HBO’s Watchmen Is the Most Ambitious Comic Adaptation of the 21st Century

Most superhero stories fall into two camps: franchise extensions or efforts that push the genre in unexpected directions. Damon Lindelof’s HBO series Watchmen belongs to the latter, presented as a sequel to the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Lindelof treated the original 12 issues as canon and deliberately shaped the first episode to feel like "the beginning of a new story rather than a continuation of an old story." The show follows the comic’s events while moving them into surprising territory: Adrian Veidt is on a country estate on one of Jupiter’s moons, Rorschach’s journal gives rise to a white nationalist group called the "Seventh Kalvary," and Laurie Blake returns in an antagonistic role.

Those choices are woven into the narrative so that the characters’ actions feel like extensions of their original portrayals. Watchmen also confronts real history and racial themes.

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