Fearful Symmetry

I'm going to see the Watchmen film on Sunday, I think it is better that is was made now, 23 years after the 12-issue graphic novel finished up, and I did enjoy THE SPIRIT even though it pretty much sucks as a movie starring The Spirit, so I'll walk away knowing I saw what I went to see. I have a little shot of John Locke from LOST up there because something odd seem to be playing out on the show. Season 5 is starting to mirror Season 2, and there the show winds up next year. The show has always been about good/evil, black/white, very much like THE STAND. But to see it starting to play out where characters in S5 mirror other characters from S2, in some cases scene by scene, is wild. Alan Moore was all about that with WATCHMEN. You always here me rant about Grant Morrison and his crazy writings on FINAL CRISIS, but the man learned from the crazier man. The sixth issue of WATCHMEN, the halfway point, is such a subtle thing, I didn't catch it for years. The entire book is done almost entirely in pages with nine panels. If you took the staples out of the book, you'd get that odd yet off symmetry on pages 18 and 19. Unmarry the pages and you see the same on pages 17 and 20. Characters face each other across the panels and the color scheme is not quite the same. The cover itself is a Rorschach blot, a butterfly that might just be Rorshach's mask. So if this kind of thing is being done, obviously to a lesser extent, with LOST, I applaud it. When it comes to comics, a lot of people my age boil it down to pre- or post-Watchmen. Without Watchmen, Don Speigelman likely wouldn't have been able to sell MAUS, which then won the Pulitzer Prize. I can't equate television with comics, nor cable with novels. But I will say this, once LOST has ended in June 2010, I doubt I'll see anything even approaching being watchable. Kind of like reading an apocolyptic novel after having read THE STAND, or a dystopian one after Nevil Shute's ON THE BEACH. Idea might be good, but you've seen better.