Are you following me on twitter? If not then you might be missing out. Other than posting here on the main page, Twitter has become the most immediate and effective conduit I have to my readership. It’s been a wonderful tool for staying connected and getting to hear from you guys. It’s done more to help me connect with readers than email and message boards combined. And it’s free for everyone to use (for now at least).

There’s a lot of stuff I comment on in my twitter feed that I wouldn’t ever post here on the site, mostly because it would clutter up the main page really fast and would confuse a lot of people. That being said, there are a couple of cool things happening in the twitter feed that you guys may not know about and I wanted to make you aware.

Occasionally, I’ll broadcast live streaming video of my computer desktop, allowing you to watch me draw the strip. Nine times out of ten I never post about it here on the site, but I always notify my twitter feed. I have also been known to occasionally drop in a PVPstuff.com coupon code into the twitter feed to give my followers a 10-15% discount for the day.

Also, I highly recommend Tweetdeck, an adobe air application, for managing your twitter feeds. I have mine set up in a three column power display. Friends on the left, reader responses in the middle and direct messages on the right. I never miss a tweet!

So check me out on twitter. I’m @pvponline over there. And send me a tweet and say hello.

Just a quick review from me on Watchmen, I don’t want to spend too much time talking about it. No need to add to all the noise.

First let me say that I personally enjoyed the movie. I loved the experience. I’ve seen it twice now. The first time I saw it was a midnight showing and I felt an odd anxiety and stress about whether or not the other people in the theatre were going to enjoy the movie around me. It almost felt like this was something I wish I could have watched alone, and then it dawned on me:

Watchmen is comic book porn. It felt very fetishistic. If The Watchmen was a story about ex government black-ops who discovered that members of their old unit were being murdered to cover up a plot to trick the world out of global annihilation, nobody would question anything. Movies about espionage often touch these subjects and deal with bad people with no morals. But when you replace government agent with Superhero, and you make the costuming as campy as a 1960’s Batman TV episode, suddenly it seems very off putting.

Some of the situations in this film would seem like normal R-rated fare if it were an episode of the Wire or The Shield. But when it’s Super-Heroes it really seems a bit naughty. This is a movie I wouldn’t want to watch with my dad. And we catch ALL the super-hero flicks together. During our second outing to see the film, a couple got up and left half-way through the movie.

So there was this odd anxiety of “I love this, it’s awesome. But that’s only because I’ve lived with this graphic novel for twenty-plus years and have been re-reading it and dissecting it since 1986. This ain’t gonna work for the couple thinking their about to see something similar to Iron man. Oh god. This is gonna be embarrassing.”

After seeing the first night, I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. I asked my wife if she liked it (she’s never read the comic) and she loved it. So that’s all I needed to know. But I didn’t feel like getting into it with anyone, online or off. It was a bit of sensory overload.

So here’s what I loved about the movie:

-The opening credits. Brilliantly done, really cool way of establishing how our history changed due to super-heroes being around.
-Dan’s arc. I really loved Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl. I felt for him. I wanted him to feel whole again. I love the concept that Clark Kent is a disguise Super-Man wears. Dan is the opposite. He was born Clark Kent and he feels flabby and impotent when he doesn’t get to pretend he’s Superman. I really felt for Dan and I wanted him to be happy.
- Doctor Manhattan was executed pretty damn awesomely. He was gentle and sad, and otherworldly. He was a little more human and flawed than he was able to realize. Cruddup did a great job.
-I feel that any time the movie producers stepped away from filming the novel frame-for-frame, the movie worked best. It’s okay to interpret the spirit and intention of the novel and try to adapt it for film. I felt that I liked those scenes even better than the ones that were ultra-faithful to the book.
-The sex scene in the Owl Ship has made my top 10 list of best movie sex scenes. Totally human and vulnerable and sexy and funny. But again, this is super-hero porn so what should you expect.
-I don’t care what anyone says, slow-mo fighting is awesome. But it wasn’t all slow-mo. the fight scene between Ozy and the Comedian was intense. When Adrian caught the cleaver I about lost my shit. It’s much better than the quick cuts of Batman Begins.

So those are my thoughts. I loved the movie. I think pretty much any comic book nerd has something to get from it. I’m sure a lot of people are just appalled and consider it a travesty. I won’t begrudge them their opinions.

Just take my advice and don’t watch it with your parents.