- Watchmen S1E09: “See How They Fly” Bonus
The first season of Watchmen might be over, but we’re cracking open an egg full of speculation about Season 2. On the final bonus episode for Season 1 — and the Season 1 finale, “See How They Fly” — we discuss Damon Lindelof’s insistence that he’s not sure if he would come back for more Watchmen, a big revelation about Lube Man from Peteypedia, some interesting confirmations and surprises from the official Watchmen podcast, and read some of your questions, comments and theories. Nothing ever ends, but this podcast is done (for now).
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: Episode 9.5 appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy54m - Dec 19, 2019 - Watchmen S1E09: “See How They Fly”
The Watchmen season finale, “See How They Fly,” is here as everyone converges on Tulsa for an apocalyptic ending. The 7th Cavalry’s plans are revealed, as are Lady Trieu’s, and they all revolve around Doctor Manhattan. Can Angela Abar save the love of her life? Will Adrian Veidt “save the day” one more time? And will Laurie Blake ever get out of that chair? Those questions and many more are answered, so strap in and grab your wrench as we leave all of this entirely in your hands.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: “See How They Fly” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy1h 27m - Dec 16, 2019 - Watchmen S1E08: “A God Walks Into Abar” Bonus, With Cher Martinetti
Cher Martinetti, Founding Editor of SYFY WIRE Fangrrls, joins our bonus podcast to discuss the fallout from Watchmen’s “A God Walks Into Abar.” While Peteypedia delves further into “Fogdancing” and we maybe learn the identity of Lube Man, the promo for “See How They Fly” teases an apocalyptic finish to Season 1. Plus, Cher discusses what it’s like coming to Watchmen the TV series having never read Watchmen the comic book series, and we take some of your listeners questions and theories.
You can follow Cher on Twitter or check out her work on SYFY WIRE Fangrrls.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: Episode 8.5, With Cher Martinetti appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy1h 3m - Dec 12, 2019 - Watchmen S1E08: “A God Walks Into Abar”
It’s flashback — or is it flash-forward? — time on HBO’s Watchmen as we find out how Doctor Manhattan met Angela Abar on “A God Walks Into Abar.” While Angela and the being formerly known as Jon Osterman chat in Vietnam for the first time, Doctor Manhattan is waking up in present day Tulsa, a new world is being created on Europa, and an important meeting is happening between Doctor Manhattan and Will Reeves, Angela’s grandfather. Oh, and if you’re wondering how Adrian Veidt ended up on one of Jupiter’s moons? You’ll find that out, too.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: “A God Walks Into Abar” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy1h 15m - Dec 9, 2019 - Watchmen S1E07: “An Almost Religious Awe” Bonus, With Josh Wigler
The Hollywood Reporter contributing writer Josh Wigler joins us for our bonus episode discussing the fallout from Watchmen’s “An Almost Religious Awe.” In it, we break down some interesting tidbits from Josh’s interview with Damon Lindelof about the episode, discuss the recently released ratings for Watchmen — and what they might mean for a Season 2 — as well as delving into the latest Peteypedia files, the promo for Episode 8, “A God Walks Into A Bar,” and read some of your tweets and questions.
You can follow Josh on Twitter @roundhoward, or his ongoing coverage of Watchmen on THR.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: Episode 7.5, With Josh Wigler appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy58m - Dec 5, 2019 - Watchmen S1E07: “An Almost Religious Awe”
Get ready for revelations a-plenty on this week’s episode of HBO’s Watchmen, “An Almost Religious Awe.” As Angela Abar continues to trip back through the past – this time, her own upbringing in Vietnam – Laurie Blake stumbles deeper into the Seventh Cavalry’s plans, Adrian Veidt is put on trial, and Lady Trieu reveals the scope of her master plan. Oh, and we learn some interesting information about one Cal Abar.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: “An Almost Religious Awe” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy1h 20m - Dec 2, 2019 - Watchmen S1E06: “This Extraordinary Being” Bonus
On our bonus episode for Watchmen’s “This Extraordinary Being,” we talk some corrections from the previous episode, the latest Peteypedia files, and answer some of your questions and theories.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watchmen: Episode 6.5 appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy38m - Nov 28, 2019 - Watchmen S1E06: “This Extraordinary Being”
Angela Abar takes a Nostalgia fueled trip through Will Reeves memories on a game-changing and illuminating episode of HBO’s Watchmen “This Extraordinary Being.” As we head back to the dawn of masked vigilantes in the Watchmen universe, threads tie together, a major piece of mythology from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ comic book series gets ret-conned, and the true enemy is revealed as we meet Cyclops.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: “This Extraordinary Being” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy1h 1m - Nov 25, 2019 - Watchmen S1E05: “Little Fear of Lightning” Bonus, With Jordan D. White
Marvel Comics Editor Jordan D. White joins the bonus podcast for “Little Fear of Lightning” to discuss his own fears about adapting Watchmen from a comic to a TV show, other spinoffs of the property, and more. We also apologize for misidentifying planets in the recap episode, break down Peteypedia’s latest files, the promo for “This Extraordinary Being,” and take some of your theories and comments. Also: is the show making fun of Zack Snyder… Or not? It’s not. But we discuss anyway.
Check out Jordan on his own podcast, Sailor Business, as well as Twitter.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: Episode 5.5, With Jordan D. White appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy55m - Nov 21, 2019 - Watchmen S1E05: “Little Fear of Lightning”
Watchmen’s mirror turns to focus on Looking Glass, as we zoom back in time to 11/2, the squid explosion, and Wade’s origin is revealed. Not only that, but we get some huge revelations about the 7th Cavalry, the state of what’s happening in Tulsa, and the overall dramatic plot of the show. Then there’s Adrian Veidt, of course, who is going all Black Freighter on some dead Phillips and Crookshanks. Let’s recap “Little Fear of Lightning.”
