The Internet is specially suited to certain things. Unnecessarily detailed manifestos on subjects of no particular importance are one of its greatest strengths. See: The six years of content buried away at this very site. Perhaps you can understand, then, why I took it upon myself to create the most comprehensive CD/DVD list for Monster Rancher 4 that the Internet had ever seen. Very few CD/DVD lists exist for the game, partially because it’s five years old and nobody cares any more, but also because not many people ever cared in the first place. Mostly, however, it’s because there’s no great effort involved in sticking a CD or DVD in the PS2’s drive and watching a polygonal monster come bounding out of it yourself, always to the delight and shock of the kindly shrine attendant. Only the most lazy have any need for a list that saves them twenty seconds of work.

Still, at no place on the whole wide Internet is there a list of which monsters are born of which M*A*S*H DVDs, most likely because I’m the only person on the planet that owns both Monster Rancher 4 and every season of M*A*S*H. If anyone were to finally right this wrong, why shouldn’t I be the one to do it? I’ve had no trouble wasting more time on more useless projects in the past. See again: The six years of content buried away at this very site.

It turns out I probably should have read my own Monster Rancher 4 review. I’ve spent the last two days trying to earn the last two breeder badges, and with them the right to train any monster that could possibly spring to life from any disc. But, no more. The game is just too damned repetitive for me to put up with any longer, even though my army of Garus are nearly ready to take the final tournament circuit by storm. I could certainly just post what I’ve already accomplished (in a .txt file only usable by dorkclub.com and gamefaqs.com, naturally), but the obsessive-compulsive completionist in me could never settle for birthing the most thorough Monster Rancher 4 CD/DVD list on the Internet if it didn’t also include the monster hidden on the Final Fantasy Chronicles version of Final Fantasy IV. Incidentally, I’ve had Scott Brust’s copy of Final Fantasy IV since 2003 when I first needed it for the Inn Music Database, though I suspect he’s had my copy of Monster Rancher 2 far longer.

Discouraged, I drowned my sorrows and ever-present sense of failure in the Internet, eventually finding solace in the screenplay for an unproduced version of the Watchmen movie written by Sam Hamm. Written in 1989, the script has recently become relevant again thanks to Zack Snyder’s upcoming Watchmen movie and 20th Century Fox’s claim to Warner Bros. that, “hey, we actually own the rights to that.” Anyway, like Monster Rancher 4, Hamm’s Watchmen script is terrible and I was unable to finish it. At least I spent the better part of a week with Monster Rancher 4, though. The Watchmen screenplay lost my attention after about twenty minutes.

And with good reason. Hamm’s version starts in 1976, where Watchmen’s cast of characters have formed a superteam of superheroes called, wait for it, the Watchmen. I’m cringing even as I type that. His script opens with a terrorist attack against the Statue of Liberty, where these Watchmen ineptly bungle the NYPD’s peaceful resolution with the statue-threatening bomb-wielders. The sequence features such cinematic gems as:

The three TERRORISTS fall into a tight cluster at the base of a long metal stairway. One of them grabs the JANITOR, holds a gun to his head.

TERRORIST I
I’M NOT JOKING!!

The COMEDIAN shrugs: okay. He lifts his rifle and fires TWO SILENCED SHOTS directly into the JANITOR’s gut. The old man’s body jerks twice and he slumps to the floor, stone dead.

The TERRORISTS stand there aghast. For an instant they’re too stunned to shoot. The COMEDIAN breaks into a dopey grin –

COMEDIAN
The joke’s on you.

– and opens fire with a look of VICIOUS PLEASURE on his face. As the saying goes . . . it’s nice to see a man who enjoys his work.

This poster child for missing the point eventually ends with Dr. Manhattan rewriting history so that he never exists. A trio of characters then find themselves in our very own version of New York circa 1986. Here, of course, they’re nothing more than characters in a book called Watchmen. Clever in that ‘makes your brain want to jump out of your skull so as to never experience such stupefying pain again’ sort of way.

David “Solid Snake” Hayter’s own take on the unfilmable comic book is leagues better, allegedly, even garnering an indifferent shrug from Alan Moore, which is his highest honor given to adaptations of his work. Zack Snyder’s movie is supposedly using Hayter’s script, in whole or in part, and Snyder himself seems hellbent on capturing the essence of the original book on film, even going so far as to film the Tales of the Black Freighter story-within-a-story as a DVD extra. Sadly, like unhealthily comprehensive Monster Rancher 4 CD/DVD lists, you just can’t find such things on the Internet.

