Melkorjunior wrote:
...I'd argue that Watchmen is simply Moore riffing (albeit brilliantly) on other people's work, it had the advantage of being first: it was revolutionary, not in content but in style. Before Watchmen comics were universally regarded as kiddie stuff and the very idea of a moody, noirish thriller starring superheroes was brand new to the general public.
In point of fact, Watchmen was not the first. Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns was out earlier. That was that mini-series/graphic novel that broke the ground of being "moody & noirish" and touched off a multitude of imitations. Watchmen was second to the marketplace. A great work, but not the pioneering work.

Comics hadn't really been considered "kiddie fare" since the sixties as Marvel Comics got plenty of PR from the mid-sixties onward about being popular reading material on college campuses. As we moved through the 70's, nearly all of the real "kiddies" comics (Harvey, Gold Key, etc.) disappeared from the field.

One could also argue that moody thrillers featuring superheroes had been evolving for quite a few years. I can think of some work Steranko did that tended in that area, Miller's earlier run on Daredevil, some of O'Neill & Adams work on Batman, etc.