour ago?
Both are really cool but as a teenage boy i liked TDKR alot because of how violent it was and how everyone looked like a hulking caveman. Also batman/bruce waynes always cooler as an older gruff man. Its why the coolest iteration of bruce was in batman beyond
Has anything top it???
Real question, I stopped reading capeshit a long time ago.
Nope, there have been quite a few great, and even legendary titles in the ten years after that, but NOTHING came close
I do not need to read that.
The Dark Knight Returns thoroughly ruined Batman up to the present day.
T. Adam wests ghost
i still like adam wests batman BTW, but im of the opinion that i enjoy campy silver age batman and brooding edgy batman tho i prefer the later i still enjoy the former. Im one of the only anons here who actually likes batman and robin
I'm just kind of sick of seeing Batman completely burn all his bridges, destroy all his relationships and make a total mess of his life every decade or so. It's just a constant thing with him. His relationship with Dick is just completely bipolar as all frick. One minute they get along great, the next Dick can't fricking stand breathing the same air as him. Barbara too. She genuinely despises Bruce half the time. Bruce goes from being a decent guy to a horrible person who constantly ruins the lives of the people he's close to. To say nothing of his relationship with the Justice League. Batman was responsible for nearly destroying the Justice League twice in the course of five years back in the early 2000s.
And it all goes back to this, The Dark Knight Returns. Bruce's horrible relationship with Dick, his utterly callous way of treating the people around him, his general failure to protect Gotham to the point where for all his superheroism Gotham is worse off than it ever was, his antagonistic relationship with Clark. Bruce's actions caused Alfred to have a heart attack and die. Bruce does not give a shit. He's a genuinely unlikable human being, and this has completely enveloped his portrayal across so many mediums.
There were many stretches throughout the past thirty-odd years where it's hard to call Batman a hero. And it's all The Dark Knight Returns' fault.
wow it's almost like vigilantism is a bad thing and leads to more bad things
Thats bullshit lmao, movies like death wish were right about vigilantism
So basically it went over your head
None of that has anything to do with TDKR.
Because god forbid a brooding antihero have flaws and troubles instead of being a le heckin wholesome /r/eddit gay
That's really a New 52 thing. Batman doesn't brood in TDKR.
EVERYTHING you're describing is from the New 52. If anything that's the exact opposite of post-Crisis DC.
Wasn't Dick alrady fighting with Batman by the time of New Teen Titans?
See this is where I see the split in the fandom. Batman fans who read comics tend to appreciate Bruce's supporting cast but the other fans (you know who I mean, only know Bruce through games and movies) have always only seen him portrayed as a dickhead loner and that's why they like him ("one man against the world, no one else can have this burden" type deal), so even introducing Grayson would interfere with that. Most of this group don't read comics and so don't care about the rest of DC. The Batfam and JL to them are just props to show how cool Bruce is, if they should exist at all.
I'll tell you what the split is.
Batfamily fans are all rubes.
Loner Batman fans can be rubes, casuals, or comic book snobs.
comic book snobs would never say they like a superhero
False.
absolutely true, a comic book snob would never be caught dead saying they like a Big 2 comic. MAYBE something from Vertigo.
Absolutely false. A good chunk of online snobs still hold Watchmen, TDKR, Year One, Swamp Thing, etc. in high regard.
You haven't been reading the literature.
not true snobs
>comic book snobs.
I have never ever seen a comic snob say they want dickhead loner Bruce
It didn't really have much influence on Batman at all. I think people who say this probably haven't read much pre-Crisis Batman.
I am absolutely astonished at the stupidity of this post.
1. Yes it did.
2. The last issue of Crisis came out a month after DKR started.
Casuals like TDKR and schizos like Watchmen. That's all you need to know to decide what is better.
DKR
Because it was made by someone who actually likes comics and superheroes
That’s not a merit
It is when the alternative is a malding manchild.
Any adult man who thinks capecomics and superheroes are good for adults is a real malding manchild, especially (YOU)
I'd argue that Moore likes superheroes more than Miller. (Or at least that he did AT THE TIME.) Miller once called Batman "a terrorist".
Miller was the start of Batman/Joker being officially gay undertoned, since that was a cultural thought forever and he was a believer in it
I don't think that's the case at all. It seems like your and a bunch of twitter freaks are seeing what you want to see.