Tomorrow: More stories of failed feature ideas disguised as content.

The Sandman might just be the best comic series ever made. It’s certainly won more praise and critical accolade than any other comic series, and stands as the only comic book to ever hold a place on the New York Times Best Seller List or win a World Fantasy Award. In fact, it may be the only comic to ever win a World Fantasy Award, as the following morning the organization changed its rules so that a lowly comic book could never win the award again.

The series ran from 1989 to 1996, every word of it written by Neil Gaiman, who has since gone on to bigger, though not necessarily better, things. In those seven years, Gaiman crafted a genuine literary comic book, merging history, myth, and fantasy into a dreamscape that included the best elements of the real world and make believe. The series is now collected in ten (actually eleven) books, presenting the monthly issues more or less in the order they originally appeared. While Preludes & Nocturnes, the first book in the series, is far and away the weakest, even in its humble beginnings we can see the masterpiece that The Sandman was destined to become.

This first book introduces us to Dream of the Endless, perhaps better known as The Sandman. Pale, scrawny, and infinitely morose, Dream is the very embodiment of that which all good little goth boys and girls strive to be. In 1916, he is accidentally captured by a British occult society trying to imprison Death, and he remains their prisoner until the chance to escape finally presents itself in 1988. The world suffers in Dream’s absence; many fall under a mysterious sleeping sickness, never waking from their slumber. As Dream reminds the only man left to punish for his 70 years of captivity, all of humanity is lucky they did not succeed in incarcerating his older sister, Death.

Dream returns to find the Dreaming in ruins. He spends the rest of the book tracking down the three powerful artifacts he needs to rebuild his kingdom – his pouch of sand, his mask, and his ruby – that were stolen from him during his imprisonment. During his quest, he earns the ire of Hell and enlists the help of a few DC superheroes, including John Constantine and Martian Manhunter, and battles with JLA villain Doctor Destiny. While they mostly play as temporary sidekicks, the superheroes feel strangely out of place in a world where truly horrific acts are possible. The terror Doctor Destiny unleashes in a small town diner over 24 hours, for example, draws attention to just how impotent most comic book villains’ schemes really are. Thankfully, Gaiman gives up shoehorning The Sandman into the DC Universe after Preludes & Nocturnes, opting to populate his world with his own characters instead.

Gaiman admits in the book’s afterward that Preludes & Nocturnes represents his exploration of various horror subgenres. The dark, ornately framed art certainly matches its subject matter. However, even as Gaiman struggles to find his voice, Preludes & Nocturnes is already laying the groundwork for The Sandman’s future. Dream’s trip to Hell in particular sets up multiple future plot points and hints there’s more to The Sandman than simple horror. Similarly, Dream’s visit with the Hecateae, the three weird sisters from Norse Mythology, Macbeth, and Harry Potter, suggests the series’ more literary aspirations. And as we watch 72 years fly by in the book’s opening chapter, we see Gaiman’s first attempt to merge the narrative of the series with the history of reality.

In many ways, Preludes & Nocturnes also sets up the series’ ending, though realistically, it’s impossible to realize this through a first reading. Looking back, however, it’s easy to see the seeds for the series’ eventual conclusion, and even easier to respect Gaiman for beginning the series with a clear indication of where he wanted to take it, even if he wasn’t quite sure how he’d get there. At several points during the book, Dream comments on how much the world has changed during his incarceration. The Dreaming, obviously, lies in ruins, but other places have changed in Dream’s absence too. The Wood of Suicides in Hell, once a tiny grove, is now an endless forest, and Hell itself is now ruled by a triumvirate, with Beelzebub and Azazel sharing equal power with Lucifer. In the mortal realm, two world wars and rapid technological advances have left their mark on the world. Even the Justice League of America is now the Justice League International, with embassies throughout the world. The fact that the world could change so much without him wounds Dream’s pride, and there’s a sense, even now, that Dream must change with the changing world.