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: “Little Fear of Lightning” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy54m - Nov 18, 2019 - Watchmen S1E04: “If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own” Bonus, With Charles Pulliam-Moore
io9 staff writer Charles-Pulliam Moore joins the bonus episode for Watchmen’s “If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own” to talk about the lasting ramifications of the season’s opening scene, Ances-trees, and why everyone needs to stop speculating so hard. Plus, we discuss the latest Peteypedia entry, which has some surprising info about Laurie Blake and Dan Dreiberg, the promo for Episode 5, “Little Fear of Lightning,” and take some listener questions.
Check out Charles on Twitter and io9.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: Episode 4.5, With Charles Pulliam-Moore appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy46m - Nov 14, 2019 - Watchmen S1E04: “If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own”
Lady Trieu enters the stage in a big way with Watchmen’s fourth episode, “If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own.” Meanwhile, Laurie Blake and Angela Abar continue their game of cat and mouse, but it’s unclear which one is which. And somewhere else, Adrian Veidt reveals where Phillips and Crookshanks come from — and that he’s getting ready to escape. Oh, and also some dude lubes himself up and slides into the sewer. Get ready, time babies, because this is a weird one.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: “If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy1h 2m - Nov 11, 2019 - Watchmen S1E03: “She Was Killed By Space Junk” Bonus, With Abraham Riesman
New York Magazine and Vulture writer Abraham Riesman joins our bonus episode to discuss his experiences interviewing Watchmen showrunner Damon Lindelof, his take on artist rights issues surrounding the graphic novel, and much more. Plus, a big week in Watchmen as we discuss all the fall-out from dildo-gate after “She Was Killed By Space Junk,” the launch of the official HBO Watchmen podcast hosted by our mortal enemy Craig Mazin, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ first Watchmen soundtrack album, a new installment of the Petey-pedia files, the promo for Episode 4, and take your questions and theories.
Check out Abraham Riesman’s work on Twitter, or at his website.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: Episode 3.5, With Abraham Riesman appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy45m - Nov 7, 2019 - Watchmen S1E03: “She Was Killed By Space Junk”
We finally (re)meet Laurie Blake, and she’s not the same as we remembered on the latest episode of HBO’s Watchmen, “She Was Killed By Space Junk.” Meanwhile, over on… Wherever Jeremy Irons is, his identity is finally revealed. And yeah, he’s exactly who you thought he was. Finally, Laurie tells a very funny joke to Doctor Manhattan, though he may get the last laugh.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: “She Was Killed By Space Junk” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy1h 12m - Nov 4, 2019 - Watchmen S1E02: “Martial Feats of Comanche Horsemanship” Bonus
On this bonus episode we delve further into your theories around HBO’s Watchmen, Season 1, Episode 2, “Martial Feats of Comanche Horsemanship.” Plus, we discuss the promo for the show’s third episode, and delve into some serious supplementary material juxtaposition, thanks to the second installment of the Petey Files.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: Episode 2.5 appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy33m - Oct 31, 2019 - Watchmen S1E02: “Martial Feats of Comanche Horsemanship”
In the second episode of HBO’s Watchmen, “Martial Feats of Comanche Horsemanship,” Angela Abar delves further into the mystery surrounding Judd Crawford’s death, and discovers a few surprising facts about her own history. Meanwhile, a command performance of “The Watchmaker’s Son” has dire consequences… Sort of.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: “Martial Feats of Comanche Horsemanship” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy1h 5m - Oct 28, 2019 - Watchmen S1E01: “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice” Bonus
In our bonus episode for Watchmen Season 1, Episode 1 “It’s Summer And We’re Running Out Of Ice,” we talk about HBO’s promo for what’s coming up on the season, the supplementary material released online, and answer some of your questions. Who is Laurie Blake? What’s up with Judd Crawford? And when will Dr. Manhattan finally show up?
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: Episode 1.5 appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy29m - Oct 24, 2019 - Watchmen S1E01: “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice”
The first episode of HBO’s Watchmen is finally here. Head down to Tulsa to meet Sister Night, Red Scare, Looking Glass and many more new characters in this sequel to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic comic book series. How does this connect to the comics? Are there easter eggs? And who the heck is Jeremy Irons playing? We tackle those questions and more, including how much coke is too much coke, and how many golfers we can name as our Watchmen podcast recaps “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice.”
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
The post Watchmen Watch: “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy1h 11m - Oct 21, 2019 - Watchmen Issue #12, “A Strong And Loving World”
Our walk through Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen ends with issue #12, “A Strong And Loving World.” Or does it? Because nothing ever ends? No, this ends, as Dr. Manhattan and Laurie Blake return to Earth to confront Adrian Veidt; and our assembled heroes are faced with an impossible decision.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
Plus, here’s a transcript of the episode, so you can read along as you listen:
Alex: Welcome to Watchmen Watch, who watches it? We get ready to watch it as we’re coming up on Watchmen Watch on HBO, but first, we’re going to be watching a comic book which just kind of sits there. I’m Alex.
Justin: I’m Justin.
Pete: I am Pete.
Alex: We are going to be talking about the final issue of the Watchmen comic, the 12th issue, A Stronger Loving World, as we wrap up our recap of the comic, and transition totally seamlessly into recapping the TV show, no breaks there, don’t even worry about it. Before we get into it though, I’m a little concerned here, I see you Justin, I see you Pete, our fourth co-host including-
Pete: Come on man-
Alex: … some of the biggest four people, isn’t here, what’s going on?
Justin: Well, It’s a great day here. I actually have some very exciting news. Alan is here, Alan go ahead and introduce yourself. Hello… I’m just kidding, he’s not here. It’s-
Alex: Man.
Justin: … he bailed again.
Pete: That was…
Alex: That was fine.
Justin: We’re doing this really insulting them.
Alex: Yes. We do this over video Skype chat. Even though I can see you when you start doing that voice, I was like, I’m convinced he’s here. That’s how good your voice was.
