I read The Watchmen

The holy grail of graphic novels, the starting point for someone who wants to know what graphic novels are, one review said. So I read the 100-page long comic book, published around 1987.

Holy grail or not, it didn't change my life.

My impressions were 1) it was very comic-bookish, not as one might have assumed, that is, something quite different, somehow of a different quality than a comic book. 2) it had more sex than I expected. 3) it was dark, adultish, and unresolved, as if the way to entertain people was to leave them in a moral quandary.

The review I read tried with urbane journalistic objectivity to say that "intellectuals" always look down on graphic novels. The insinuation was that those who are accustomed to reading books without pictures should get down off their high horse and understand the times. Who are you, anyway, to say that books with words are better than books with pictures? That's just your tiresome western assumptions again, trying to assert that your way is superior to another equally valid way. Another case of logocentrism, or the intolerance of word-oriented toward those of other literary orientations. At least, that's what was laden in this review's attempt at literary pluralism.

I suppose I have to line up with the "intellectuals", we few, we snobs who said, "you mean, a comic book?" when we first heard the term "graphic novel", we who like flagellant monks prefer the archaic way, the dusty road of toilsome words, words, words, we who cling to tradition with an arthritic bent finger upheld sermonizing about the good old days, we who eschew even the Kindle in favor of the earthy, dead, eco-unfriendly books. But I digress.