There’s something inherently funny about the idea of a countdown to Watchmen.

watchmen-dr-manhattan.jpgTonight the book club I convene in the Residential College where I live with my family discussed Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen. I first read it as a 16-year-old, waiting each month for the new issue to arrive. (When Issue 11 showed up I thought the cover was the most beautiful piece of comic art I’d ever seen.) Even then I swore that someday I’d teach it in college — that one and Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, which came out the same year. I’ve been teaching Dark Knight now for a while, but this was my first chance to make that nerdy teenage Watchmen dream come true. 

I haven’t been reading around a lot about the movie. I’m wary, of course, but enough of a geeky fanboy that I’m also waiting with bated breath. I’m sure Cyrus and I both will have more to say about it later on.

For now, I’m still loving the last question posed by the book group. We didn’t take the formalist approach modeled over at Edge of the American West by SEK (parts 1 and 2); rather, we took a more cultural tack, talking about history, politics, media, gender, and genre, sex and the bomb. The final question, posed by a female student, was self-admittedly “girlie”: she wanted to know whether people preferred Laurie with Dan or with Jon. I thought it was a great question.

Well — those of you who know what the hell I’m talking about — what would you say?