Justin: Yes, I am here.
Alex: He’s here again. Pete is here.
Justin: No, that’s just me. That’s how seamless when you’re a classically trained actor as I am, you can slip in and out of a character. Sorry, Alan Moore isn’t going to make it for the 12th and final time.
Alex: Man, that is too bad. Well, hopefully I know how psyched he is about the show, he’s been out on the promotional tour, chatting it up, talking about what’s going on in HBO.
Justin: He’s at a Buffalo Wild Wings premiere party for Watchmen.
Pete: I’m going to be there for that. [crosstalk 00:01:48] Are you kidding me? Come on.
Justin: He has a sauce that’s branded the Alan Moore nuclear explosion wings.
Alex: I heard they’re also putting that on the Rorschach shows.
Justin: Those are not shows.
Alex: Yes.
Justin: It’s tricky. Alan Moore has lost a step as a writer, especially when it comes to naming a product tie in appetizers.
Alex: He used to be so good at that too.
Justin: Yes.
Alex: It’s surprising.
Justin: That’s right. He was the one that came up with unlimited breadsticks. They used to be unlimited potential Doctor Manhattan breadsticks.
Alex: That’s all-
Pete: Were they blue?
Alex: … why I always feel like it’s five minutes to midnight whenever I go to the olive garden.
Justin: 100%. Guys-
Alex: It’s the-
Justin: … Their original slogan was, when you’re here, you have a blue dick, they changed it to family.
Alex: I remember I went there one time and I was like, “Hey, we’ve been waiting for a while for our food, can we get our food?” And they were like, “You ate it 35 minutes ago.”
Justin: That’s how they made a fortune in their early days.
Alex: They get you, every time they get you, do you know who also gets you? Adrian Veidt gets you, Ozymandias gets you and he gets the entire world. He got them. He did the ultimate punked episode. He punked the entire world in this issue. Really glad I went for that reference.
Justin: No, this is the context we should speak about this final issue. It is the ultimate punkting.
Alex: When we left the characters of this book… I was about to say the what.
Justin: When we left the characters, we said a hardy goodbye last day issue. And here we are, knock, knock, knocking on the character’s doors again. Let’s go inside, issue 12.
Alex: Hello, Watchmen, you there?
Justin: Hello Alex.
Alex: It’s me-
Justin: Alan Moore.
Alex: Well anyway, New York got destroyed by a giant psychic squid that Ozymandias dropped there in order to create a fake alien invasion, which is something that we affirm in, we talk about more in this issue, in order to promote and cause world peace. Right now, Nite Owl and Rorschach are both at Adrian Veidt’s headquarters, they’ve just been told about his plan.
Alex: They are pretty shocked at the end of this issue when it actually turned out to actually have happened. Meanwhile, Silk Spectre and Doctor Manhattan are all the way up on Mars, though they’re heading that way as well and everything comes crashing together in this oversized final issue. Before we get into it, this feels like a very dumb question to ask with Watchmen, having revisited the series, what’d you think about it?
Alex: But really, I mean like, we’ve been talking about this all along, but I’m curious now that we’ve reached the end, now… and we’re going to go through the whole issue, and we’re going to walk through the issue, but what was your general take on it with this re-reading now in 2019?
Justin: I think too, we change as readers over the years, obviously, and I haven’t fully sat down and read this in probably six or seven years. I do think, just as a fan of comics, the older you get and the more time passes, the more time that you live, a fan of comics are in the world where the political atmosphere chain is changing all the time.
Justin: I think this comic deepens so much. I do think that happened. I think the topicality of reading it right now, in our political atmosphere, the current sort of a state of the world and with the series about to come out and sort of reframe this whole series, it’s an exciting time to read this comic.
Alex: How about you Pete? How are you feeling about it now?
Pete: Well, it’s a lot to talk about, but for sure, I mean the problem is, when you’re looking at a comic like this that was written so long ago, there’s a lot of bullshit that you have to kind of try to ignore like the female characters, the oversexualization, there’s a lot of bullshit, but-
Justin: I will say that was there in the original read. They didn’t take any more women out. It didn’t use to pass the Bechdel test and then now suddenly has failed it.
Alex: Well, I will say, this is coming right off of right before we taped, there was a thread in our patriot slack, about this very issue, which frankly I think is what Pete’s very rightly responding to and that’s something that we’ve talked about all along in the podcast, that this, it’s an incredible comic book, it’s an undeniable artistic achievement, but it’s also very much a product of its time at the same moment.
Alex: I think something I struck by which you’ve talked about a lot, and you just mentioned Justin, is the very timeless aspects of the book in terms of criticizing society, talking about panic, talking about conspiracy theories that feel so relevant right now but to Pete’s point, same sort of thing that, yes, the female characters are absolutely underserved and I think from a 2019 perspective when we’ve seen… I’m not going to say infinite more but a lot more female creators and male creators also being more cognizant about these sorts of things in terms of creating books, we’ve certainly seen a revolution in comic books.
Alex: I mean if you look at sales, the predominant force in comic books today isn’t Marvel comic books, it isn’t DC comic books. It’s Raina Telgemeier who is mostly writing graphic novels for, young females almost more than anything and that’s, if you look at the New York Times best sellers right now, that’s what people are reading. That’s what they’re being influenced by.
Alex: In a certain sense this, just from the comic book perspective is responding to comic books that were coming out in the mid 80’s and before that and pushing those forward. A lot of, we’ve talked about over the course of the podcast, comics since then have been responding and riffing off of Watchmen, often taking the wrong lessons in terms of [uber macho 00:07:58] and dark, and grimness and all of these things, but to its credit, despite the fact that it does have some serious issues in terms of the female characters, which I think we’ll also get to later in this issue when we get to certain material with Sally Jupiter in particular, I think one of the most controversial things that happens in all 12 issues happens towards the end here.
