both watchmen and Metal Gear Solid 2 are stories where halfway through you realize the story has unreliable narrators, forcing you to engage with it intellectually or you just miss the point entirely. the problem with engaging with them intellectually is that they aren't actually THAT deep so for a vast majority of the people it's railroading them through Baby's First Literary Analysis and they're not really capable of engaging with a text on that level.
i read that comment about these two, but I disagree. To be unreliable narrators, you would have to see evidence that contradicts what the narrator says, which doesn't really happen in Watchmen IIRC (sure, Ror is insane, but he doesn't seem to hallucinate the main plot), and MGS2's plot devolves into a grocery list of common cyberpunk plot-points that had been talked about for decades by then (and done better in Deus Ex 1), as well as seething hatred towards the fanbase in the form of Raiden, made to piss off the fans.
And Alan Moore was one of the first practitioners of polyamory, had two wives simultaneously, one of whom begot him leah moore who was raised in that household. Eventually both of them left him and he married the child porn lady, Melinda gebbie (I'm frankly amazed that I remember her name off the top of my head), who he did the child porn book with, lost girls. I would bet a kidney that the dr Manhattan infidelity storyline is a freudian slip by him and he sees himself in dr manhattan somewhat, explaining his seething hatred for rorschach fans.
Didn't know much about Moore, jeez.
For what's worth, Adam Strong's stories don't seem to be terrible... Right? First ones at least.
Your comment would explain why Dr. Manhattan is incapable of changing the world for good despite having the power to do so, and having done so already before the comic began. Oh, and America becomes a super-totalitarian rightwing dictatorship that fires against protesters just because.
It's not, it's just basic political commentary in American comics, not that high concept. Including infidelity alcoholism rape and other things is not high concept. I'll tell you what's high concept, the boys, punisher max, fury my war gone by, captain america/punisher blood and glory, daredevil born again, these comics deal with themes which will never age and have concepts like the military industrial complex, corporate interference in government, surveillance, patriotism, warmongering, political cynicism, military exploitation etc etc. Its way more mature than "what if hero was a drunk rapist and villain won".
The Boys? Really? Isn't that edgefest made by people who hate superheroes?
Alan Moore sees himself as Doctor Manhattan, Ozymandias is what he’d want an IRL superhero to be and everything he really hates in this world became Rorschach. Nite Owl is the contemporary superhero, impotent, fat, living in the past and questioning an American Dream he let die.
Owl also fails to act when the world needed him the most because that was the easiest choice.
Although I'm not sure what could have made to prevent Watch's America going down the drain, since Ozy was right there behind the scenes being an one-man conspiracy group.
“Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon.”
-Rorschach
This was meant to be radical and extreme but, once again, some leftists seem to ignore that sometimes radical options are preferable when the alternative is much worse, such as having Ozymandias, responsible for killing millions and poisoning the mind of future generations due to psychic feedback, rule the world, compared to the risk of a nuclear war that Manhattan could easily disable by covering America with a forcefield or some shit.
The "sequel" by Tom King about Ror not only is not about the character despite figuring in the damn cover, but it also shat on the alien plot-point by representing those paranoid about aliens as right-wing nuts obsessed with guns, akin to radical cults... Except for the point they're completely right, as it was all part of a conspiracy that the comic conveniently ignores.
