PAGE TURNER: Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes

It gives me great joy to announce that my latest book review, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, has gone live at BookADay. The site has undergone some renovation, so you can enjoy that, too.

This marks my second encounter with Alan Moore this month. He, of course, wrote the story that eventually was adapted for the screen as V for Vendetta. Both stories deal with vigilantism, and the way mankind idolizes and cries out for all-powerful superheroes even as it resents the need for them. There's probably a metaphor for the immaturity or adolescence of man in there, although that's not Moore's concern in either of these tales.

I'd like to say that Moore's compelling take on deeper questions of freedom and morality makes me want to read more. Unfortunately, the man writes comic books. You can call them graphic novels if you like. They're still stories told in pictogram form. They occupy this strange space between novels (which are only words, forcing you to create the images in your mind) and movies (which takes the words and gives them picture and movement, meaning you do no work at all). And I can't quite wrap my head around that kind of reading. I don't have the training for it, I guess. I suppose I could learn. I'm not sure I want to.

It's this kind of open-mindedness that's really going to endear me to my kids.