Who Watches These Watchmen Tattoos?

For decades people would dismiss comics as nothing more than kid’s stuff. Then DC Comics published “Watchmen” and for the first time a comic would have enough critical acclaim that it earned the title “graphic novel.” The work is so beloved that Time Magazine included it in their Top 100 Novels of All Time. Not a list of comics, novels. 

Writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins created a stunning tale set in an alternate 1980s that saw Nixon still in office and the Cold War threatening to become an inferno at any minute. The tale follows two sets of masked vigilantes through the years, ultimately ending with a massive semi-apocalyptic event that killed millions, but also brought relative peace to the world in its wake. 

The HBO series, created by Damon Lindelof (“Lost,” “The Leftovers”), picks up a couple of decades after the events in the comic. Much like the source material, the series takes on some divisive social issues, only this time the focus is on race relations in America. 

Whether or not the television series will become as beloved as the comic is a question that can’t be fully answered until it’s been completed, but critics and viewers have been quite excited by what they’ve seen so far. Maybe somewhere down the line we’ll be seeing tattoos of Sister Night, Red Scare (a throwback to the Cold War themes from the original) and Mister Glass. 

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet. Let’s throw it back to the Cold War and marvel at these old school Watchmen tattoos.