Are the prose parts necessary to read in this?
>>83940904
not necessary, more like easter eggs.
>>83940904
They're part of the sotry
Yes, that's why they're in there
and the pirate stuff.
>>83940904
Yes, absolutely. Under the Hood is one of the best parts of the story, and Black Freighter is really good too.
I would be ok with anyone who says no being permabanned
Great way to clean out plebs and /tv/ filth.
![s1e03 - Final Exam.mp4_snapshot_03.29_[2015.02.26_02.19.27].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/RfBM4Cj.jpg "s1e03 - Final Exam.mp4_snapshot_03.29_[2015.02.26_02.19.27].jpg")
If you're seriously considering skipping parts of a book just don't even bother
I've got a little sympathy on the black freighter sections though
>>83940904
If you skip it, you can understand most of the book, but the text pieces fill in a LOT of backstory for the characters.
>all these buttmads
It's not necessary, but *some* things aren't obvious if you don't read the back matter.
The biggest one is the "excerpt" about the author of the Black Freighter comic (issue #5, now that I'm looking). You don't get a sense for what happens next if you don't read it (along with the Black Freighter tale itself, which you obviously should be reading). This is also a bit true for #8's back matter, though to a lesser extent.
Otherwise, the "Under the Hood" excerpts at the backs of issues #1-3 are the second most important, as they fill in a LOT of the unsaid backstory of the main players.
#4's material is less important. #6 fills in some stuff, but it's nothing you couldn't quite piece together; #9's isn't too important; #10 is very cool in the context of the next issue, since it further delves into this character's mind. #11's text is, well, take it or leave it, but with such an important character, you wouldn't ignore it.
>>83940904
Yes. Every part is necessary. The prose parts not only give you insight into the characters, but they come together to explain the ending...
>>83941255
...especially the Black Freighter sections.
>>83941078
Shut the fuck up.
The stuff that's actually relevant to the story, like Under the Hood and the Rorschach stuff, yes. The pretentious bullshit about Owls, no.
>Not reading the New Frontiersman issue.
I hate fa/tv/irgins
>>83940904
You can't halfass your way through life, Bobby.
They're backmatter, they aren't necessary, it's just world building which the art already does well. If you want to fully understand the world if watchmen read them,if you don't then do not bother.
>>83941112
Fuck the pirate stuff
I skipped that shit
>>83942441
>A love song to comics
>I skipped it
You phillistine
>>83940904
It shouldn't be but Moore is bad at world building
>>83942441So, I'm guessing that you think that Adrian won?
Reading a whole page is really hard. You can skip it if you want.Fucking retard.
>>83942441
The pirate stuff was the only good stuff on Watchmen
>muh glorified fanfic
>Watchmen has an incredibly deliberate design, you should read it all.
>"Yeah but those parts look boring"
If all you care about is checking boxes off on the "plot list" then why don't you just go read the wiki....oh wait you did.
>>83943014
literally retard the post
>>83943211
That Anon is right, Anon. If you don't read the Black Freighter, you won't know that Adrian is the protagonist of that story and will actually cause the apocalypse. If you skip other parts, you'll miss the president Truman parallel (Squid in NYC vs Little Boy/Fat Man in Hiroshima/Nagasaki), etc.
>>83942417
No, the backmatter contradicts the unreliable narration of the main story. If you don't read it, you'll believe everything that the story hands you and shitpost "Was Ozymandias Right?" on /co/ every friendless Saturday of the rest of your life.
>>83940904
All the prose pieces are no more than a 2 pages. Don't be lazy.
>>83940904
>do I need to read what's on the pages in a story book?
Uh...yeah. Kind of the whole point.
>It's a necessary prose in Alan Moore comics thread
>>83943409
This
Watchmen was ambiguous until I took the time to read all the prose pieces. The Ozy ones turn out to be some of the most important ones in the book regarding how insane his methods are
You also learn small stuff like the Comedian probably murdering that dude who prevented him from raping the Silk Spectre's mother the first time
Read it or don't, but you'll be missing part of the story
>>83944960
>You also learn small stuff like the Comedian probably murdering that dude who prevented him from raping the Silk Spectre's mother the first time
Actually Hollis Mason killed Hooded Justice because Before Watchmen is canon and there's literally nothing you can do to stop that
people actually read the words in comics?
