*** Due to our excitement about this weekend’s release of The Watchmen, spunkybean is proud to re-run EJ’s column reviewing and explaining the two-decade love affair with this classic graphic novel. ***
Thanks to the trailer for next year’s Watchmen movie that ran with The Dark Knight, DC Comics has printed a million copies of the graphic novel, and 21 years after its initial publication it cracked the bestseller lists. Constantly in print since 1987, best estimates are that the collection sells between 50,000 and 100,000 copies a year. Even the most conservative math gives us more than two million copies in print before this year’s deluge, and I suspect the real number is significantly higher.
Watchmen was published as a 12-issue series in 1986. Written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, both prominent British creators, the series was a huge success from the very earliest issues.
