Who Will Watch The Watchmen?

I suppose it was only inevitable after the success of the translation of the incredible From Hell from comic book form to movie. The screenwriter from X-Men has been signed on to do Alan Moore’s Watchmen for the big screen. They’ve tried this before, most recently with Terry Gilliam. Maybe it’s the difficult ending, where millions die horribly and nothing is changed, that confuses the Hollywood types.

Surely one of the best graphic novels of the 80s, who will play everyone’s favourite nihilist, Rorschach?

Stood in street. Watched it burn.

Imagined limbless felt torsos inside; breasts blackening; bellies smoldering; busting into flame one by one.

Watched for an hour.

Nobody got out.

Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes then scream like babies in night.

Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, Hell-bound as ourselves; go into oblivion.

There is nothing else.

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not Fate that butchers them or Destiny that feeds them to the dogs.

It’s us.

Only us.