Yee Fui has recommended this to me on something like three separate occasions in the last six months or so, else I probably wouldn't have read it (I mean, what is this - another graphic novel?). The basic premise is that costumed vigilantes, fighting crime and assorted evils, had risen to prominence in the 1930s and 40s - 'superheroes', though largely without genuinely super-human powers - before being banned by legislation in the 70s; the narrative of Watchmen picks up in the 80s, when it begins to appear that someone is picking off these superannuated superheroes one by one, bringing at least some of them out of retirement and casting light on what others have been up to in the meantime. Also, the US won the Vietnam War and Nixon is still president. (As the series proceeds, the back story is filled in bit by bit.)
Anyway, I enjoyed reading these comics, and found the story quite thought-provoking in places. Overall, it's well crafted, and cleverly so - the way in which Moore often entwines two narrative strands in a single series of panels, so that dialogue/text ostensibly pertaining to one of the strands in fact advances the other at the same time, is particularly pleasing from a literary/neatness point of view. My main quibble is that the pacing seemed a bit weird - perhaps I've just been spoilt by the Sandman series, where everything seems to come together in exactly the right way, both within individual volumes and in the context of the series as a whole, but Watchmen somehow seemed a bit off-pace...I can't put it any better than that. I also felt that there wasn't a single overriding 'point' to the series, or at least not one that emerges particularly clearly; its ideas and politics seem a bit muddled, but perhaps the point is more to provoke thought (particularly about moral systems and responsibility) while entertaining than to push any particular barrow...
