Who Watches the Watchmen?

“Watchmen” by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons shattered the conventions of the superhero genre and articulated the possibilities of graphic storytelling with a level of detail previously unknown until its creation in the summer of 1986. Together with the Batman story “The Return of the Dark Knight”, which was created at the same time, and the first part of Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Watchmen, originally published as a 12-part comic book series, also marks the beginning of the graphic novel’s triumphant rise. To celebrate the 40th anniversary, issue 83 of Reddition features a Watchmen dossier, and editor Volker Hamann speaks with Peter Lau (journalist), Michael Kompa (curator of the 2025 Watchmen exhibition), Falk Straub (journalist) and Steffen Volkmer from the German Watchmen publisher Panini about the significance of the series and its influence on comics, film and popular culture in general.