Interview and photos by Emilio Cirri – Lo Spazio Bianco.
“If superheroes really existed, what would they be like?”
40 years of Watchmen with Dave Gibbons
At the Munich Comics Festival we sat down with the artist of Watchmen to talk about the influences and legacy of one of the most important works in the history of comics.
Dave Gibbons is a veteran of British and international comics, and his fifty-year career speaks for itself, as do the countless anecdotes collected in Confabulation: An Anecdotal Autobiography, published by Dark Horse in 2023 and a true treasure trove of stories big and small. Over the decades he has left his mark on a vast range of comics, famous and less so, from Green Lantern to Superman, from Judge Dredd to Rogue Trooper and Dan Dare, to the Martha Washington saga with Frank Miller and his Vertigo graphic novel The Originals.
But without a doubt, the work that has carved his name in capital letters into comics history is Watchmen, which turns forty in 2026. Alan Moore’s realistic, deconstructionist approach might never have hit the superhero genre with such explosive force without Gibbons’s pages, where the rhythm of the now-iconic nine-panel grid tells the stories of cynical, disillusioned, violent heroes against the backdrop of a Cold War sliding towards apocalypse. His clean, realistic line, with its attention to detail and to the characters’ acting, set the standard for a generation and changed the way we picture superheroes forever.
There was no better way to open our short special on forty years of Watchmen — and, more broadly, on the anniversary of one very specific year, 1986, which turned the international comics scene upside down — than with an interview with Dave Gibbons.
Dave Gibbons: I’ve loved science fiction for as long as I can remember. I have drawings I did when I was maybe six, seven, eight years old, full of spacemen and rocket ships. There was one in particular: a Jack Kirby image from a comic called Race for the Moon, showing a man chained to an asteroid floating in space. I remember copying it in art class at school, because it had made such a deep impression on me. The British weekly The Eagle, which starred Dan Dare — another space hero — was also a huge influence. My dad used to buy those comics for me. Later I found out that he’d loved science fiction too, before the war: he’d had some pulp and science fiction magazines that all got thrown out when he went off to fight in the Second World War. I grew up in a little village in the middle of nowhere, but we had a mobile library that came round once a week, and you could borrow books from it. That was another place where I discovered science fiction: whenever I saw a book with a spaceship on the cover, I’d pounce on it. I was reading two or three books a week, and when I found out I could actually order them, I dived right in: I read everything by Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and all those great classic mid-twentieth-century science fiction writers.
I loved the escapism, and that “what if?” quality science fiction has. When I was working on Watchmen, one of the real breakthroughs came when I started thinking of it not as a superhero comic, but as a science fiction comic set in an alternate world.
Exactly. Watchmen is set in an alternate version of our world and asks what would happen if superheroes really existed. At the same time, the story is permeated by a constant sense of impending apocalypse.
The story also asks: if superheroes really existed, what would they be like? They certainly wouldn’t be like Superman or Batman — they’d be something very different. The world would welcome them, but at the same time it would be afraid of them and wouldn’t trust them. So in the end, Watchmen really explores science fiction ideas through the lens of superheroes.
The story also asks: if superheroes really existed, what would they be like? They certainly wouldn’t be like Superman or Batman — they’d be something very different. The world would welcome them, but at the same time it would be afraid of them and wouldn’t trust them. So in the end, Watchmen really explores science fiction ideas through the lens of superheroes.
Yes, I loved DC Comics because it felt very clean, very precise and incredibly well crafted. A lot of my favourite American comics were edited by Julius Schwartz, one of DC’s editors, who had previously worked on science fiction pulps. He’d also been the literary agent for well-known science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury and Edmond Hamilton, so there was a strong science fiction sensibility behind a lot of those comics. I was particularly drawn to Green Lantern because, once again, it opened the story up to the whole cosmos. I was fascinated by the idea of an intergalactic police force in which Green Lantern was just one member. There were all these alien beings wearing the same uniform, and I loved the idea that there was this vast civilisation out there, with Earth sitting right on its fringes.
Another big influence on me was a British newspaper strip called Jeff Hawke which, as I understand it, was also very popular in Italy and other European countries. It approached science fiction in a slightly quirky way, with a sense of humour and a touch of the absurd. I found that combination fascinating, and it was certainly one of the things that drew me to the genre.