But immortals tend to get stuck in their routine; billions of years of life would do the same to you. The book ends with Dream accompanying Death on her daily duties, but Gaiman’s Death is like no other personification of the grim reaper. With no sickle or shroud, Dream’s sister is a bubbly, down-to-earth goth girl who stands in seemingly stack contradiction with her assigned task. But then again, shouldn’t Death herself cherish life more than all others? Here, the book finally comes into its own in its last 23 pages. Dream confides in his sister that a part of him doesn’t want to return to his duties, and that his quest to escape his captives and retrieve his tools instilled in him a sense of purpose he had never before experienced. Death reminds her gloomy brother that they are Endless; they don’t need to be worshiped like gods to survive and they will exist long after life has left the world. As such, they have a task to do, and nobody else is going to do it for them.

Dream takes Death’s words to heart, and the series only improves from here. The Sandman quickly sheds the strictly linear, MacGuffin-driven plot of Preludes & Nocturnes in favor of more interesting possibilities. Often times, Dream plays but a minor role in his own series or doesn’t show up at all. Instead, dreams themselves become the leading protagonist, as the series shifts between reality and fantasy, history and legend, and manages to build a cohesive narrative out of seemingly unrelated stories. Superheroes are replaced with Greek myths, Egyptian gods, and historical figures – who are far more interesting than musclebound men in spandex anyway – as The Sandman rises above the juvenile trappings of its medium. Gaiman describes the first book in his series as “awkward and ungainly,” but even in its rough beginning it’s easy to see the first hints of The Sandman’s inevitable greatness.

I’ve never liked comic books. In fact, I mostly despise the entire medium. Super hero comics, the industry’s bread and butter, are little more than juvenile fantasy fulfillment featuring characters with backstories tangled up in decades worth of convoluted continuity. Feel free to quote this right back at me after my next epic Transformers update. Individual issues are too short and too expensive, taking months, if not years, to resolve their cross-promoted, soap opera-esque story arcs that leave no lasting effect on characters or their world. Good is good; evil is evil; and despite publishers’ hype, nothing ever changes. In short, comic books are dull.

At one point in 2002, I think, Toastyfrog.com was decked out in a Watchmen theme, even if Archive.org has no record of it, the site’s title character asking, “Who toasts the toastyfrog?” Only vaguely aware of Wikipedia, I turned to Jeremy Parish to find out just what Watchmen was. After all, he had just revealed himself to be more of an expert on the subject than anyone else I knew. Amazon had informed me Watchmen was a 12-issue super hero comic book series that had been collected as a single novel. I had heard about the book before, briefly mentioned in blogs and forums, but always assumed it was just another super hero comic series among many, no different from X-Men or Spider-Man. Its title certainly did little to dissuade this perception. Parish quickly put my fears to rest in an e-mail, assuring me that Watchmen was entirely self-contained with a beginning, middle, and end – not part of a larger comic book continuity – and though it involved super heroes, was tightly scripted and generally excellent. Around this time of year while home from college for winter break, I bought the book to help kill time during the holidays. What I found beneath its bright yellow cover completely changed my reading habits and perception of the medium. I just finished my fifth yearly reading of Watchmen and still managed to uncover plenty of new discoveries hidden between its pages.

One of the book’s greatest strengths is that it can only exist as a comic book (which makes the fact that it’s finally being filmed after so many failed attempts by Zack “300” Snyder all the more troubling). Its pages are littered with a tremendous number of tiny details that foreshadow future developments or outright reveal major plot points long before they enter the narrative proper. Newspaper headlines, graffiti on distant walls, and seemingly insignificant characters shuffling through the background all enrich and flesh out the world, providing hints of what’s to come and filling in what’s already happened. Because you can spend as much time as you want studying a single frame or rip through the pages reading dialogue bubbles and avoiding all else, Watchmen effectively rewards you in direct proportion to the energy you invest in it. It’s a surprisingly interactive experience and a book that takes full advantage of its medium.

It also manages to translate many cinematic techniques, including montage and slow motion, to its paneled pages of still images. The panels are treated like shots from a camera, and only things a camera could record – images, sound – show up on the page. There are no thought bubbles or internal monologues. The book is actually a multimedia experience, despite being limited to images on a page. Besides its blatantly filmic techniques, Watchmen also features excerpts from a character’s autobiography, police reports, internal company memos, and Tales of the Black Freighter, a lengthy comic-within-a-comic that recounts a pirate tale with themes and events that echo those of Watchmen itself. Pirate comic books are very popular in the world of Watchmen.

