Bases

The bases of my project is that I want to compare the Cold War that was portrayed in the graphic novel Watchmen with the Cold War that actually happened in reality, but I want to go beyond just the facts by adding the effects of the fact that Watchmen is a graphic novel with superheroes and images. I use the fact that this book is a graphic novel to show what effect that has on the events during the Cold War in the book because of the different pieces that compose a graphic novel. I want to compare these two “Wars” by looking at the aspects that Alan Moore adds that produce different outcomes.

 

The Rationale

The rationale of using a website as my multimedia document is that a website is a twenty first century technology and gets a positive response from today’s college students. Also a website can be easily presented versus a brochure that is small and even if you give a brochure to everyone in the class not everyone will pay attention or choose to follow along. The last reason I chose a website as my multimedia document is that it is easily organized and it helps me get my point of view across.

The composition choices I chose for my multimedia document are that for the background I took the cover of the graphic novel Watchmen and I added ‘Cold War’ just like ‘Watchmen’ except on the other side. I also had yellow, black, and a little bit of red as my color scheme throughout my website. Finally on the header I put the picture of the all the Watchmen right next to the picture of the big three because these pictures symbolize the Cold War itself and power throughout both worlds.

My website will include five pages; the first page will be the home page consisting of my ideas in words and the next four pages are my focus subjects, Nixon, Vietnam War, Graffiti, and Newspaper Headlines. These pages will only consist of pictures that will then be presented to the class.

The presentation of this project will be key because it will tie together the facts and the obvious differences of the two “Wars” with the illusions that different pieces of comics creates and the addition of superheroes in an intriguing way that the audience will find interesting. It will clearly display my multimedia document in aesthetically pleasant way.

Focus

In this project I am going to focus on four different subjects Nixon, Vietnam War, Graffiti, and Newspaper Headlines by comparing pictures from the novel to real life. I am focusing on these subjects because Nixon, Vietnam War, Graffiti, and Newspaper Headlines are all part of the Cold War, in the book and in real life, and have a lot of emphasis on them. Alan Moore has made these subjects as a reoccurring theme throughout the book.

Comparison

It all began with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which led to Jon Osterman becoming a Nuclear Scientist and that led to his accident and his evolution to Dr. Manhattan.  Having Dr. Manhattan, America won the Vietnam War which led to the Watergate Scandal never happening and President Nixon stayed in office. President Nixon staying in office kept the Cold War on the edge and the only thing stopping it from happening was because the Russians were afraid of Dr. Manhattan. The scare of the Cold War ended when Adrian Veidt, Ozymandias, created a creature that killed one million people in New York and made it seem like it was some sort of alien which caused the world to unite.

In reality Hiroshima and Nagasaki did happen but there was no Dr. Manhattan so the Americans lost the Vietnam War and soon after the Watergate Scandal happened which led to President Nixon resigning. The Cold War ended with Ronald Reagan signing the INF treaty.

 

Effects of Superheroes (Watchmen)

In Watchmen the decisions and impact in the Cold War were made by the superheroes also known as Watchmen hence the title, for example Dr. Manhattan’s presence made an impact on whether the Soviets were going to attack and Ozymandias ended up finishing the Cold War by himself. In reality the big decisions and impacts all throughout the Cold War were made by the “Big Three” which included the President of the Soviet Union, United States, and Great Britain.

This is one of the first books that questions superhero as heroes, questions their intentions, and their actions. Alan Moore wants the readers to ask themselves whether the existence of these Watchmen is beneficial or detrimental to society and whether it is okay to fight terrorism by terrorism.

Steps in Completing my Project

1. Choosing topic
2. Choosing multimedia document
3. Research
4. Scanning pictures from the book
5. Compiling pictures and research to the multimedia document
6. Finishing multimedia document
7. Response paper
8. Presentation

Successes

All the successes are based upon what I feel are the strong points of my project. In my opinion my success are the composition choices I used to make my multimedia documents. Also I was able to find similar Cold War photos that compared to the pictures from the book. Finally I think another one of my strong points is the focus subjects I have chosen. These subjects are reoccurring throughout the book and support my topic.

Failures

At first when I started this project I was basing it around just the facts, this would be incorrect because the project would not reflect the fact that Watchmen is a graphic novel. Also research took more time than I thought it would so I had to cut down on some parts. Finally scanning the pictures from the book were not giving me the best results so I had to scan them again form a friend’s scanner.