Casual geek

In case you've ever wondered how I spend my free time, here's a little breakdown of how I spent this afternoon and evening. Can it get any more exciting? Yes…it most definitely can. However, you're reading my blog, so such excitement is unlikely.

Those of you who are geeks of some variety―movie buffs, sci-fi dorks, comics dweebs and Alan Moore fans, primarily―know that Zack Snyder of "300" fame has been given the green-light to write and direct a movie version of Alan Moore's groundbreaking comic series Watchmen. (Even if you don't know this or don't care, keep reading―you might learn something.) Snyder, in an exercise in cockiness, went so far as to slip a still shot from his vision of the movie into the "300" trailer. A while back, this still was released to Ain't It Cool News and began circulating on the interweb:

Since I must live under a rock, today was the first time I'd gotten a chance to look at it.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you that while I'm a fan of Alan Moore's comics, I'm not very fond of the movies adapted from those comics. Part of this has to do with Moore's own distaste for them, but the lion's share of my leeriness stems from the fact that I've read all the comics and found them infinitely superior to their Hollywood versions. Watchmen itself―a comic book which is about comic books as much as it is about anything else―seems especially unfilmable: there simply isn't the same rich tradition of super-hero movies to draw from the way Moore and artist Dave Gibbons drew from super-hero comics. Sure, the story and images could be transferred to the screen, but all the meaty text (subtext, context and the mind-bogglingly clever interplay between titles, quotes, pseudo-biography, interviews and essays) would be missing, kind of like a thin-crust pizza topped only with sauce.

So, keeping in mind my suspicion that a satisfying film adaptation of Watchmen is impossible, after looking at this picture I am guardedly optimistic about the project. Leaving aside the fact that he looks like he's got a sweat-sock stretched over his face, this picture is quite literally an iconic image of Rorschach, who is himself, arguably, the most important hero in Watchmen.

First off, the scene depicted here is the beginning of the story. While the chain of events that eventually unwinds in the novel is well under way, this is the point when Rorschach becomes involved and brings all the rest of the characters on board. As the noir-ish quality of the still suggests, the story starts as a mystery: a super-hero has been murdered and Rorschach intends to bring justice to the murderer.

Secondly, and more subtly, check out that sign in the background: No Left Turn. This strikes me as a visual play on Rorschach's character: he is an absolute moralist, seeing the world not in shades but in stark black and white (mostly black, really). Rorschach brooks no compromises, makes no deals and backs down in the face of adversity precisely never. On the political spectrum, he'd come in to the left of Hitler or Stalin, but to the right of Mussolini or, say, Dick Cheney. Of course, the joke is that Rorschach is unlikely to change direction at all, especially not to lean, much less swerve or turn, to the left.

Finally…well, remember how I used the phrase "literally iconic" to describe this still? Check out the positioning of the moon. Now compare it to the placement of halos in portraits of saints. Need I say more?

I know, I know: the Mona Lisa it ain't. Still, the image―with its details and implicit story―intrigues me. So I decided I wanted to make it my desktop background. For most people, this would be a matter of "Right click-->Save Image As…". I on the other hand am a colossal dork, so I spent the better part of the afternoon and evening painstakingly crafting a desktop wallpaper:

Voila! I warmed up the old scanner and grabbed some of the imagery used in the comic book: that's an actual scan of the Watchmen logotype, while the blood and the clock approaching midnight are visual themes which recur throughout the series. Just to keep me in the appropriate mood, I listened to Iron Maiden―particularly "2 Minutes to Midnight"―pretty much the entire time I worked on it.

So, why did I feel compelled to spend a few hours trying to find the best possible design for a desktop? Well, for one thing, it's really fun. For another:

I like to make sure everything lines up and looks pretty, once I get all the icons and sidebars where they belong. :)