>>83945016
>Before Watchmen
Never read it, never will
I assume those were just DC trying to get their own while also promoting the terrible Watchmen movie
>>83945048
BW came out years after the Watchmen movie so even then DC couldn't capitalize on that right.
I think it was an attempt to boast Watchmen sales since the movie almost killed any interest in the book, and a prequel would at least get it back in the collective consciousness
>>83941255
The Black Freighter is Adrian's entire story you god damned pleb.
>>83945094
That sure worked, didn't it
>>83945339
Probably temporarily, which is why we're seeing Manhattan in Rebirth
>>83945514
That's just because Morrison can't help but jackoff about continuity
Kamandi the Last Man or whoever also made an appearance, as he always does, in that Multiversity shit
>>83940904
Not ABSOLUTELY, you can still follow the story without them. But it's like if I told you "Goldilocks went into a house and fucked with everything she found inside and it turned out bears lived there so she ran all the way home, the bitch."
It leaves out all that flavor about the three bowls of porridge and beds and stuff. So, if you want to go through life missing a lot of good things because you're too lazy to read, I guess you can be an ass and skip them.
>>83945016
I only read a couple of the minis in Before Watchmen. Why would Nite-Owl 1 kill Hooded Justice? Hooded Justice seemed like a cool dude.
>>83945770
Comedian frames him as a pedophile/child killer
>>83945934
Now THAT'S funny!
>>83945660
>That's just because Morrison can't help but jackoff about continuity
You mean Johns? In DC Rebirth where it actually is Manhatten and not a proxy like Allen Adam?
>>83945770
It was in Minutemen 6.
Basically there was a rash of child kidnappings throughout the series that Silhouette and NiteOwl try to solve. By the end they find the common theme to be the circus, and after the HUAC interrogations they discover Hooded Justice was a circus strongman with slight German nationalism. Hollis goes to the circus to rescue the latest victim, gets beat up, saves the child, and requires Mothman to attack Justice at the old Minutemen base. They get jumped by Justice but Hollis tackles him and he dies.
We LATER find out (via Comedian blackmailing Hollis to cut portions of his autobiography) that it was a different circus strongman that was the child killer, and Comedian possed as Justice to kidnap a child so NiteOwl could flush out the real Justice and he could finally be arrested for not revealing his identity. Comedian takes sadistic satisfaction in Hollis killing a relatively innocent man and the book ends with Hollis, and the reader wishing they could undo the past.
>>83940904
The prose parts tell you what to think
>>83945514
I just realized that DC wants to make sure Watchmen never goes out of print to keep the rights from going back to Moore. Rather than being prickish because they're following a contract with unintended results, they're now actively trying to keep him from getting the rights.
>>83946101
Is Watchmen even in danger of going out of print?
>>83946101
They already offered him the rights back and he told them to fuck off a few years ago.
>>83946181
I haven't a clue. But it's a tinfoil idea that would fit a corporation being a dick.
I rarely feel bad for comics creators signing bad contracts. It's their own faults for undervaluing their worth, or other such things. But this almost seems like it could be a deliberate move to dick Moore over. Or I think it'd be funny if it was. Hard to tell.
>>83946214
Did they? Under what terms?
Getting that prequel he was starting to cook up could have been neat. Oh well.
>>83940904
I did not give half a shit about owls and thus didn't read that part. I did like the "God exists and he's American" bit though.
>>83942441
If you skipped it then youre in no place to judge how important it is or is not to the book
>>83942441
The pirate stuff is actually really good. Moore missed his calling as an EC comics writer churning out 30 issues a month, tbqf.
>>83940904
>Is it okay to skip pages in a book
Fucking children
>>83946181
Shit, they're reprinting it in black and white now. They'll reprint it until the end of time.
