As HBO and Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers, Lost) prepare to enter the world of Watchmen with their follow-up series, which debuts on October 20, this seems like a good time to catch up on the events of the original 12-issue graphic novel by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and John Higgins.
That seminal book was of course turned into a movie directed by Zack Snyder in 2009, though by its very nature the film had to drop or alter several elements from the comic. Additionally, the HBO Watchmen TV series is a continuation of the book, not the movie, set some 34 years after that story. (The movie, of course, had a different ending than the comic.) Read our first impressions of the Watchmen pilot.
Source: IGN.com Watchmen: Everything You Need to Know About the Classic Graphic Novel