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After setting the internet on fire with the release of advance promotional pics of the Watchmen cast members in costume, the studio finally relented to frequent demand and released the long-anticipated first pic of Doctor Manhattan!







(Seriously NSFW.)















(I don't want you to get fired.)















Click here for the EXCLUSIVE pic!

In all seriousness, I am laughing my ass off at how many people are getting excited about these pics. I mean, I love Watchmen to death, and I'll probably even see the movie - but what are we, twelve? Do we need Hollywood to make a movie out of our favorite book in order to endow some "legitimacy" onto our inferiority complexes? I can't wait until we see the Watchmen toys - invariably, there will be toys. If you've actually read Watchmen, you know that the book itself is well-inoculated against the kind of extra-textual corruption provided by big-budget merchandising extravaganzas. The book has an entire section devoted to how silly and dangerous merchandising is, for God's sake.

It's not enough to say that Hollywood is missing the point, because they always miss the point, it's their job to miss the point. They don't make money if they don't miss the point. But it's nonetheless funny that they have missed the point, by creating a big commercialized tent-pole film starring a megalomaniacal supervillain who manipulates the commercial-saturated mass-media to achieve his ends. You can argue that movie adaptations of V For Vendetta and From Hell are travesties - in both cases, they were - but for Watchmen, the existence of the movie, however bad it may be, actually does add something to the book, in a metatextual sort-of way. When I pass the Watchmen toys lined up in the toy store (or Newbury Comics, assuming the movie is rated R or a hard PG-13 and the toys are only aimed at older collectors), I will smile when I think of Adrian Veidt perusing the tear-sheets for the little plastic Rorschach with his Action Grappling Hook accessory.

Even Alan Moore would crack a smile over that little irony...