All are paperback, which means easy transport, and all have the official Complex co-sign. $150 for a pair of shoes that’ll be out in three months vs. $15 for a book that just might change your life? Get your paper up!

THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO (Riverhead Trade)

AUTHOR: Junot Diaz

A comic-book geek, hot Dominican girls, and magical realism? We think that maybe…yes, yes, it’s official, this book might just have it all!

BUY IT NOW!
————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

CITY OF THIEVES (Plume)

AUTHOR: David Benioff

The writer of The 25th Hour (which Spike then turned into a decent movie) goes back in time to the Siege of Leningrad in World War II to tell a story of two young men looking for eggs, sex, and Nazis. Sound boring? Wrong. One of the best reads of the year, trust.

BUY IT NOW!
————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY (Vintage)

AUTHOR: Erik Larson

Nonfiction that reads like a crime novel. Old-timey Chicago and a serial killer who took out more people than Jack the Ripper? Yes, please.

BUY IT NOW!
————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

THE HUNTER (University Chicago Press)

AUTHOR: Richard Stark

Originally written in 1962, this is the first installment of an incredible noir series, The Parker Novels, by mystery O.G. Donald Westlake (writing under a pseudonym). It was turned into Payback, that Mel Gibson joint from the ’90s, but don’t let that sway you. No frills, just taut sadistic revenge.

BUT IT NOW!
————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

I AM NOT SIDNEY POITIER (Graywolf)

AUTHOR: Percival Everett

Post-racial utopia our behind. Just because our president is black doesn’t mean there’s not room for a white-hot satire in the vein of Ishmael Reed and Paul Beatty (blaow, two more recommendations for that ass!).

BUY IT NOW!
————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

LUSH LIFE (Picador)

AUTHOR: Richard Price

The author of Clockers and Freedomland went off to write for The Wire, then came back to books to tell a tale of L.E.S. hipsters, cops, and Tru-Life’s crew. Well, not exactly, but the book reads like a Field Guide to Ludlow Street, except with way more guns.

BUY IT NOW!
————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

THE ROAD (Vintage)

AUTHOR: Cormac McCarthy

A father and son scrabble across the wasteland that used to be our planet. Bleak post-apocalpytic settings were never so compelling, so read up now before the Viggo Mortensen movie finally comes to theaters and you’re exposed for the poorly-read poser you are.

BUY IT NOW!
————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

SUPER SPY (Top Shelf)

AUTHOR: Matt Kindt

If you’re looking for a graphic novel, stop here. Espionage + awesome meta-fiction + pretty pictures = JJ Abrams’ wet dream.

BUY IT NOW!
————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

WHITE TIGER (Free Press)

AUTHOR: Aravind Adiga

A dirt-poor village kid rises through the class divides of India. Coarse, hilarious, and a far fucking cry from the gauzy “Indian fiction” your girl’s into.

BUY IT NOW!
————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

ZEROVILLE (Europa)

AUTHOR: Steve Erickson

A freak show with an obsessive love of movies moves to 1960s LA, then falls in with some weirdos and descends into madness. Seriously, seriously unlike anything you’ve ever read.

BUY IT NOW!

Ayo! Scott is not a fanboy (or a fan of boys, for that matter). Genius does recognize genius, though, which is why 12 single issues of Alan Moore’s 1986-87 comic classic Watchmen sit on Ayo!'s bookshelf, right next to the Hustler mag that pioneered labial close-ups. As a collection, the story of a disbanded team of flawed, masked vigilantes trying to solve the murder of one of their own and prevent nuclear holocaust in an alternate 1985 has gone on to become one of the best-selling books of all time and led to generations of fawning fanboys.

While the graphic novel was raking in cake for the suits at DC Comics, the movie adaptation sat in development hell, with good reason. Computer graphics weren't advanced enough to properly render Dr. Manhattan, a giant naked blue master of all matter, or the shifting ink blots on the mask of the unhinged hero and narrator Rorschach. Numerous writers and directors couldn't figure out how to turn the dense, dialogue-heavy epic about the nature of mankind and higher powers into a compelling movie that wouldn't cut out key pieces and piss off longtime Stans. Improved CGI and Zach Snyder, director of 300 and the Dawn of the Dead remake, were supposed to fix all that.

They do and they don't. As it turns out, Snyder's slavish devotion to source material is not necessarily a good thing. His original version of Watchmen, which included damn near every one of the painstakingly detailed panels Moore described for his artist Dave Gibbons, would have run close to four ass-aching hours in a theater seat. Cut down to an Ayo! quickie (two hours and forty minutes), the movie will still feel interminable for anyone who was expecting a rock 'em, sock 'em, cock 'em popcorn flick. Watchmen is a book and film for the pensive, not a full-speed ball-buster. The change in artistic mediums is worth noting, too. A reader can put down and revisit an epic graphic novel and flip back and forth to make sense of its complex narrative structure. A moviegoer overwhelmed by an epic, complicated comic movie is just stuck. But then Snyder wasn't trying to simplify things; he wanted his Watchmen adaptation to do for comic movies what the original book did for comics'completely buck the system. For non-devotees, though, it's more likely to make them want to buck'and blow their shit loose.

As someone who loved the original comics, Ayo! enjoyed the film's arresting visuals, its deliberate, slow pace, the quality of performances set against green screens and Snyder's insistence on not sacrificing deeper themes to make Watchmen the next Wanted. And yes, when the complete, unedited DVD comes out, Ayo! will spend four ass-aching hours watching it. Not like a fanboy, of course. Ayo! will be in his socks and drawers in your mom's basement.

