“Entirely a Meditation About Power”: Every Watchmen Character Represents a Different Kind of Power, According to Alan Moore

Writer Alan Moore calls his genre-defining series Watchmen “entirely a meditation about power,” to the extent that each of its major superhero characters represents a different form of power. Though readers have long understood the series as being critical of power – who craves it, who wields it, and what effects it has on those without it – Moore’s comments provide insight into how this project informed each character’s creation.

In an interview with the BBC for the Comics Britannia documentary series, Moore provided insight into the development of Watchmen’s iconic roster of flawed, tragic superheroes. Though most readers know that Moore originally based his characters on the old Charlton Comics heroes owned by DC, the additional details provided by the author in his Comics Britannia interview make it clear what drove their evolution once the series became detached from this starting point.

Moore’s desire to ask questions about power that other superhero stories wouldn’t, or couldn’t, ultimately lead to the characters as they appeared in the pages of Watchmen.

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Alan Moore Crafted Watchmen To Interrogate All Forms Of Power

“We were thinking about how each of these characters, to some degree, represented different sorts of power,” Alan Moore explained to the BBC, about the creation of his infamous Watchmen superheroes. Moore also noted that an entirely different form of “superpower” is integral the backdrop of the story, as a nuclear confrontation between the global superpowers of Soviet Russia and the United States of America adds to the constantly rising tension of the series, and provides the urgent impetus for Ozymandias’ plot to unite the world against an outside enemy, which culminates in the series’ final issue.

“To some degree, if you’re talking about superheroes, it’s very likely to become a meditation on power,” Moore noted, as the question of what it means for an individual to wield incredible power is baked into the DNA of the genre, influencing all superhero narratives to one degree or another. With Watchmen, Moore’s innovation was less about doing something shocking with his characters, and more about using them to make these inherent genre questions overt, bringing them to the readers attention in a way that irrevocably informed not just the book’s narrative, but the comic industry as a whole.

Watchmen Offered A New Perspective On Old Character Archtypes

“When you look at these familiar characters from a new perspective,” Alan Moore said, calling back to Watchmen’s Charlton origins, “you can suddenly see things that have actually been true of the characters right from their very inception…that nobody had applied. A political interpretation, or a sexual interpretation.” Rather than subtext, Moore elevated these interpretations into the text of Watchmen. As much as its narrative thrill ride, its literary prose, and its visual density, this is part of what makes the series as groundbreaking as it has proved to be.

Despite his complicated relationship with Watchmen, and the comic industry in general, in recent years, Alan Moore remains gracious in his interpretations of his own work. His willingness to provide guidance for aspiring writers makes interviews, such as his Comics Britannia appearance and his BBC Maestro online course incredibly, valuable for all potential creators. Watchmen is, of course, a near-endlessly re-readable work of fiction, and Moore’s comments on the text as a “meditation about power” is yet another reason to return to it.