"Tales of the Black Freighter" - classic or dud

i really wish the pirate comics described in the text section actually existed. also, the idea the pirate comics would supplant superhero comics when superheroes became real = k-genius.

Scabarous pirates, yahr!

EC actually did do a line of Pirate comics in the 1950s... I read reprints of them a few years ago. They were good fun. But obviously they were a sideline to the more normal BLOOD AND GUTS EC fare.

Anyone else pick up the not-for-profit book on Moore for his 50th. He's retiring apparently.

WHO WATCHES THE AUTHOR OF WATCHMEN?

(haha "free to decide so hmmm what shall i call call him, why OZYMANDIAS no hints there...")

No. As I said, the last line of the comic is "I leave it entirely to your hands", and then the fat bloke maybe picks up Rorschach's diary or maybe something else, it's up to the reader to decide. But Moore, being an anarchist (at that point) obviously wasn't able to leave all the moral judgement up to the reader, so that's why there's the pirate story, the name Ozymandias etc.

Mark, I think Watchmen is overrated too. I hated the "alien" ending, it simply isn't credible, and the "brain of a psychic" part makes it even more ludicrous. Otherwise, it's a fine comic, but definitely overrated.

isn't he always retiring? or always announcing that he will never write another superhero title?

He put the matter back in the hands of fools, is my view of the last panel.

Or are you saying that the existence of this alien/the fact Ozymandias's plot was credible to him and believed by the world is no more ridiculous than world nuclear war?

I'm saying that's what Moore's saying, yes. More the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction, which is insane, rather than Limited Nuclear War, which is just stupid.

Was Watchmen before or after the V for Vendetta collection with the foreword where he says "I appear to have given the impression that nuclear war would be survivable. Sorry about that"?

Also complaining about the use of a psychic in a comic that features Dr. Manhattan is on the face of it a little strange, except that part of the set-up is the fact that Dr. Manhattan is completely unlike anything else ever and is immediately the elephant in the living room.

x-post: Toumas, why do you assume the cold war would re-assert itself in a few decades?

I wasn't complaining about the psychic, I was just saying that I thought Moore came up with the psychic's brain bit only after he realized that the whole "alien-equipped-with-a-psychic's-brain-will-scare-people-off-the-war" solution was kinda cheap and not truly plausible.

x-post: Toumas, why do you assume the cold war would re-assert itself in a few decades?

Because people forget. If fear forces folks to make a solution, that solution won't last that long unless there are other reasons to back it up. Of course you could argue that the peace between USA and Soviet Union would make them forget their differences, but it'd be just as likely that cold war would eventually continue. Remember, in the real world all the treaties between USA and SU weren't enough end the cold war, it took the fall of the latter to do that.

I think the V For Vendetta collection didn't come out until the late '80s. but most of V For Vendetta was written and published before Watchmen, in Warrior comic.

C/D: Jumping into a thread almost 9 months after the fact?

I watched this online today and would say it's the most violent cartoon I've ever seen. Totally fucking awesome.

Bought the DVD the other day and had to watch the cartoon twice in a row! Really gruesome stuff. Haven't seen the Under The Hood documentary yet.