Alex: But there are also things that are still very relevant and from a modern read, again, like we’ve been talking about all along, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons are never telling you these are good people, this is the right way of doing things.
Justin: I feel like the thing of taking the wrong lessons, this is not a misogynistic comic in that it’s like, hey, these characters are right, this is what’s happening. This kind of got to be like criticizes so much of the comic book industry and the character development that most comics were having in their pages back then when it came out. I agree the female characters are underserved and you don’t see them a lot but they have depth of character, they’re not just there as objects.
Justin: And then the male characters are mostly horrible people and they’re shown to be that way, the greatest heroes are the most flawed. Rorschach in this issue, who is the only one that really has integrity at the end of the day, is just mercilessly struck down. I’m just saying, I think this comic is subverting a lot of the stereotypes, as well as it upholds them.
Pete: Yeah, that’s true. But I mean, you’re right with a lot of things. The female characters, they don’t have conversations on their own. It’s always talking about… At the end, not to kind of jump ahead, but like you’re saying, she loves her rapist. I mean that’s like… it’s not well done.
Justin: No. Well that’s [crosstalk 00:10:04].
Pete: I understand what you’re saying, but like there’s a lot of really fucked up shit.
Alex: I get it. I’m on board with what you’re saying, Pete, for the most part, except for the, it’s not well done, because to Justin’s point, that this is very much jumping to the end and talking about the Sally Jupiter of it all but, it’s complicated emotions that she’s feeling. And I think you don’t have to agree with what she’s feeling, but it is a very, or it’s a very realistic thing for people to not feel the right thing all the time, to in fact have the wrong feelings about the wrong people. That’s how gas lighting works. That’s how abuse works, is that you feel something, or think you feel something towards your abuser, even if it’s not actually a good thing to feel, if that makes sense.
Justin: It’s one thing to glorify what happens at the end, and I agree it is controversial. When she kisses that picture, it leaves you with a bad feeling, but maybe there… it’s hard to tell what the intention of that move is, but it’s definitely confusing and it’s… but it does feel like it’s coming from a place of the character, but the character’s wrong, in feeling that way, or the character is, I mean it’s hard to say that I guess, but the character feels, it makes you feel bad, about everyone’s lives in this comic.
Alex: Yeah, I could be wrong, I’m trying to flip through the comic quickly to take a look at it. I guess she doesn’t have… for some reason I thought it was there, but I, don’t they mentioned til they give her nostalgia or something like that? The perfume, at some point in that scene, or am I imagining that?
Justin: I think you’re imagining that. Dan’s wearing it when he’s with Laurie.
Alex: There you go, that’s what I’m thinking of. I think what I take away from that scene, and we’re very much jumping to the end of the issue here, just to give you guys a little context listening at home, Dan and Lori are in disguise after everything else that we’re going to talk about at the issue, they go to visit Sally Jupiter, and chat with her a little bit. Laurie reveals that she knows her father is Eddie Blake. Sally starts sobbing, talks about the complicated emotion of it, and as Justin mentioned, ends up kissing the picture.
Alex: What I took away from that is that feeling of nostalgia, right? It’s almost the same thing that Ozymandias is working for. The same way he’s talking about this very vague, wonderful, hopeful future, where everybody’s going to work together, when in practice, it may not turn out that way. Nostalgia is the same way, right? We have fuzzy memories, we think warm things about things-
Justin: Well, and there’s another-
Alex: Go ahead Justin.
Justin: There another way to read it. I mean, I agree with you. There’s another way to read it too, she’s just seen her daughter who she thought was dead, surprised her by walking in, is in a relationship that ostensibly seems happy, they’re talking about having kids.
Justin: And I think there’s something, it could just be she’s happy that she had her child, despite the horrible circumstances that, and relationship she had with The Comedian.
Justin: Like a lot of great writing, it’s open for interpretation, and one of the interpretations is super fucked up, but there are others that you can take from that.
Alex: Well, and the other thing we talked about back in the issue where it was revealed that Eddie Blake was Laurie’s father, when she realized that, I think there was issue nine maybe, maybe issue 10, and I think we disagree with this, but I still stick by the interpretation that, Eddie Blake does feel something towards Laurie and he feels kind of something, towards Sally, that doesn’t in any way forgive his actions or what he’s done or make him less of a monster, but that doesn’t mean he can’t also be passionate towards these people in the same way, though ultimately he is a bad guy. Pete, I interrupted you though. What were you going to say?
Pete: Well, I was just going to say that, some of these things that happen are sort of awful. We’re trying to show these people as not good people, sure. But also all Laurie does is she’s just sleeping with dudes every time you see her, or she’s on her knees in a sexualized position, it’s like, if there was some kind of good quality that they would try to portray, I think it would just go a little bit easier with kind of being like, okay.
Alex: Well I’ll tell you what, I will disagree with you at certain points on this issue in particular, that I do feel has a re-owning of the Laurie Blake character, and does push her forward into giving her much more agency, which we’ll get to in a moment. Let’s put a pit into this discussion, I’m sure we’ll re-visit it throughout the issue, and why don’t we jump into a page by page of what’s going on, real easy by the way, to get through these first couple of pages, I’m just going to say. It’s just real easy, just flipping right through them, just a bunch of destruction, squid legs, et cetera, et cetera. It’s great-
Pete: It’s been fun-
Alex: … just like-
Pete: pale horse, we would love to see pale horse sold out.
Alex: … Exactly. Has this series used full page splashes at any point previously?
Justin: No, definitely not back to back. I think, that’s what is so amazing about this, is the way to sort of hold that back, and then to let Dave Gibbons just go to town here and the colors in these pages as well are just so amazing-
Alex: John Higgins.
Justin: We see little references to everything we’ve seen before. We see characters that we’ve met, who are now laying dead in the streets. It’s just such epic storytelling and Plate used it, just the right moment in the series.
