Comprehending comics and Graphic Novels: Watchmen as a Case for Cognition

Reading Watchmen: A cognitive perspective In the opening sequence of Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-1987), a disheveled man wanders the streets of New York, carrying a sign warning of the end of the world. He steps through puddles on the sidewalk, while a bloodstained smiley face pin lies in the street. Through panel narration we are introduced to Rorschach's journal, and although we do not yet know it, we see Rorschach himself. The mystery of who murdered the Comedian begins, and over the course of the comic book's twelve issues we become familiar with dozens of characters through flashbacks, text sequences, action scenes, setting shifts, and text supplements. The characters and events that are depicted in the maxi-series are so carefully crafted, memorable, and multi-layered that many readers and critics consider Watchmen to be the greatest comic story ever written. As evidence of this respect, it is often described as one of the best-selling graphic novels of all time 1. One thing that makes Watchmen so compelling is that it can be read on a number of levels—as a traditional comic book story, as a murder mystery, as allegory of the comics industry, as political polemic, as alternate history, as a thesis on what the world might be like if superheroes actually existed, and as an ode to tropes and icons of the comics medium. For all of these reasons Watchmen offers a fine example of the comic book form, providing characters and narratives that can be enjoyed over and over again. Moreover, its complexity lends the book to critical analysis, and, for the purposes of the current essay, provides a wealth of examples, techniques, and characters idiomatic to the comic book form. But when people read Watchmen, perusing or even studying the comic panels, what are they doing? We are not referring here to any sort of metaphysical question or to queries about motivation or engagement, although these certainly are interesting issues; rather, what cognitive processes and textual features guide readers' attempts at comprehending the story? The approach we offer in this essay in considering how people experience and comprehend Watchmen relies on insights from cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology is a 1 Of course, Watchmen was not initially published as a graphic novel, but rather as twelve serialized comic books. It has since been published continuously in a single collected volume, and in this trade paperback …