It Took Seconds

Four minutes: A few years ago I was chatting to a then-colleague about Watchmen, and how the last issue had been really delayed and when it came out people were all “OK, this series is a masterpiece” at exactly the same time as they were saying “OK, this issue in itself is kind of… er….” - and she stopped me and said in geek awe “You read Watchmen in FLOPPIES?”

And I thought, well of course I did, it’s a comic about superheroes, how else would I have read it? A really GOOD comic about superheroes, which came out at a time I was incredibly excited by superhero comics, to be sure. I hadn’t realised until that moment the extent to which it had become separated from “being a comic” and become its own monolithic thing, The Good Graphic Novel (That Isn’t About The Holocaust).

On realising that I felt pretty lucky. Not in the LCD Soundsystem “I was there” way, but because reading Watchmen like that meant I experienced it not just as a monthly comic* but as part of a wider swirl of pop culture rather than a sealed-off classic. A really pivotal part, more so than I knew at the time - this was the era of “Bam! Pow! Comics Aren’t Just For Kids Anymore!” and EVERYONE was playing catch-up with Alan Moore and the ‘new comics’ he’d helped unleash. The NME and Face ran features on his stuff. The new script editor of Doctor Who, Andrew Cartmel, was trying desperately to refashion that show along Moore-styled lines (and ending up with something far odder). A new UK comic, CRISIS, came out - to newstands, not the “direct market”, so it was intended to SELL - and it mixed up muddled post-Watchmen superhero pretension with stories about corporations drafting anarcho-punks to fight in South America, soundtracked by the Dead Kennedys.

And pop reacted. It had nothing to do with Watchmen but the smiley face was suddenly all over the place thanks to acid house. The DJs were reading this stuff though - Tim Simenon’s Bomb The Bass put the Watchmen blooded-smiley on a single sleeve. And then this - “Def Con One” by Pop Will Eat Itself, a single springing out of the series, making a breakneck, sample-soaked stab at hip-hop** out of its nuclear brinkmanship subplot***. It sounds like reading a really good comic felt. Like reading Watchmen in floppies, in fact.

*this is a really good way to read Watchmen for the first time. You miss out on the clockwork superstructure but the pulpy impact of the individual chapters is so much greater - especially the Rorschach origin, the prison break, and the Mars stories.

**Britain was awash with bands at this point who really really liked the idea of hip-hop and thought they might have a go. Compared to most of it “Def Con One” is technically superb.

***of COURSE it’s exactly four minutes long.

What would your 4’00” track be?