Pete: I mean, I’m def-, I’m sorry.
Justin: Go ahead Pete.
Pete: I’d definitely looked through it to see if there was anything like this, and the closest you get, is when they’re on Mars, but it’s not giant scenes like this. They thought about the paneling, and the coloring, and how it was going to hit you so well, I mean, the layers, that’s very impressive.
Alex: Two things in particular I want to call out, about the sequence, which is, let’s see, one, two, three, four, five, six pages long, the first page is blood pouring over the clock, which of course calls to mind, The Comedian’s button because it’s the same colors there with the blood in the clock, even though it’s a different design, but also-
Justin: And the sequence actually ends on page six with, some are very small, Comedians button, underneath the news-
Alex: Yes.
Justin: … thing.
Alex: Yeah, that’s right. That’s been the back matter of the entire time. Every time you get to the end page, you see the blood dripping down to the clock. To be honest, I’m not 100% sure if that’s in just the collected edition or that was in the original issues, but that’s, I think super fascinating. The other thing that I think is incredible about this, is the way they slowly work out the squid because you look at that first page, it’s not there, you just see the destruction.
Alex: Seconds page, if you’re not looking closely, at least my eye initially went towards Madison Square Garden, you see the pale horse and Kristallnacht poster, you see the destruction there and it isn’t until you look at the next page and you go, wait a second, what’s that weird thing coming across the left side of the page that you look up and you see it connects to this tentacle.
Alex: It’s clearer and clearer as you go on, as you see more destruction, until you can get to that sixth page, and you see the squid face reveal the same as that drawing we saw back on the island, so many issues ago at this point, and as you mentioned Justin, paper’s falling everywhere with war. We see the news, we see The Comedian button. It’s really everything coming together at this point.
Justin: Yeah, it’s so good. And just the way that that final squid panel, you really get to look it right in the eye and just see what a monstrous creation this whole thing was.
Alex: Yeah, it’s the final squid down as they say, now-
Pete: Come on.
Alex: What? Then we get into a series of pages where Laurie and Doctor Manhattan have come back to earth. Doctor Manhattan being predictably an asshole about all of this. He really is, I don’t know why, the rest of the series, I was like, yeah, I get it, you’re all out of type or whatever. But this, he’s standing in the middle of this and he’s like, this is interesting and I’m like, fuck you do bad. Come on.
Justin: Yeah. Well I do think-
Alex: He’s kind of smiling as he’s looking around.
Justin: Well I think he’s intoxicated by this feeling, he doesn’t know what’s happening. This is the first time this has happened really, since his accident where he is unaware of what it’s… the first mystery he’s really faced, where he wasn’t in control in a long time and he’s clearly intoxicated by it. He doesn’t care about any of the other characters really in this. He’s just enjoying his little fix here and he really sees himself as a god no matter what he actually is.
Alex: Now, not to open this particular can of worms again, but one thing, that I understand the complications here, but one thing that I do think is in Laurie’s credit that I really like in the scene, is she is the one character in the book, up until later on when Rorschach starts crying, and we’ll certainly talk about that, that feels any sort of motion, she has any sort of feeling about what’s going on. Nite Owl and Rorschach are literally and figuratively very removed from everything that’s going on.
Alex: Ozymandias is obviously very into his plan. Doctor Manhattan is being an asshole, but Laurie is sobbing and noticing the little things, and I think that does point to her power as a character. The reason I say it’s a complication is because it’s the one female character who is allowed to feel things, but to your point, Justin, I do wonder if that is them pointing out how comics work, that the men need to be [Uba 00:20:26] man and the women are allowed to be women maybe, or am I giving them too much credit there?
Justin: I mean that yeah, it could be. It just tracks with her character, she’s someone who is very empathetic. I feel like throughout, she’s always going through it, whether that’s attributed to her, or just like women are like that, says I Alan Moore, but I do think also, another good thing about the way she acts in this scene is, she’s fully moved on from her feelings toward John and is just like, alright, take me out of here now. I’m sick of being around you and this horrifying scene.
Alex: Yeah. Then we do cut to Adrian Veidt who’s still talking tonight, Alan Rorschach and I love Doritos reaction here where he was like, well that’s ridiculous. What are you even talking about? That can’t possibly be true. Why do you think it’s important that he has that reaction?
Justin: I don’t know. I’ve never… Nite Owl in this whole issue, he just… a character they were supposed to really feel for and be like, he is the, maybe the hero of this story. He’s the one who really helps put it together and is trying to have this romantic relationship that we’re all behind. He’s like, doesn’t believe Adrian Veidt. He doesn’t really do anything in this issue. He just sort of floats there. And it’s weird because over the arc of his, of Nite Owl through this series has been like, he really got his mojo back, and in this issue he’s just like, hey, what? I don’t know, what’s happening. I don’t believe any of you. Then he’s like, I’ll have sex with you, Laurie.
Alex: Yeah. What’s your take on it, Pete? Do you have-
Pete: Well I think-
Alex: Go ahead.
Pete: … I think that he’s just kind of in total shock. He’s not really comprehending what’s happening. He’s not really aware and you just kind of… And that’s what sucks, is he got to this point and he’s not, at least Rorschach was trying to fight, but he’s just in complete shell shock mode, and kind of shutdown, which, I definitely have heard people say that, when something tragic or they can’t believe happens, they just kind of go into ghost mode and they’re just kind of removed from all of that’s happening.
Alex: Sorry. I believe that’s called enacting ghost protocol?
Justin: Yeah, that’s what it is. That’s why in ghost protocol Tom cruise is like, what? Wait, what? What’s happening in this movie?
Alex: All right-
Justin: That’s what he says-
Alex: … I don’t want to deal with this, no thanks. But they’re like, their mission if you choose to accept it, and he’s like, no thanks, I’m good.
Justin: Please blow up tape.
