jducoeur

In preparation for watching the new series (no, it's probably not necessary, but I'm that sort of geek), I'm rereading the hardcover edition that I've had on The Shelf for so many years. It's probably the first time I've read it in 15+ years.

I'm currently about midway through, and a couple of impressions strike me so far:

a) It's a bit better than I remembered. But yeah: it's both structurally brilliant and structurally obsessive, which keeps it from being quite as good as V For Vendetta, which lets its passion show through more readily.

b) I'm fairly sure that, the first time around, I did not realize who Rorschach is until he was unmasked. Which makes the reread ruefully funny: not only are there scads of hints if you are paying attention to the background, Alan Moore all but mocks the reader who hasn't figured it out by the end of issue 5.

c) The fictional history of Max Shea (author of Tales of the Black Freighter in the backmatter of issue 5) is almost weirdly prophetic, in the way he quits DC after writing "blatantly pornographic" stories that DC refuses to publish: not by any means identical, but a strange foreshadowing of the Swamp Thing debacle (one conceptual step removed from Alan Moore) yet to come soon thereafter, and generally a foreshadowing of the gradual breakdown of Moore's relationship with DC.

Mostly, it's a reminder that great comics are worth the reread. I'm going to have to start thinking about what else belongs on The Shelf...