Jeffrey Lewis lecture on Watchmen at the GFT, Glasgow

Jeffrey Lewis is an alternative folk (or 'antifolk') musician from New York. He plays folk music with a punk twist. I own one of his CDs, '12 Crass songs', which is a collection of his cover versions of songs by the old British anarchist punk band. It's pretty funny and I like it a lot.

Lewis is also a comic book artist and an arts graduate who wrote his thesis on the Watchmen graphic novel. He was playing a gig in Glasgow last night. Before the gig he was delivering a lecture on Watchmen at the Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT). Sadly I couldn't persuade anyone to go to his gig but I did manage to round up 3 other nerds to attend the Watchmen lecture with me.

I'm a big Watchmen fan. I first read the book when I was 11 or 12, over 20 years ago. I must have read the book 50 or sixty times. I own 3 copies (paperback, 1980s hardback, slipcase absolute edition) as well as several issues of the original series. I also own as many of the other works of Alan Moore as I have been able to locate. I am a major geek. I even liked the film although I realise that some fanboys would disagree with me

This lecture was comic book nirvana for me. Lewis apparently wrote his undergraduate thesis on Watchmen and he knows the book well. He spoke for about 90 minutes and he had interesting opinions on the underlying themes of the comic.

Initially Lewis described his idea that Watchmen is about the conflict between innocence and experience embodied by the Characters of the Comedian and Molok. He also discussed the recurrent images of a covered right eye in the book which Lewis feels represent a character being blind to a hidden truth. Finally he discussed the conflict between 'circles' (Dr Manhattan/nature) and 'triangles' (Veidt/man/industry). All reasonably convincing and interesting although Lewis appeared to be unaware of Alan Moores personal history of visual problems.

Totally geeky but good fun and thought provoking. A once in a lifetime opportunity. Wish I'd made it to the gig.

http://www.thejeffreylewissite.com/