who watches the watchers of the watchmen?

I finished reading Watchmen this last w/end.

I'm kinda unchanged in my opinions on Alan Moore, being that I'm not his biggest fan. I know a lot of people love his stuff, and more power to them, it's just for me he doesn't quite work.

The problem I find is he doesn't really seem to write comic books--he seems to write novellas that someone else then draws accompanying pictures for. They're very words and there's very little real reliance on visual story telling, which is really what comics are all about.

Really, the purest form of comics would have no speech at all. And it's like the decision in watchmen to not have sound effects--it's backwards, really to be a proper pure comics, s-fx should be the only text.

Which isn't to say that watchmen doesn't achieve what it set out to do--it's got a complex, interweaving plot and lots of sub-texts and all sorts of other clever things. I'm just not sure that makes it an entertaining comic book.

It's also far too dense as a 12-part comic book--really it's 24 part comic book (or novella, as a mentioned) that's been squeezed into 12 parts by the clever use of tiny panels.

I could go on with loads of other tiny quibbles, but those are my main feelings.