Casey said I must read the graphic novel before watching the HBO version of Watchmen. (I had already seen the movie version some years ago and it didn’t stick with me.) Reading it took a while because I’m slow and oddly have difficultly with the flow of language in comic book panels.
But I soldiered through and eventually grokked the structure, time hopping and ultimately the underlying themes. It was especially poignant to read during a summer that the Black Lives Matter movement became devastatingly prescient and imperative.
The series amps up the themes in the book and fast forwards to a modern day setting. I’d say it’s a sequel but there’s some skipping around in the timeline. It feels more like an extended remix of the original graphic novel, and it is powerfully good. And Casey was right, read the book first—the series coalesces with the additional context.