Watchmen on DVD!!!

Watchmen is coming on DVD on July 21st. I love Watchmen because it is superheroes for grown-ups (note - don't let the kiddies see Watchmen unless you routinely let your kids see graphic sex scenes and intense violence). But for those fanboys among us who grew up loving the superheroes but now find ourselves a bit jaded with some of the adolescent nature of comic book writing (not saying all comics books - some are a definite exception) along comes Watchmen.
Of course the graphic novel is "old". Old enough that I read it at a pretty scandalous age and was shock by the content.
Now, as an adult, I love seeing superheroes for adults. Another great example is the Wild Cards series of novels editted by George RR Martin.
I am sure that some convetional wisdom told both Alan Moore (author of Watchmen) and George RR Martin (Master of Wild Cards) that superheroes were for kids and it was not a good idea to make stories with adult content using superheroes, metahumans, whatever.
Well, Watchmen is one of the most highly acclaimed graphic novels of all times and Wild Cards has been going for two decades so I think the authors were right.
The key - Know your target audience and write for them. If you put together great content, targeted specifically for what your audience wants. Don't try and please everyone. Just give your target audience what they want. They WILL find you. And they will bring their friends.

Why is Watchmen so important?

Why is Watchmen so important? There are storytellers just like me who long for just that sort of story. We are fanboys (and girls) who love Star Wars and comic books but who need a more updated fix. Something that speaks to us now the way these heroes spoke to us as kids. We are older now and understand adult issues and we want to see heroes that face the same issues we do, but manage to overcome them (or sometimes can't overcome them so we can see how they deal with them). It's a matter of taking our lives now and letting us see something heroic in them.
That's why Watchmen is so important. It is the sort of story an adult fan boy can really enjoy.
We need more of them and that's what GGE is all about. Of course, the beauty of the creative world is that there is no real competition if you have a great story! So let's all write something great! Then our niche becomes mainstream! Why not get started?

Later
JG