Pete: I agree with you while you’re singing about Laurie, she’s the only one who gets her shit together here, and puts up a fight but then the fact that like, let’s just have sex again. It’s like, god, can she just…
Alex: I mean, what did she… well, I don’t know. I think it’s [crosstalk 00:23:32]. After that, I’m a man, I want to have sex all the time, but after like, okay, first off-
Justin: Big reveal, big reveal Pete, for the end of this part.
Alex: Even right now on our podcast.
Pete: No, but like-
Alex: This turns you on?
Pete: … no.
Justin: This is the only time you don’t want to have sex, is when you’re talking to us?
Pete: Oh my god, yes-
Justin: That seems weird.
Pete: … my point is after all that happened, it seems like that’s like, hey by the way-
Alex: I’m sorry to interrupt you one more time, but what if I put on my sexiest voice bit?
Justin: I’m so hot right now.
Alex: Anyways. I’m starting to feel like I didn’t have my mojo, like Nite Owl.
Pete: I don’t think you-
Justin: It’s true.
Pete: … do have it.
Alex: Are you sure Pete?
Pete: Please for the love of God, stop.
Justin: Also, Alex objectively, that’s not a sexy voice.
Alex: Are you sure? But that’s too much to have happen-
Justin: You sound like you have a cold-
Pete: To then want to do that-
Alex: I do-
Pete: … my point.
Alex: … it’s like a very bad cold. Do you like that?
Justin: [crosstalk 00:24:36], Sorry Pete, Alex, be quiet. Pete, it’s your turn to talk, no more sex talk.
Pete: I’m just saying it’s too much to have happen and then be like, hey, let’s have sex.
Justin: Well, but I will say, it, I mean, we’ll get to that in a second, but it’s Laurie’s idea. It’s not like Dan’s like, all right, let’s get lucky.
Pete: I’m just saying her only purpose is a sexual object. She should have more.
Alex: I understand what you’re saying and I understand you’re hitting the same job but, in that scene, and we’re definitely jumping ahead, Laurie is the one who says it, and this might be a shock to you, but some women, like to have sex as well, I don’t know. I think that’s her actually taking control, if anything, when there’s all these men who have been wanting to have sex with her, and she finally says, no, you know what? It’s the end of the world. This is what I want. This is what I need right now.
Justin: Cool. And in her time of crisis in the past, when her marriage is falling apart and she didn’t know what was, what she was going to do, she did find comfort in Dan’s arms, and maybe it’s that, but on Pete side, it is weird that they, did she, that’s the scene we see with them. They don’t have much of a romantic moment. They just fuck by a pool. It’s definitely a surprising thing. When I was a kid reading this, I was like, what?
Alex: It gives Doctor Manhattan, he’s happy for some reason about that, which is weird.
Justin: Because I think he at that moment, I’ve always read that as they belong together and he’s like, I should go. I don’t belong here.
Alex: I got to go to space, I guess.
Justin: When I walk in on my partners having sex with another man, I smile and I’m like onto the next town.
Alex: Man. All right, Nite Owl and Rorschach are there, there’s a great series of panels that happen, where Nite Owl is calling out Adrian Veidt. He’s like, you got assassinated. What if he had shot you instead of the secretary? And Adrian says, I suppose I would’ve had to catch the bullet, wouldn’t I. And Nite Owl says, “You? nah, come on that’s completely, you couldn’t really do that.” There’s just a silent battle of Adrian Veidt smiling and looking him. I love that expression so much.
Justin: I know, talk about being an asshole. What a dick-
Alex: Yes.
Justin: … in this series of panels. Now I always thought this was set up long before, the whole catching the bullet thing, but it really is just like, he says it here and then he does it, a couple of pages later, which I thought was so funny, that’s become such a thing associated with him, but it really is just like a last minute, like I could do that, see, and he does it.
Pete: What’s f-
Alex: I think, go ahead Pete.
Pete: … that’s fucked up though, that the evil villain smile is your favorite panel dude.
Alex: No, I just think it’s a well drawn expression on the part of Dave Gibbons and the way that it’s timed out there is excellent. The thing I would say Justin about that, that points to, which we’ve talked about before, is that Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons made sure that these issues were a package. There are certainly things that are long running throughout. There were things plot wise, the pay throughout, but every issue, it does introduce things and then pay them off several pages later. There’s still this sense of yes, this is the last issue, but if you’re going to be plunking down your money to buy just this issue, you’re still going to get kind of a complete story at the same time, which I think is pretty neat.
Justin: Yeah, definitely. I just think it’s funny how I met has grown to be such a bigger thing about his character over the years. Another thing about about Nite Owl, I do think, Adrian Veidt is sort of up on a pedestal for Nite Owl, in the same way that Nite Owl one was for him, that might explain some of his sort of inactive, inactivity throughout this whole issue is, he’s his hero in a way it seems. And his hero just became the biggest villain in all of history.
Alex: Now we get to the next part when Doctor Manhattan shows up. And this to me is fascinating. This gets back to something that we talked about with the last issue with Ozymandias, which is that frankly, he’s actually been improvising a lot. He hasn’t really had these well laid plans. And this point where Doctor Manhattan shows up, there’s a point where you’re just like, maybe he’s going to turn back, we’ll see what happens.
Alex: And as soon as he does not, Adrian Veidt goes into, oh shit mode, where he just have to throw everything at him because he’s not sure anything will work. That’s one thing going on, the other thing that’s really-
Justin: Wait, but on that-
Alex: Yeah please.
Justin: … on that though, it’s funny that he has this very, years long plan that he came, he put together, and then his plan to beat Doctor Manhattan was like, I hope he follows my cat down this hallway. And then turns on the thing. He’s definitely not as great, much like Doctor Manhattan, Adrian Veidt is also not all he’s cracked up to be. It’s just what he thinks about himself, and where we go along with it. And I think that’s why so many people take the wrong lessons from this. They’re like that character is confident. He must be right and he’s just a human like anybody else, both these guys.