Earlier you mentioned the many influences that helped shape your work. One of the most striking things about your autobiography is the sheer number of names you cite — some very famous, others much less so. I know it’s a tough question, but if you had to pick one major influence from your early years, who or what would it be?
I think there are simply too many influences to single out just one. There’s the DC Comics science fiction tradition, but there’s also what Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were doing at Marvel. Ideas like Galactus, Ego the Living Planet, and the feeling that beyond Earth there was a whole universe of civilisations — those fascinated me. So I really couldn’t point to a single influence: it was a combination of all those things.
I think there are simply too many influences to single out just one. There’s the DC Comics science fiction tradition, but there’s also what Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were doing at Marvel. Ideas like Galactus, Ego the Living Planet, and the feeling that beyond Earth there was a whole universe of civilisations — those fascinated me. So I really couldn’t point to a single influence: it was a combination of all those things.
Turning to Watchmen, this year marks its fortieth anniversary. Looking at the book today, how has your relationship with it changed? It started out as a self-contained project, but over the years it has taken on a life of its own — not just commercially, but through adaptations, spin-offs, prequels and sequels. What does Watchmen mean to you now, four decades on?
I have to say I’m amazed that, forty years later, it still has the influence and popularity it does. When Alan and I created it, we never imagined it would last this long. We honestly thought we’d do our twelve-issue series, it would come and go, and eventually it would end up in the back-issue bins of comic shops. We had no idea it would have the longevity or the impact it has had. As a creator, it’s incredibly rewarding to see more and more people discovering your work. It’s deeply moving to think that something we made so long ago still matters to so many readers. In fact, it’s been so long that I can almost look at Watchmen as if somebody else had made it, because forty years ago I was a very different person. And that in itself is a mind-boggling thought.
I’m also very glad that a film adaptation eventually came along that was, in my view, a very good film. It wasn’t perfect, but everyone involved gave it their all. The same goes for the animated adaptation: I had a few reservations at first, but I think in the end they did a superb job. Right from the start, Alan and I had always thought an adaptation was possible — we thought that one day there might be films or animated versions of the story.
I’m less keen on the prequels and sequels, because I think Watchmen stands on its own. That’s the story we wanted to tell. If you start filling in too many gaps about what happened before or after, you risk weakening the very thing that made the original work. It’s like explaining a joke: once you’ve explained it, it often loses its punch. That said, I’m not angry or upset about any of it. On the whole, the book has been treated very well. It’s been an extraordinary success, both artistically and commercially. It’s obviously the defining work of my career. I’m sure that when my obituary is written, the word Watchmen will be in the very first paragraph — and honestly, there are far worse things to be remembered for. It has exceeded any expectation I could have had, and I’m simply grateful that, after all these years, people still care.
I think, once again, the question to ask is: if superheroes existed, what would they really be like? And then you can ask: why would anybody want to be a superhero? They might be people like Nite Owl, a rich kid looking for his adrenaline fix, so he spends his money on an owl-shaped ship, a costume, gadgets and all the rest of it, like Batman. Or they might be people like Silk Spectre. It’s a family tradition: her mother was a masked heroine, so she’s supposed to be one too. Or, in the case of Dr. Manhattan, somebody who has the powers of a god but never wanted them in the first place. He isn’t interested in helping humanity or fighting crime; he gets lost in his own thought processes and in his ability to make things manifest. So he’s rather self-absorbed and completely detached from whatever happens to humanity.
When you start exploring characters like that, you give them body and depth, instead of just having them say, “I’m one of the good guys, I’m going to fight crime.” That’s too simplistic. We were after complexity; we wanted to explain the reasons behind what they did. And that also means — going back to what I said about it being a science fiction novel — that you don’t approach it like a regular superhero comic, all big splash pages of musclebound figures leaping over the skyline, but on a much more human level: people in human spaces, interacting in human ways.