No way man.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_Batman_franchise
Homosexual undertones were being inferred in Batman since the 50s in ‘seduction of the innocent’. ‘Twilight of the Idols’ by Christopher Sharret has an interview with Frank Miller where he said Batman and Joker are seemingly sublimating their sexual urges into fighting one another. That’s why he was the first author to have Joker go on long monologues how much he “loves” Batman and does it all for a pseudo-romantic connection with him. Originally dkr Jason was gonna be revealed as having been raped to death by Joker (later alluded to again in The Last Crysade)
>wikipedia
I also named two books for you to read, but obviously reading books doesn’t benefit your narrative.
>Miller was the start of Batman/Joker being officially gay undertoned, since that was a cultural thought forever and he was a believer in it
Miller literally made Robin a girl in DKR to crush the whole "Batman is a pederast with Robin" thing. The 50's Batman / Detective Comics did themselves no favors inspiring innuendo.
Moore loves superheroes and comics
Watchmen suuuuuuucccckksss. It's more proof that a deconstruction coming from someone that doesn't like the subject are immensely boring.
The new Star Wars movies had this same problem, it was written by people that did not like Star Wars.
Watchmen isn't really deconstructing anything. That's just kind of Cinemaphile's latest current meme word. There's people on here who'll call virtually anything a "deconstruction".
I feel it deconstructs quite a few things about comics
The idea of heroic superheroes and clearly evil villains
The thought that complex issues like world peace can be solved with fistfighting clear targets, or that action should be the focus of a story
The idea of america’s nobility, or that a (nuclear) superpower wouldn’t let their power go to their head
It’s not boring at all though, it deconstructs superheroes to use them for wider themes of politics and the human condition
None of that has anything to do with deconstruction.
>deconstruction coming from someone that doesn't like the subject are immensely boring.
I think "Marshal Law: Fear and Loathing" had some entertainment value.
The sequels were a lot weaker, unfortunately.
I'll defer to Miller's statements on it, not in terms of which was "better", more like what his and Moore's intents were.
To quote (read: paraphrase) Alan Moore: "Watchmen and Dark Knight represent the points in Miller and my own careers where we passed each other going different directions".
Yes, they both are primus of comicbook stories. No debate!
Whats up,with all the Watchmen threads today? Anniversary? Or advertisment action for the new animated series?
>silly spectre
ronin by frank miller
Watchmen easily.
I don't rate Miller that high.
What takes third place?
The Crow by James O'Barr.
Interesting choice. Could you go into why you think so?
Not a debate really. TDKR is just one of Miller's many good cape stories (Year One, Born Again, TMWF and others), while Watchmen is one of the greatest comics ever made, and definitely Moore's best work (though not my favourite, I'm more of a LoEG fan). It's one of the medium-defining works, along with Maus, A Contract with God, possibly Sandman and a few others, it's a deconstruction of all Silver/Bronze Age superhero tropes and a cape genre as a whole, while TDKR is just a deconstruction of Batman.
TDKR. Watchmen is a fricking slog to get through. Never cared for anything Moore did outside of From Hell.
If either of these two books are your actual #1 or #2 superhero comics of all time, you don't like superheroes. Superheroes are supposed to be dumb fun slop like Walter Simonson's Thor, Geoff Johns's Green Lantern, Batman: No Man's Land, the Annihilation saga, Byrne's Fantastic Four, Claremont's X-Men, JMD's Spider-Man, etc.
>supposed to be
There is no "supposed." There is "I like" vs "I don't like", and "In good faith" vs "in bad faith", and "intended for me as the target audience" vs "hostile towards me as the target audience," but no "supposed to."
Your idea of fun is different from mine. Most of the comics you posted are major tedium to me, while comics like Watchmen and TDKR are fun slop.
that's a dumbhomosexual comment
it's not good because of the tone it's good because of the proficiency in medium
>slop
Nope. Miller and Moore are greats.
Mogs both.
Yep. Was reading it just last week and it's one of the greatest comics ever (possibly the greatest). DKR is more bombastic and pop culturey so I guess it makes sense that it's the more famous.
for me it's DKR
Watchmen and it's not even fricking close.
TDKR
peak Miller is peak comics