(Last Sunday HBO premiered its new
series based on “Watchmen”, the 1980’s 12-issue DC comic book series which has
been called “a masterwork” and “the greatest piece of popular fiction ever
produced.” That inspired me to publish
this excerpt from my (unpublished as yet) book—"The Saga of Smiley”-- about
the history of the Smiley Face symbol, created in 1963 by Worcester, MA
artist, Harvey Ball.)
With the appearance of Watchmen, a12-issue series of comic books
published by DC Comics from September 1986 to October 1987, Smiley had metamorphosed
180 degrees from happy innocence (early 1960’s) to stoned euphoria (1970’s and
Acid) to complete evil. Here is how Jon
Savage of The Guardian described the bloodstained Smiley that became the symbol of the
series, appearing on the first and last page of the comics and, later, on the
cover of the graphic novel: “Watchmen
used the Smiley as a visual metaphor for a narrative that examines guilt,
failure, megalomania and compromise with a corrupt power structure,” Savage
wrote. “All is not well beneath the
idealized superhero surface, as the novel spirals into an existential crisis of
betrayal, mass extinction, the transience of human existence.”
This is a heavy, deep critique and Watchmen, created by writer Alan Moore, artist
Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins, is a whole lot weightier—and, some
would argue, more culturally significant—than your average comic book. It revolutionized the comic book medium and
the popular perception of super heroes.
When the series was gathered into a trade paperback in 1987, bookstores
and public libraries began setting aside special sections for graphic
novels.
Time Magazine praised it as “a
superlative feat of imagination, combining sci-fi, political satire, knowing
evocations of comics past and bold reworkings of current graphic format into a
dystopian mystery story.” Watchmen was the only graphic novel to appear
on Time magazine’s 2005 “All-Time 100
Greatest Novels” list. Entertainment Weekly called it, “A
masterwork representing the apex of artistry”, and Damon Lindelof, a creator of
the TV series Lost, [and the new HBO Watchmen series!] described it as,
“The greatest piece of popular fiction ever produced.”
Watchmen is set in an alternate reality which
resembles the contemporary world of the 1980’s, but many things have gone
wrong; for instance, the U.S. won the War in Viet Nam, thanks to the assistance
of some of the six costumed superheroes who make up the eponymous Watchmen. As a result, Richard Nixon has been re-elected
for a total of five terms. And Russia, jealous of the superior powers the Watchmen
give the U.S., is threatening to launch a nuclear war against America.
Over the years since they were first organized to maintain law and order,
the superheroes have become cynical and tired and increasingly unpopular among
the police and the public, so that in 1977 a law was passed to outlaw costumed
superheroes except those who are working for the government. As the story unfolds, most of the heroes have
turned in their costumes and retired, but two of them are still employed by the
government: Dr. Manhattan, who is
blue-skinned and all-powerful and capable of teleporting himself and anyone
else anywhere, including to Mars, and the Comedian, (kneeling above) who always
wears a Smiley button and who is described by Richard Reynolds in Super Heroes as: “ruthless, cynical and
nihilistic, and yet capable of deeper insights than the others into the role of
the costumed hero.” Also still active,
but as a rogue superhero outside the law, is Rorschach. No one knows what Rorschach looks like,
because he always wears a white mask with constantly changing ink-blots moving
over it.
Just before the beginning of the comic series, the Comedian has been
murdered. (In the film version you get
to see it happen, when a masked figure all in black slashes him, then tosses him through the glass window-wall of his apartment many, many stories above the street. His yellow Smiley button gets close-ups as it becomes tinged with the Comedian's blood and then clinks down on the pavement near his shattered body.) Soon Rorschach, the rogue superhero, arrives to pick up the button and begin investigating the murder of the Comedian, all the while keeping a journal of what he discovers and going around to warn his old superhero companions that their lives might be in danger.
Writer Alan Moore picked the Smiley Face as the symbol for the Watchmen for a number of reasons. He cited
satirical author William S. Burroughs as one of his main influences, saying he
liked his use of “repeated symbols that would become laden with meaning.” The
blood-stained Smiley face did just that.
The artist Dave
Gibbons, in drawing the Watchmen
panels, often added symbols himself that Moore would not notice immediately. Gibbons created the Smiley face badge worn by
the Comedian in order to lighten the overall design, and added the splash of
blood. He later said that he and Moore
came to regard the blood-stained Smiley as “a symbol for the whole series” and
he pointed out its resemblance to the Doomsday Clock ticking up to midnight—another
prominent symbol in the story.
At the end of Watchmen we
learn that one of the retired superheroes has killed the Comedian and
stage-managed the exile of Dr. Manhattan to Mars as part of a plan to save
humanity from an impending atomic war between the United States and the Soviet
Union. He intends to fake an alien
invasion in New York City, killing half the city’s people, in hopes of uniting
Russia and the U.S. against this perceived common enemy. And although the others try to stop him, in
his hideaway in Antarctica, it’s too late; the death and destruction have
already been unleashed on New York. The
Doomsday clock has struck 12.
Literary analysts have called Watchmen “Moore’s obituary for the
concept of heroes in general and superheroes in particular.” Moore himself said in 1986 that he was
writing Watchmen to be “not anti-Americanism
[but] anti-Reaganism”. He added he was
“consciously trying to do something that would make people feel uneasy.”
Plans to make a film of Watchmen went through many different hands and scripts and studios
and potential directors. In 1986 producers Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver
acquired the film rights for 20th Century Fox. Alan Moore was asked to write a script, but he
declined. After spending more than 20 years in development hell, passing
through a multitude of scriptwriters, directors, studios and producers, Watchmen was finally released on March
6, 2009 in both conventional and IMAX theaters.
Watchmen grossed $55 million on the opening weekend. It grossed over $185 million at the worldwide
box office (and had a budget of $130 million).
Smiley had been the cover, the symbol and the star in “the book that
changed an industry and challenged a medium,” as it says on the back of the Watchmen graphic novel. Inevitably Smiley’s worldwide fame and his ability
to symbolize everything from innocence to drugged euphoria to rabid consumerism
to dystopia brought him a flock of roles in film and television. Even though he didn’t get an Oscar nomination
for Watchmen, everyone in the entertainment
business wanted a piece of him. So
Smiley went Hollywood big time.