And inevitably, when you create characters, you get to know them. The one closest to me is Nite Owl, because as a kid I used to make up my own stories and amateur characters. I had a character called Nite Owl, and I suggested to Alan that a character with that name, with the whole owl theme, could be our Batman stand-in. And he said, “Yes, great. We’ll spell it N-I-T-E O-W-L, the American way.” So he’s a character who’s very close to my heart. I own one of the props from the film, the statue of the original Nite Owl, and I look at it every day and think: isn’t it incredible that this thing I drew when I was fourteen ended up in a movie and was seen by millions of people all over the world? So yes, I can understand why people like Rorschach — even though he’s a terrible person, he knows what he believes in and has an enormous amount of certainty. But for me, it’s still Nite Owl.
I think, looking back, he’s probably someone a lot of people can relate to. He’s more of an everyman who becomes a superhero, but then he gets older and, once his career is over, he puts on a bit of weight, gets a bit of a paunch. I don’t know, maybe it’s also something we can relate to as we grow up: when you’re young you do all sorts of things, and then, as time goes by, you gradually slow down and get older.
Exactly — you stop working out, and obviously you stop fighting crime as well, so he just sits in his basement thinking about the good old days. So there’s that element of nostalgia too.
Another aspect I’d like to talk about, in terms of style and storytelling, is the nine-panel grid. Obviously you didn’t invent it, but since Watchmen it has become more and more common in comics, and for many creators it’s become a homage or a stylistic choice. How did this particular storytelling approach come about? And as far as your style and this structure are concerned, what were its advantages, but also its limitations and challenges for you as an artist?
I wanted Watchmen to look completely different from any other American comic, so that you’d only need to glance at a page to know it was Watchmen. At the time, back in the eighties, there was a lot of what I’d call the movie-poster approach to comic art: a big image of the hero flying across the sky, and then the story told through smaller images, with the aim of making the whole thing work as a poster rather than as part of a story. Since we were going to tell a very complex story, I thought using a nine-panel grid would give it a unique look, unlike anything else on the stands. Alan also realised it would give him a lot of control over the pacing and would draw the reader into the story. The trouble with posters is that you look at them as a picture and then read the story almost as if it were an article. We wanted the story to be the main thing, and the pictures to be almost invisible. You weren’t supposed to think, “Oh, this is a work of art” — you were just supposed to lose yourself in the story. It was also a very common way of making comics, especially in European and British comics.
I think that, together with the colouring, helped give Watchmen its distinctive look. I had very specific ideas about the colour palette I wanted, which was different from the usual American comic book palette. So I spent a lot of time talking with John Higgins, my friend who was the colourist, to get that kind of European comics look and give the book a different flavour.
I’ve always tried to adapt my drawing style to the comic I’m working on. Watchmen is drawn in a style very close to the clear line, but I’ve done other things, like Martha Washington or Doctor Who, where the compositions are much more explosive. So it’s not that this is my one fixed, unchanging style — it’s just the style I chose for Watchmen.
Having read and reread Watchmen, I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to the secondary story, the story within the story: Tales of the Black Freighter. It strikes me more and more because it acts as a counterpoint to the main plot. In a way it explains what’s going on, but through a completely different story and perspective. And the style is closer to the EC comics. How did you work on this part of the book? Was it developed alongside the main story or separately? And how did the idea come about?
When Alan and I were first building the world of Watchmen, I drew up a long list of things I thought could be interesting elements. There were things like, for example, the fact that, since it was an alternate world, there would be different fast-food chains and different fashions. And it also occurred to me that, in a world where costumed heroes really existed, there probably wouldn’t be a market for superhero comics, because they’d seem redundant. But what could have the same kind of appeal, glamour and violence as superhero comics? I thought: maybe pirate comics. They could fill that space. I suggested the idea to Alan, and in the very first issue there’s a street scene with a kid reading a pirate comic. We could have stopped there, but when we talked it over further, Alan said, “You know, we could actually tell that pirate story, reproducing it from the comic.”
At first I wasn’t sure it would work, but he wrote it and it did: as you say, it became an allegory for what was going on, with Ozymandias, of course, clambering over other people’s corpses. And, you know, we could give it a bit of colour, and since the main story had some fairly cerebral elements, it would add that sense of swashbuckling adventure. That’s an example of how collaboration works. I’d had the idea of the pirate comic, but what Alan did with it went far beyond anything I could ever have imagined.