Check out the trailer here to decide if you’ll be watching Watchmen.

In the February/March 2009 issue of Complex, we brought you a “Shotcaller” interview with Watchmen director Zack Snyder (click here to read the article). Like his adaptation of Alan Moore’s epic graphic novel, our feature was so deep that we had to edit some of the brilliance out just to make it fit on newsstands.

To see the complete version of the film that Snyder wanted to put out, you’ll have to wait for the director’s uncut ultimate blowout version of Watchmen on DVD, but you can get all the extras from our interview right now. Read on for Snyder discussing his relationship with Alan Moore, being spoofed and his awesome upcoming projects…

Interview By Justin Monroe

Complex: Sucker Punch, which is on deck, is an original story you wrote. Have you been looking forward to doing something without source material?

Zack Snyder: It's fun. I don't mean to sound weird but I get so immersed in the source material when I'm working on a movie that I kind of lose the line between what I thought of and what was in the book. [Writing something original from scratch], the initial process is way different. But once it exists and you start to actually work on making it real, then the approach is kind of the same, for me anyways.

Complex: How does it feel to have 300 spoofed in Meet the Spartans, one of those horrendous parody films?

Zack Snyder: I think it's pretty funny. You can't get upset about that. If the thing didn't hit pop culture in the knees pretty hard, there'd be no reason to spoof it. My favorite parody of 300 is Robot Chicken's 1776. They nailed it. I saw that and I'm like, “I'm going to make that into a movie!” [Laughs.] I can't wait to see Robot Chicken's Watchmen parody.

Complex: You've respected Watchmen creator Alan Moore's desire to have nothing to do with Hollywood adaptations of his work, but do you secretly hope he calls you one day to say he accidentally saw the film and thinks you did a great job?

Zack Snyder: Do I respect him and think he's amazing? Yes. Do I hold that hope for that? No. That's a pipe dream.

Complex: If he were inclined to view Watchmen, do you think he'd be proud of it?

Zack Snyder: We've tried as hard as we can into keep the ideas intact in the hail storm that is Hollywood, so, whether he is or not, I'm personally proud of what I've been able to jam down their throats.

Complex: Early on, did you make any special gestures to Moore to try to get his blessing?

Zack Snyder: I did not. By the time I came along, that ship had sailed.

Complex: What do you think went wrong with previous adaptations of his work?

Zack Snyder: I don't want to make any assumptions about what's good and bad, but I will say that I tried not to make assumptions about what Alan thinks. I think that's what has been done by a lot of people.

Complex: You're doing Cobalt 60, from artist Vaughn Bode's work. He was big in the graffiti world. Were you into graf growing up?

Zack Snyder: I wasn't, but Vaughn was one of those artists I did follow, and I was aware of his influence in the graffiti world. I can't say I was connoisseur of graffiti art, but I was certainly aware of that influence.

Complex: What attracted you to Cobalt 60 originally?

Zack Snyder: I used to be a huge fan of Heavy Metal magazine growing up, and I was exposed to Cobalt there and fell in love with the character and the world. I've tried to track it down and pursue it myself to make a movie out of it. Also I felt like the thing that's cool about Cobalt is it does have a culty kind of underground quality to it that I really like.

Complex: What made you want to remake Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man?

Zack Snyder: Well, Bradbury's a genius. Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favorite books of all time, and The Illustrated Man as a collection of short stories ranks up there. When you read it you realize how influential it is on so many other stories and people.

Complex: The Illustrated Man's tattoos move on his body and depict future events. How will technological advances in special effects figure in to your portrayal of that?

Zack Snyder: Some of the stuff that we learned with Rorschach [whose mask features constantly changing ink blots] I think will inform a lot of what we do with that because you can do anything almost now.

Complex: Have you decided which stories you'll use?

Zack Snyder: It isn't all of them but it's a lot of them. More than you'd think. We have a couple right now. We've written a few extra and we’re probably going to decide how we're going to approach those last few. We have like a few extra so we can so we're not locked in. We can go, “Maybe this will be better.”

Complex: How do you maintain the crew's passion when you're working with CGI and green screens?

Zack Snyder: I know, that's hard because it's abstract, so it's hard for them to stay frosty and everything, but we keep a pretty healthy pace. And a lot of the people I work with, I regard as family. In that sense we all have a pretty good time. We're glad to do work.

Complex: What diversion helped get you through the filming of Watchmen?

Zack Snyder: I gotta say the [2007-08] football season. We shot through the football season. The Packers went pretty far and that really was my distraction. I was born in Green Bay, so I'm bit of a Packer fan. Brett Favre has Godlike status at our house. My wife would be like, “Oh my God, are you kidding me? On your only day off, you're going to watch a football game?” And I'm like, “Yes, we are.”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ZACK SNYDER ARTICLE FROM COMPLEX’S FEBRUARY/MARCH ISSUE

In the book, which drops in July, Robinson explores what happens to a 40-year-old cigarette addict who gets transported back to high school as soon as he puts on a nicotine patch. Coming up as a pupil of the late, great Will Eisner, Robinson’s earned fanfare for his emotive tales like Box Office Poison. After the jump, check out a few preview pages from Too Cool to get the gist.

[Click on an image to view full size]

[Vinyl Pulse]

Related:
-God Save The Sex Pistols Kubrick Toys
-Dan Hazelton's Spiderman Tattoo Tears It Up

[Click on an image to view full size]

Images: WatchmenComicMovie.com

Related: On the Set of the Watchmen Movie