Bob Schwartz

“What happened to the American Dream? It came true. You’re looking at it.”
The Comedian, Watchmen

Watchmen (1986) , written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Dave Gibbons, takes place in 1980s America.

The Keene Act of 1977 outlawed costumed superheroes. But instead of making America and the world better and safer, everything was going to hell, and the end literally was imminent. Chaos and fear reigned.

When asked by one of his former crime-fighting partners what happened to the American Dream, the ever-cynical Comedian says, “What happened to the American Dream? It came true. You’re looking at it.”

By the time of Watchmen, graphic novels were already earning cultural respect. Watchmen established that graphic novels were literature—and that Alan Moore was a literary great. Time magazine named Watchmen one of the 100 best novels of the twentieth century.

Technology, government, geopolitics, power, money, authoritarianism, violence, love, hate, human aspiration and frailty, cosmos, apocalyptic, and of course, America and the American Dream. All wrapped up in a “comic book” as relevant today as it was almost twenty years ago.

You may have seen one of the versions of Watchmen in the last few years. There was a not-so-successful movie, a more successful HBO series that was an extension rather than a retelling, and just now a very literal translation of the graphic novel to animation.

Whether or not you’ve seen or plan to see any of those, start with the novel itself.

Has the American Dream come true?