Pete: He just really believes in himself and his evil plan.
Alex: A little detail that I really like a lot, that again talking about Laurie’s humanity and her connection to humanity, is she is carrying a bag the entire time, which I believe she took from the wreckage of Manhattan and what she’s taking, is she’s taking a literal baggage with her as she travels down to the superhero confrontation, where everybody else is playing their games and blowing each other up in the hallways, and fighting, but she’s the only one that really knows and understands what’s happened in the world, and she’s bringing all of that with her.
Alex: She is essentially, the way I took it is, taking justice for the world along with her and obviously it doesn’t work out in the long run, but that’s the indication I took from that bag.
Justin: She has sort of a Pandora role in this where she’s sort of maintaining the hope and all these people and sort of keeping everything going. Maybe that’s why she has a little Pandora’s bag.
Alex: The other thing that’s neat that happens is, we get a double sequence almost that is laid out almost exactly the same way, where Doctor Manhattan is walking up to the fortress, and he says, “I’m sorry, these tacky ons there’s bundling things up. I’d better follow him inside.” But, he’s actually saying that later when he is following Adrian Veidt on the next page.
Alex: It’s parallel panels, they’re in the same exact position on both pages, but he’s actually saying that to Nite Owl, the exact same phrase. And that happens a couple of times. This is just so great, just in terms of layout, just in terms of pacing and everything, it’s very neat.
Justin: And the way that he’s in the same, and maybe you just said this, same position and you can swap Nite Owl and Laurie, they’re in the exact same spots if you flip quickly back and forth, very cool.
Alex: And the other thing that happens here is very briefly, you can see he’s put Laurie in a protective bubble, which makes sense because she’s in Antarctica, and she’s not wearing pants, but as soon as he disappears, he completely forgets about her. She is left alone to walk through Antarctica without the protective bubble, and as to walk in, again, total asshole.
Justin: Yeah, not cool dude. Keep your force field-
Alex: Speaking.
Justin: … up.
Alex: Speaking of not cool, you mentioned the hallway earlier, that Ozymandias lures them into, Ozymandias kills Bubastis, blows him up, very sad. Do you think like Doctor Manhattan, and like John Ostrom before him, is Bubastis going to be able to come back as some sort of blue cat? Thanks for tribe again guys.
Justin: 100% yes, Alex. I think that cat is who we’re going to really focus a lot on in the Watchmen TV show.
Pete: Oh man. I hope so.
Justin: Lot of time traveling cat.
Pete: I really felt like the cat was underused in the comic and I hope we do get more of it in the next series.
Alex: Do you think there’s a possibility, we’ve only seen a trailer for it so far, but in the Cats movie at the end, they’re going to turn and say, by the way, this was Watchmen?
Pete: Wow.
Justin: Yeah. That’s cool. Then Bubastis goes to the cats universe, cinematic universe.
Alex: Bubastis would fit right in with old Deuteronomy and Trash, Trash face well I don’t know.
Justin: I think a lot of the cats are named Trash. It’s a common name.
Alex: Let’s jump over to the bullet catching sequence. Laurie is sobbing, she comes on Ozymandias after he’s blow up Doctor Manhattan and Bubastis and she says, “Veidt, you’re an asshole,” and she shoots him and he bleeds. Now how do you read the sequence? Because the way that I took it, is he does catch the bullet, but true to form, he also gets very hurt at the same time. That’s what I-
Justin: Yes, I think so. I think he caught it in his hand, and his hand got bloody from the bullet.
Alex: Yeah. Which points to that he’s very athletic, he is very smart, but he’s not actually superhuman, same as we’ve been talking about all along.
Justin: That’s what I’m saying. Unless that’s bean juice.
Alex: What do you think Pete is it bean juice?
Pete: I don’t know, it could be capsules that he has, for the show but… I mean, that’s, this to me it was such a 80’s kind of moment where you have the karate move that saves the day when he catches the bullet. But it just makes me mad that it’s like Laurie, shoot ,it bothers me when people… if you want to do something, do it, don’t talk beforehand to give up, somebody a chance to turn around and get in their karate stance. Shoot [crosstalk 00:35:07]somebody if you want to, you have a chance to use a cool line, use that cool line.
Justin: I agree completely. I’m just going to drop the line if I have a second.
Alex: What’s your line going to be Justin?
Justin: It’d be like, am I pointing this in the right direction or what? And then I’m going to[crosstalk 00:35:28] shoot myself in the head.
Alex: Time to get loaded-
Pete: Oh, man.
Alex: … because forgot to load my gun with bullets and then the guy shoots me.
Justin: Yeah, that’s good. I’m going to say guns make me uncomfortable, and then pull the trigger. Or maybe not.
Alex: That’s a cool line. These are all very cool lines. Pete, do you have a cool line you’re going to say?
Pete: Yeah, I would shoot a bunch. And then as they were dying I would just be like, fuck you guys.
Justin: Oh wow. You’d say afterwards, fuck you guys?
Pete: Yeah.
Justin: But they wouldn’t hear you Pete?
Pete: They might get a little bit of it as they’re dying.
Justin: I guess what I would say is like, man, I’m turned on right now, no matter what I’m doing.
Alex: There were getting amazing secrets, Doctor Manhattan was not actually blowed up. He’s totally fine and he’s enormous and bashes into the art tactic retreat. I appreciate the fact that we do not see his enormous blue dick at any point of the sequence, but he does come down to normal size, at which point Adrian Veidt turns on his wall of TVs.
Alex: We get to see exactly what’s happening in the world. And very quickly because of the psychic rays that have spread throughout the world. I want to get back to this in a second, because of threw me a little bit, the squid not only blew up because of the psychic rays, but also sent thoughts out to psychics all over the world, and seeded the story that he had created with all of these writers. And ultimately, again, in a very short period of time, Russia and the United States cease hostilities.