When Alan and I were first building the world of Watchmen, I drew up a long list of things I thought could be interesting elements. There were things like, for example, the fact that, since it was an alternate world, there would be different fast-food chains and different fashions. And it also occurred to me that, in a world where costumed heroes really existed, there probably wouldn’t be a market for superhero comics, because they’d seem redundant. But what could have the same kind of appeal, glamour and violence as superhero comics? I thought: maybe pirate comics. They could fill that space. I suggested the idea to Alan, and in the very first issue there’s a street scene with a kid reading a pirate comic. We could have stopped there, but when we talked it over further, Alan said, “You know, we could actually tell that pirate story, reproducing it from the comic.”
At first I wasn’t sure it would work, but he wrote it and it did: as you say, it became an allegory for what was going on, with Ozymandias, of course, clambering over other people’s corpses. And, you know, we could give it a bit of colour, and since the main story had some fairly cerebral elements, it would add that sense of swashbuckling adventure. That’s an example of how collaboration works. I’d had the idea of the pirate comic, but what Alan did with it went far beyond anything I could ever have imagined.
If we look at the world around us today, and especially at this particular moment in which we’re having this conversation, there’s once again a feeling of living in the shadow of an apocalypse. What would Watchmen be today? If you thought about creating something similar now, would it still be possible? Could it still be told in the same way?
I think the world has become much more complex, and the stories happening in the real world are more complex too. Back then it was more a case of, “I’ve got a nuclear bomb, you’ve got a nuclear bomb — do you want to fight?” You know, in the end it boiled down to that. I think it would be very hard today to explore a lot of what’s going on in the real world. I think there’s something elemental about what happens in Watchmen, if that’s the right way to put it. We’re on the brink of apocalypse because of the hostility between two superpowers, the United States and Russia — and when we made the book, that was very real. In England there was a television drama called Threads, which showed how fragile society was, and back then we really believed it, emotionally as well. When it comes to society’s modern problems, to do with terrorism and economic conditions, it’s much harder to make them archetypal. So I don’t think Watchmen would work in exactly the same way today, but I’m sure you could tell a story that would have a similar impact. I just don’t know what it would be. Perhaps that’s not a very satisfying answer.
I think the world has become much more complex, and the stories happening in the real world are more complex too. Back then it was more a case of, “I’ve got a nuclear bomb, you’ve got a nuclear bomb — do you want to fight?” You know, in the end it boiled down to that. I think it would be very hard today to explore a lot of what’s going on in the real world. I think there’s something elemental about what happens in Watchmen, if that’s the right way to put it. We’re on the brink of apocalypse because of the hostility between two superpowers, the United States and Russia — and when we made the book, that was very real. In England there was a television drama called Threads, which showed how fragile society was, and back then we really believed it, emotionally as well. When it comes to society’s modern problems, to do with terrorism and economic conditions, it’s much harder to make them archetypal. So I don’t think Watchmen would work in exactly the same way today, but I’m sure you could tell a story that would have a similar impact. I just don’t know what it would be. Perhaps that’s not a very satisfying answer.
I think Watchmen is still interesting from a historical perspective, too.
Yes, what I’m trying to say is that Watchmen very much belongs to its time. It sat at a very specific point in history, and we captured a lot of what was going on at that moment. When Gorbachev was the leader of Russia, he had a meeting with Ronald Reagan in Reykjavík, Iceland, to talk about weapons and what would happen in the future. And the first thing Ronald Reagan said to Gorbachev was, “Hey, Mikhail, you know what we really need? An invasion from Mars. That would get us working together.” Which is basically what Watchmen is about. I think you can still explore that theme, even though the world has become much more complex than it was in the eighties. Yes — does that make sense?
It’s interesting to take that idea further: how would the creators of Watchmen imagine humanity’s reaction to something like that today? Would it really bring humanity together, or would the reaction be completely different?
One important point is that technology is also very different today. You know, with computing power, artificial intelligence and all these things, there are many ways society could be thrown into chaos, and they’re not limited to nuclear war. And we see it every single day in the news.
Thank you so much for your time, Dave.
Interview conducted at the Munich Comics Festival in June 2025.
Many thanks to the organisers for their support.
Many thanks to the organisers for their support.
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