As readers may recall, the interpolated pirate panels are very conspicuously coloured in strange reds, greens, and yellows. As I read them, I simply could not help thinking of Coleridge passages like:
The charméd water burnt alway
A still and awful red.
and
Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes :
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire :
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam ; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
and again--
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion ;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
But of course the Mariner is a creature of romance--i.e. his struggle is an existential one. He murders the albatross for no reason and then seeks to atone for this act. By contrast, the Pirate crosses the moral rubicon when he is driven by necessity (hunger) to kill a gull (basically a second-rate albatross)--and he never recovers, once he ingests that gull's blood, though it nauseates him. The Pirate is a slave to his bodily/psycho-pathological needs in exactly the same way that most of Moore's superheroes are--and in precisely the way that the Mariner (and the Silver Age superhero, as I interpret her/him) is not. To me, this indicates that Moore recognized the full extent of the tradition his work was bucking--and of course that awareness is what empowers his willful misreading.
Watchmen: For real this Time
In the first part, I put my biases on the table. Perhaps "slammed" would be a better description of what I did--but that's an unavoidable fact of life when you're building a case against a thesis as airtight as Geoff Klock's; and I know I've ignored Jack Kirby again--certainly, the Kirby Marvels (especially the FF) lend themselves very easily to Moore's method... But you're right Sean, there's no reason why current creators shouldn't make use of whatever aspects of the tradition happen to suit them--I'm just sayin': if we're gonna talk "ultimate yardsticks", I'd rather see Animal Man #1-26 in the role...
And Eve--I'm not sure I would call my interpretation of the superhero "unconstrained"... I would say that to be liberated from power relationships is to be forced to confront the turbulence native to the mind. I'm interested in questions like: is it possible to relate to others (and The Other) without playing a culturally prescribed role? Can you look the world in the eye?
Article comments
1 - Al Barger
Co-incidentally, I just re-discovered my old Watchmen book buried in storage - and accidentally ran into a groovy little internet tidbit -- an unproduced 1989 screenplay for a Watchmen movie.