Watchmen

Warner's third packaging of a comic book serial as a graphic novel tells as trite a tale as Frank Miller's Ronin and Saga of the Swamp Thing (Booklist 84:598 D 1 87). It's a long, sinuous yarn about several costumed crime fighters (a la Batman but grungily workaday) trying to foil a plot to destroy them and maybe the world in an alternative 1985 U.S. over which Nixon, having won the Vietnam War and repealed the 22d Amendment, still presides. Totally squelching the impulse to toss the silly fantasy aside is Dave Gibbons' spectacular illustration. He emulates the style of hyperactive TV shows, changing point of view in nearly every frame and mercurially shifting to and fro in time in order to recap main characters' careers or to juxtapose the story's real world with the imaginary past of a horror comic that a minor character is reading. It's all flat-out dazzling: you keep turning the pages just to be surprised and delighted by sheer visual-narrative virtuosity, and you're never disappointed. Spielberg and Lucas should make movies this flashy. RO. 741.5'973 Comic books, strips, etc.-U.S.

In 1985, as the Americans and the Russkies approach nuclear Armageddon, a trio of former masked vigilantes regroup in order to solve the seemingly unrelated murders of other ex-members living anonymously in retirement years after the government outlawed them. What they ultimately discover would avert World War III but still cost millions of lives. This is dark, disturbing stuff that presents heavy moral questions. The hardcover is more durable, but if the price is too steep, there's a more affordable paperback edition ($19.95. ISBN 978-0-9302-8923-2). Whichever you opt for, buy a couple; you'll need them. For all public and academic libraries. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.