>>83940904
>Literally Amerifat: the question
Why is BW Minutemen so fucking depressing?
It makes the original Watchmen look jovial in comparison
>>83940904
what kind of dumb fucking question is this. Christ, without the prose parts, Watchmen would be nowhere near as good as it is. It'd just be a fairly good story.
Black and White, not even pencils.
>>83947163
because it uses colors bc that's part of a comic.
>>83946234
>It's their own faults for undervaluing their worth, or other such things.
Read this
http://elliot.maggin.com/BlogPost.cfm?BlogID=34
>>83946101
yeah no shit
>>83946267
>I did not give half a shit about owls and thus didn't read that part.
The owl part is pretty much to show what a goober Dan is and how he only really comes alive for his passions. Him being breathless at the scene of an owl scooping his prey mirrors how he could only feel sexually whole after becoming the predator again.
Weird wild stuff
>>83946044
This is dumb.
It's pretty apparent in Watchmen that Hooded Justice is a homoerotic sadist, what with the Comedian taunting him about how it gets him off to beat up the Comedian. And then Hooded Justice basically proving that point by then shaming Silk Spectre after he'd "rescued" her from the Comedian.
I figured Comedian killed him in one part for vengeance and another part because Eddy Blake had his own thoughts on Hooded Justice.
>>83946267
The owls part is definitely the worst of them
The best is Rorschach's stuff from when he was a ward of the state. Informs you on Rorschach is a really important way.Rorschach agrees with Adrian but is too pussy to admit it. And the only person who disagrees with Adrian is the only one Adrian killed
>>83947467
That does not change the fact that it's still an incredibly boring chapter. I still read it, and yeah it definitely does inform Dan as a character.
But it's still a chore to read.
>>83941700
Stop abusing ellipses.
>>83940904
not strictly necessary but they are in every way worth reading
>>83947963
Walter agreed.
Rorschach didn't.
>>83947999
>>83940904
i must admit that i was tempted to skip over Rorschach's horrible handwriting
but the other stuff had all been so good i persevered and spent the time to decode it
>>83947982
Definitely needs a once over (they all do) but on rereads you can skip it.
>>83948055
Rorschach is just Walter trying to hide his insecurities though.
I'd say that the whole book should be be read multiple times. There's a bunch of foreshadowing that most people don't pick up on the first read, and there little details that I didn't even pick up on until a third or fourth reading.
>>83945514
yeah a lot of people think there using watchmen to sell rebirth its the other way around
>>83945722
thats an interesting analogy
>>83947920
yeah worked fine as a story but as a part of watchmen it was stupid
>>83946181
regardless of contract i dont think watchmen is ever going out of print
>>83948107
i would go so far as to say there is no piece of media that benefits from repeated consumption more then watchmen
So that guy reading the comics at the stand about the guy who was cast away and shit and then got back to civilization and went nuts, was that supposed to be a parallel to what Ozymandius was doing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0I4BSiRxO0
Worth watching if you want to delve a little into how fucking dense Watchmen is.
>>83948196
Yeah. The shark is Rorshach.
>>83948268
Moore is pretty funny too. The cops get the call about a "Raw Shark" after a scene where the shark boards the makeshift float in the pirate comic
>>83940904
you could skip the bits with the owls and miss nothing.
The rest are an interesting and pleasant read that adds to the story, so you may as well.
You can maybe come back to some of them later if you can't be arsed, but you should really read the Veidt interview when you reach it, as it's really enhanced by reading it around the point in the story where it shows up
>>83948423
I only noticed on my last read.
When the cops are walking down the street after they leave Blake's apartment, there's a woman with a daughter across the street identical to Laurie.
She even has the mole.
What the fuck was Moore or Gibbons trying to convey there?
>>83949037
Likely just a coincidence unintentionally done by Gibbons
>>83946251
>Did they? Under what terms?
I think I read about it in one of his interviews or something, but I think they wanted him to write some prequels/spin-offs or something.
>>83949091
Eerie. It's too much of a coincidence.
