Thursday, December 3, 2015
Color Choice
Before even starting to read I was struck by the colors John Higgins uses throughout Watchmen. There is a wide range and they are all bright and saturated - some of the scenery shots of Mars in the later half I though were really beautifully done. This artistic choice at first seems at odds with the dark and gritty storyline. The Dark Knight Returns, by contrast, uses a subdued palette of primarily black/grey tones and blues/purples, and all the colors look washed out. It's not an upbeat book and it did not use upbeat colors. Watchmen, despite a similar (and, in my opinion so far, better) deconstruction of superheroes, uses really vibrant and varied colors even during violent, disturbing or sad scenes. It reminded me a bit of the coloring in Crime SuspenStories, but since the goal was deconstruction of the classic superhero genre specifically, the color choice might be more of a reference to early superhero comic art like what we saw from Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Those stories paired bright primary colors with simple, morally black-and-white plots. Watchmen maintains a similar coloring style - just flipping through the book without reading and with no prior knowledge, you could be visually tricked that this would be a similar clear hero-vs-clear villain tale. You'd be proven wrong very quickly.
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I find your insight very interesting-especially in regards to the comparison of color palettes between Batman and Watchmen. While both feature noir storylines, Watchmen's color scheme does feel almost contradictory to the genre as the colors are bright to the point of gaudy. In this sense, the color palette of Watchmen feels reminiscent of the color palette of the Joker and his associated storylines. Both the Watchmen and the Joker provide cynical and brutal perspectives on the human condition that are often masked by an overlying exuberance, marked by the colors used in representing these ideas. Using a loud and distracting color scheme serves to almost distract us from the true message- a pessimism in the capability and morality of humans. The contrast disguises this tone by presenting it in a format we expect from comics- the bright, cheerful colors that were previously used to indicate good and evil. By mixing these colors in with a darker message, both Miller and Moore are working to have us question where, if anywhere, the line between good and evil truly lies.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the different uses of colors and depiction of the human form between the Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, I've also noticed that the two comics have different treatments of sounds. For example, when someone is thrown through a window in the Dark Knight, as the Comedian is Watchmen, there's large onomatopoeia like, "Sskrresshh" to quote the comic (54). But, in Watchmen there isn't as much use of these sound effects. So, while Watchmen is more vivid with colors, the Dark Knight is more descriptive in sounds that helps create a heightened sense of reality to a similar degree.
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