Afterword. On "unadaptability" (or, requiem for a squid) / Suzanne Scott. Part one: adaptation, remediation, and transmedia. "Nothing ever ends": how Watchmen paratexts became part of DC Comics's "deep dive" strategy / Jayson Quearry ; Flickers of black and white: cinema and genre in Watchmen and Doomsday Clock / Dru Jeffries ; Trust in the journey: HBO's Watchmen and superhero mythology / Mark C. E. Peterson and Chris Yogerst ; "An expensive bit of fan fiction": negotiating canon and multiplicty in Watchmen / Laura E. Felschow ; "Fucking Oklahoma": peteypedia as paratextual transaction and its impact on the aesthetic experience of Watchmen's transmedia storytelling / Zachary J. A. Rondinelli ; What's inside the closet: costume as critique in Watchmen and its adaptations / Alisia Grace Chase -- Part two: race and American history. Sister Night and her squad: HBO's Watchemen and the healing power of speculative fiction / Chamara Moore ; "It is difficult to be a white man in America": white male supremacy and the alt-right in HBO's Watchmen / Brian Faucette ; "Who watches the watchmen": situating HBO's Watchmen as (post)quality television / Rusty Hatchell ; Reinscribing racial power within HBO's Watchmen (2019) / David Stanley and Sarah Pawlak Stanley ; "Plenty of room to swing a rope": Watchmen and the racial politics of place / Curtis Marez ; "Nostalgia is a hard pill to swallow": intergenerational and historical racial trauma / Apryl Alexander ; "This extraordinary being": alternative archives of black life in HBO's Watchmen / Brandy Monk-Payton -- Part three: nostalgia and trauma. The epideictic use of restoritive nostalgia in Doomsday Clock / Jeffrey S. J. Kirchoff ; The adaptation of narrative and musical source material in Watchmen (2019) / James Denis McGlynn ; Diverse family structures in Watchmen: who's in this family tree anyway? / Tracy E. Moran Vozar ; "So you've taken someone else's nostalgia": trauma, nostalgia, and American hero stories / Lindsay Hallam -- Afterword. On "unadaptability" (or, requiem for a squid) / Suzanne Scott.
Summary:
"Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen fundamentally altered the perception of American comic books and remains one of the medium's greatest hits. Launched in 1986-"the year that changed comics" for most scholars in comics studies-Watchmen quickly assisted in cementing the legacy that comics were a serious form of literature no longer defined by the Comics Code era of funny animal and innocuous superhero books that appealed mainly to children. After Midnight: "Watchmen" after "Watchmen" looks specifically at the three adaptations of Moore's and Gibbons's Watchmen-Zack Snyder's Watchmen film (2009), Geoff Johns's comic book sequel Doomsday Clock (2017), and Damon Lindelof's Watchmen series on HBO (2019). Divided into three parts, the anthology considers how the sequels, especially the limited series, have prompted a reevaluation of the original text and successfully harnessed the politics of the contemporary moment into a potent relevancy. The first part considers the various texts through conceptions of adaptation, remediation, and transmedia storytelling. Part two considers the HBO series through its thematic focus on the relationship between American history and African American trauma by analyzing how the show critiques the alt-right, represents intergenerational trauma, illustrates alternative possibilities for Black representation, and complicates our understanding of how the mechanics of the show's production can complicate its politics. Finally, the book's last section considers the themes of nostalgia and trauma, both firmly rooted in the original Moore and Gibbons series, and how the sequel texts reflect and refract upon those often-intertwined phenomena"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.