's just hype ? It was a defining year for the medium : aside from `` Watchmen , '' '86 also saw Pulitzer-prize winning holocaust drama `` Maus , '' from The New Yorker contributor Art Spielgeman ; and Frank Miller 's hyperviolent Batman reworking `` The Dark Knight Returns . '' `` Watchmen , '' which takes place in 1985 , is set in a parallel world where America never lost Vietnam , Russia is about to invade Afghanistan and Richard Nixon still holds power -LRB- Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were murdered -RRB- . Meanwhile a superhero team -- only one of whom has special powers -- reforms after a fellow operative is mysteriously slain . But what lifts `` Watchmen '' above its superhero peers is a complex , multi-layered narrative and depth of characterization that ensured it was the only comic book to make Time 's 100 best novels since 1923 . A dark , downbeat work with a heady 11th-hour twist , it puts as much store on subsidiary characters like a newspaper seller as its does blue-skinned man-god Dr. Manhattan . Its influence can be traced to current small-screen favorites like `` Heroes ''
LONDON , England -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- A yellow smiley-face badge , smeared with blood , has become the trademark for `` Watchmen , '' the most critically revered of all comic books -- but it could also represent its troubled journey from page to big screen . `` Watchmen '' opens with the unexplained murder of The Comedian -LRB- Jeffrey Dean Morgan -RRB- . Note smiley badge . The subject of fervent debate in the geekosphere for more than two decades , `` Watchmen '' finally rolls out in the U.S. and other territories from the first week of March onward . But it 's not as well known to wider audiences , who may puzzle at all this heat about a superhero movie with no A-list star attached . Instead , they may simply ask : `` Watch-what ? '' `` Watchmen , '' created by the UK comic-book team of writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons , surfaced in 1986 as a monthly 12-issue series published by DC Comics -LRB- part of Time Warner , which owns CNN parent company Turner Broadcasting -RRB- . Are you looking forward to `` Watchmen ? '' Or think it