After all, there’s no need for super hero comics in Watchmen’s alternate version of 1985 where super heroes are real. Or rather, a super hero is real. The only vaguely human collection of energy now called Dr. Manhattan is all that remains of a research scientist accidentally bombarded by an unhealthy dose of radiation in the New Mexico desert. Dr. Manhattan has become the US government’s own personal demi-god, leading to radical advances in technology – electric cars and airships, for starters – and acting as a nuclear deterrent against the Russians. In fact, the good doctor single handily won the Vietnam War for the United States. America loved then-president Nixon so much, that even in 1985 he remains the nation’s commander-in-chief, the 20th amendment repealed.

Other super heroes exist, although there’s little super about them. They existed a full generation before Dr. Manhattan’s accidental creation, in fact. This first order of heroes has long since stepped aside – the lucky ones retired, the not-so-lucky ones are dead or insane – so that a second generation could follow in their footsteps until their vigilantism was made illegal following a 1977 police strike. Nite Owl, a sort of Batman equivalent – wealthy and with a secret basement full of gadgets – has found himself impotent, quite literally, in fact, since giving up costumed adventuring. His former partner, Rorschach, is a hard-boiled detective with a penchant for violence, the inkblots on his mask shifting into a new position in every panel. He continues fighting for justice for a world that no longer wants him, hunted by the police for the two murders they can pin on him. He would be a villain in any other comic. When The Comedian – think Captain America crossed with The Punisher and The Joker – is thrown from his highrise apartment window to the street below, old friends and enemies that haven’t spoken in eight years suddenly find themselves back in each other’s lives as they search for answers and try to solve the murder of their fellow hero, even if he was never quite their friend. Someone’s killing masks, and Dr. Manhattan has fled the planet, leaving the Russians free to invade Afghanistan and heat up the Cold War.

While it deals with global conflicts, Watchmen’s plot primarily uses the escalating Cold War as a backdrop to the ever-deepening mystery behind The Comedian’s murder. This is a complicated book that hops between characters and subplots as often as it leaps through time. Alan Moore wanted to write the Moby Dick of comic books and with Watchmen he succeeds, both in its sheer complexity and in its literary value. The book seriously considers the kind of person that puts on a mask to fight crime in the dead of night and concludes that this is probably the last sort of person in the world you would want protecting you. It takes a psychopath to jump between rooftops at 3:00 AM dressed as an owl, and a special sort of sickness to think it’s doing any good. In fact, Watchmen challenges many of the assumptions of the super hero comic book, which is partly why I’m so captivated by it. It takes a cold, hard look at extraordinary men in spandex as protectors of society and suggests that perhaps society should be thinking of protecting itself from them. Without getting into the finer details of the plot or spoiling any of its most affecting scenes, Watchmen challenges your moral beliefs and your very definition of a hero.

Like Moore’s earlier work (V for Vendetta, Miracleman), Watchmen is a book about personal beliefs taken to their extreme. It doesn’t necessarily provide us with any heroes or any villains either. This is a complex work that deserves a place on any respectable bookshelf, even on one owned by someone with complete contempt for its medium and genre. This book made me appreciate the potential of comic books, which should be called comic books and not “graphic novels” or “sequential art” or any other made-up name to justify the fact that adults read them too. Like video games, comics books are a medium that was first designed as simple pulp entertainment mostly targeted at children, but has since evolved into something more.

I’m glad I sent that e-mail five years ago about a few jpegs on a version of a website that Archive.org assures me never existed. After Watchmen, I read nearly all of Alan Moore’s other books and moved on to discover Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and Art Speilelman, among others. As an introduction to the medium, it’s hard to ask for a better candidate than a book that breaks all the rules, points out how ridiculous they were in the first place, and continues fullsteam ahead to tell a story that stands on equal footing with the best from any other art form. Having finished my fifth reading of the book several hours ago, smiling with each new discovery and revelation, I look forward to next year’s reading and the new insight it will bring. Everyone should read Watchmen now, before Snyder’s movie, regardless of its final quality, colors their perceptions of the book. Even if you’ve already read it once, twice, or a dozen times, dust off your copy and read it. This is a work that single-handedly endeared me to its very medium and each year it seems just as fresh, exciting, and poignant as the last.