Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic(2009) DVD: Review By aeinhorn

As the release date for Zack Snyder's film adaptation of Watchmen grows nearer, the inevitable complaints and comparisons between Snyder's film and the original graphic novel grow more heated and more intense. Almost as if they anticipated this, Warner Home Video has released Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comics - an almost animated version of the comic book, doing a straight panel-by-panel recreation of the 12-issue graphic novel, with narration and voices provided by Tom Stetchschulte.

Motion comics take the original panels from the comic strip and add movement and simple animation, along with voicing the text from the comic. It's an unusual experience that marries watching an animated film to the reading of the comic, but it can be a very exciting way to experience the story contained. It doesn't have all of the movement of a traditional animation, and in this case, a single voice actor provides the voices for all the characters, making it more like a book-on-tape than a full audio production.

What this does allow, and that a traditional animated feature often loses, is complete faithfulness to the source material. And Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comics offers that to die-hard fans. Every panel of Dave Gibbon's artwork appears exactly as it does in the graphic novel, no changes were made to adjust to studio demands, or references that might be lost, or special effects that might not have worked in a live-action film.

The downside to the precise recreation of the graphic novel is it's length. Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comics clocks in at 325 minutes in length - in other words, over five hours. While this gives it the time to include everything from the comic, it also makes for a large investment of time - especially for someone who just wants a review of the comic before the film comes out.

It's not a substitute for reading the graphic novel so fabulously created by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore, and I'm sure it won't prove to be a substitute for watching Zack Snyder's Watchmen film, but as a supplement to the two, it's an awesome addition.

The standard DVD release contains a sneak peek of the direct-to-DVD animated Wonder Woman film. The Blu-Ray version also includes one episode of the Watchmen film production diaries, featuring Dave Gibbons, and a digital copy of the film for download to your portable media player of choice.

It's a perfect, panel-by-panel, presentation of Dave Gibbons comic, with movement added. If you're a fan of Gibbons' art, then you'll be thrilled. If you're expecting something more full-motion, than you'll be disappointed. It is presented in a matted widescreen format with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio.

Tom Stetchschulte's narration and sound effects are provided in Dolby Digital 5.1 format.

The cover art is crisp, colored images taken straight from the graphic novel. It looks like it could be a page taken from a comic, which is precisely what it is aiming for.

If you're a die-hard fan of Watchmen - either the graphic novel or the film, or both, then this is a must-have. I expect a lot of fans will do lengthy comparisons between the two. If you aren't a fan of comics in general, or Watchmen in particular, you may find this disc to be a bit overwhelming.