Boots and Bibles

Watchmen, A Review – OR – Holy Crap! They Actually Did Alan Moore's Work Some Justice!

Watchmen may very well be the greatest superhero comic ever written.

Scratch that, actually...

It is the greatest superhero comic ever written.

All right, with this established, let me go forward and discuss the film based upon said comic.

As a fan of Watchmen, I was frankly stunned. Films based on stories written by Alan Moore have this horrible tendency to bring forth howls of mind-curdling rage, threats of violence against filmmakers, and massive cases of acid reflux. And if you want to see some really terrible reactions, you ought to ask Alan Moore himself what he thinks about these movies.

Yes, the greatest comic book writer perhaps ever, and Hollywood, for whatever strange, unfathomable reason, keeps thinking that this genius (working with a visual medium, no less!) needs his stories drastically re-tooled in order to make successful motion pictures with them. If this isn't a bonafide sign of the kind of mind-boggling nitwittery prevailing in what is the storytelling medium of the modern world, then I don't know what is. Yet, this does also seem to illustrate why books are not only important, but inifitely better. Again, Alan Moore seems to agree.

So, with this tangential notion in mind, let it be understood that I was stunned – literally – to see not only an adaptation of an Alan Moore book that remained true to the story, but remained true to the story at its own expense.

Some Clarifications from the Source

I groggily logged onto my computer late last night after coming home from outreach to do the usual social networking things I can't do from my work (e.g. Facebook, my e-mail) when I saw someone had commented here. The name made me cock my eyebrow a bit.

"Jeff Sharlet".

I went to my the review of his book The Family, which I posted yesterday, and saw that Mr. Sharlet had not only commented, but offered ten-point clarification of what he felt were some of the inaccuracies and misunderstandings in my review.

First and foremost, I would like to thank Mr. Sharlet for taking the time to both read my review and write a response. Not just a response, but a thorough and cogent one. It was far and beyond anything  I expected, and I appreciate that he took the time and energy to write it.

I feel that his rebuttal of sorts is worth re-posting. For the most part, I think I can let Mr. Sharlet speak for himself, and I'll only interject when I feel necessary – but the best thing you could probably do to understand Mr. Sharlet's work is to read the bloody book.

Again, while I don't agree with everything about it, it should be mandatory reading for anyone who cares about the Kingdom of God.

It's worth noting as I respond to Mr. Sharlet's book that I also (oh-so inconveniently) loaned my copy of The Family to Brian Petersen of the Poorchurch, so unfortunately I won't be able to go through and find specific examples or anything else to back up my own understanding of his work, but that's fine. It means I'll just have to shut my mouth, let Jeff's comments stand as they are, and encourage you all to read his book!

So, without further pomp, here is Mr. Sharlet in his own words:

Christian Foot-Soldiers of the Shadow Government – A Review of Jeff Sharlet's The Family

In respect to some comments from Mr. Jeff Sharlet, whom you will see below had a good deal to say about this piece, I am inserting a few editorial notes to indicate where he has either corrected me or heavily disagreed with my interpretation of his book. If you ignore what is in red and in parentheses, my original review is still as it was originally piublished.

Jeff Sharlet is a nice Jewish boy. Well, he's half-Jewish, half-Catholic. (Edit: Evidently, I was dead-wrong about this, and now I'm wracking my brain – as well as Google – to figure out how I became so mistaken in this. Anyway, for the record, he is half-evangelical, not half-Catholic. The Jewish part was right at least... oy.) He's ambivalent about his own personal religious beliefs, but what he seems to believe in more than anything else is that shifting amalgam of sentimental morality, fashion-based religiosity, bi-polar economics and self-righteous politicisation called liberalism. (Edit #2: Mr. Sharlet insists that his faith is not in liberalism. See comments below. Of course, this blows most of my review out of the water right there. Dammit...)

He also writes articles for Harper's. That should probably tell you all you need to know.

But he also wrote a book. Actually, two books. But I'm focusing on the second one. It's called The Family. And while the jacket blurbs give one the sense of it being an ominous tome chronicling the powerful religious elite who are running this nation into the ground controlling our lives, it didn't come off to me so much frightening as it did depressing – because through it all, I held in the back of my mind that the people Sharlet writes about are doing what they do for Jesus. "Jesus Plus Nothing" as Doug Coe, the closet-fascist of whom Sharlet writes about at length, puts it.

It seems that "Jesus plus nothing" can add up to a lot that Jesus would not be happy about.

August Wahnsinger: "Ever Get the Feeling That You've Been Cheated?"

So, for $90 annually, August seems to expect that he'd be able to do things that other blog sites let him do for free...

Don't know why he'd have such stringent demands.

Black Wednesday Really Sinks In

Anyone following the writing and publishing blogs has certainly read about what is being dubbed "Black Wednesday", which I alluded to in yesterday's first post to some extent. Now, all of this "bloodletting" in the publishing industry sucks for anyone with literary aspirations, or even simple fondness for those odd, archaic things we like to call books. But as I was thinking today, it hit me like a tonne of cow manure...

...Bantam Dell is being swallowed!

Soon it occurred to me that as a result, something else is happening...

...Bantam Spectra is also being swallowed!

As I stopped to consider this information, it hit even harder...

...the publisher of some of my favourite new books this year, not to mention the retainer of some of my favourite authors, is about to be swallowed and possibly dismantled by its parent company!

At this point, my eyes grew wide with terror, thinking back on how peculiarly impressed I have been with this imprints' recent acquisitions. In a time where it feels like very little is moving forward in the realms of fantasy and science fiction, the editors and staff working at Spectra have really shown themselves noteworthy.

Now, no layoffs have been announced at Random House/ Doubleday/ Bantam/ Etc. other than a couple of top editors – but you've gotta' know that it's not going to stop there. Restructuring as a money-saving endeavour is always done with the intention of halving staffs; it's foolish to have two people doing the same job at the same company, after all. So what of all the Bantam Dell imprints, now? According to the New York Times, they are presently "reviewing their staffs". Hopefully, if the review goes well, and Random House's HR department has a brain, they will keep the same editors and staff on hand that have lately proliferated such impressive works.

Troublingly, my faith in corporate America (and the shenanigans of the publishing industry, in particular) is not exactly stellar.