Hesse, Megan

Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen redefined the superhero genre,
elevating comics from entertainment to literature. Though published over
twenty-five years ago, Watchmen tells a story of human corruption that still
resonates today. While he has inspired many modern graphic novelists, he
owes a literary debt to his forefathers; in this case, Romanticist poet William
Blake. Blake’s themes of duality and the symmetrical nature of innocence
and experience are revisited and reinterpreted in Moore’s work. By
interpreting Watchmen through the lens of Blake’s poems and engravings,
both author’s vision of humanity comes into focus. Blake sees human nature
as a duality, a living contradiction that could use its two sides to become
whole. Moore complicates this, suggesting that humanity is corrupt and if it
is double-sided, it is more akin to a two-way mirror, where there is always a
side we cannot see because we are blinded by our own flaws.

Kate Zeller is nearly thirteen, with hair like a rat’s nest and the temperament of a dog chained up against its will: moody and likely to bite you. She lives in the small town of Brookford with her twenty-two year old brother Teddy and her grandfather, Tony, an acclaimed graphic novelist. As summer turns to autumn, two things barrel uninvited into Kate’s life: one is Raleigh, a strange new girl with a head full of Shakespeare and a secret knowledge of ghosts. The other is the Alzheimer’s that sneaks itself into her
grandfather’s head and begins to steal it away, piece by piece. The history and tragedy of the Zeller family begins to unwind as reality blurs with fantasy, creator with creations, all being watched by a man who lives deep in the forest that connects Kate’s house to Raleigh’s. A man with eyes that tick.