Alex: They decided to work together against this extra directional threat, and we end with a panel of Ozymandias standing in front of the Alexander painting in essentially a spotlight saying, “I did it,” like he’s five years old. The psychics thing threw me a little bit because we’ve talked about how Doctor Manhattan is really the only superhero in this world, but this seems to establish that there are people with other extra normal powers in the world of Watchmen, how did you take it?
Justin: Yeah, I mean, he does. I mean, he says he, the way he got the psychic wave to come out of the squid was by getting a psychics brain, and there’re people out there who are sensitive to it. I also think maybe Alan Moore just believes that?
Pete: Yeah, when he does comic cons, I’m always hearing him talking about how psychics, he believes psychics are real, and he was like, this is, just proves my point.
Alex: Yeah. And you mean when he does Comic Cons and also when we all hang out, and get some PSLs or whatever?
Pete: Yup,
Alex: Because he’s one of the co-hosts of the show.
Justin: Yes, we do that.
Alex: He’s back, hey Alan-
Justin: Once again, that was me.
Alex: Oh man.
Justin: I don’t think it’s go by the, you said PSL, meaning Pumpkin Spice Latte and no one’s going to be like, Alex, don’t bring that shit into our house.
Pete: I thought you meant to say like PSP or something.
Alex: No, no, no. I meant to say PSLs they’re back man. They’re back. It’s October.
Justin: I thought you meant PCP, which is what we usually take, when we’re all hanging out.
Pete: Yeah. We take-
Alex: I usually have a PSPCP, which is Pumpkin Spice PCP.
Pete: Oh man, they don’t make that.
Justin: No they do. It’s very boutique.
Alex: Let’s talk about this panel though. This Ozymandias panel where he does the, Steve Holtz raises up his hands and says, I did it again. What do you take away from that? I know I’ve been saying that phrase a lot this episode, but it’s such a different reaction than we expect from Ozymandias.
Justin: I think it points to how he wouldn’t arrested development like boy man he is, despite the fact that he’s winning… this is what I was talking about before where I think Alan Moore is subtly criticizing comic books, this man, he accomplishes his goal, which was horrifying to the world. He did save the world, maybe, maybe not. And his response is a child’s response to a soar scoring, a soccer goal. For all of his smarts, he’s still just a big old stack of testosterone.
Pete: But what’s weird is that him doing that stops Doctor Manhattan in his tracks. He was the giant monster, was going to grab him, squeeze his head and kill him, and then all of a sudden he yells, I did it like a five year old, and then all of a sudden everybody just gives up, walks away.
Alex: Well, I want to talk about this next page as well, it’s very tied to that and what you’re saying Pete, because this really threw me this page. This is the page where everybody, Adrian Veidt lays it out. He says, hey, I did it. I saved the world. Everybody’s working together.
Alex: What do you think? Is it worse to let everybody know this is what it is and hostilities, resume in the world probably gets destroyed or I already did it, I already killed millions of people and now the world is at peace. Why don’t we just go with that? And we get a series of panels where first Doctor Manhattan, then Laurie, then Nite Owl have two speech bubbles each. Two to three speech bubbles each, where the first one is always, this is terrible. Why did he do this? This is so bad.
Alex: And the second one in the same panel is, you know what? It’s okay, I think we’re going to go with this, that ends in Rorschach in one bubble saying joking, of course, at which point he walks out, but this is, I think the first speech bubbles structure thing that I’ve noticed in this book. What did you take away from the sequence? What were your thoughts on it? Because again, I was surprised that they rattled through these decisions so quickly.
Pete: I was very surprised by that. But also just like, he’s, everybody wants to kill him, then he turns on a couple of TVs and everybody… and he goes, I did it. And then everybody’s cool with it. We’re going to talk? Five seconds ago, your hand was crashing through a building to kill this guy. And now we’re just listening to him and pondering him and being like, you know what guys? Has got some points. He just tried to kill you a couple of seconds ago and ow we’re just talking shit out and it’s very upsetting.
Justin: Do you think Adrian Veidt was right for what he did? If it was true that the world was about to be blown up in nuclear warfare, did he do the right thing?
Pete: You don’t know if that’s true or not though.
Justin: Right, but I’m telling you, given those factors, did he do the right thing by sacrificing, a million people in New York City, or it’s four million people in New York city, and The Comedian sacrificing them to save the rest of the world?
Alex: No, but like, which four million people in New York City?
Pete: That’s fucked up.
Justin: It was the four million worst New Yorkers. I mean, they were in Times Square.
Pete: Come on man.
Alex: So mostly tourists and Elmos.
Justin: A lot of dead Elmos out there.
Alex: Oh man.
Justin: Sorry. I know that’s horrible to all of the Elmo fans out there, but honestly like, do you think he did the right thing?
Alex: I will say… Yeah. I mean, that’s the main question of this issue, right?
Justin: Yeah.
Alex: Is, I think there’s a difference though between, was he right to do what he did, versus now that he did what he did, do you expose him or go along with his plan? And what-
Justin: Well but I think the fundamental question, I mean, if I think they go along with it because they believe in the pragmatists argument that like, he did do the right thing, or did that what he did is tolerable because of what he’s, how he saved the world.
Alex: Right. I think it’s the latter there. I think he already did it. They can’t undo it. They can’t bring those millions of people back to life or anything like that. Yes. What Pete?
Pete: Doctor Manhattan was talking about time travel and he has time traveled, why couldn’t he go back and stop this guy?
Justin: Because I think he thinks it was right and in this panel, he’s like this, no he did it and the world is a better place for it.
Alex: Yeah. I do want to mention, I said something wrong actually, on the speech bubble thing, Doctor Manhattan in his panel, has two leaked speech bubbles that basically say, no, you argued on Mars, Laurie, that we should save life. Ultimately, the equation balances out to more life the way that Adrian Veidt did it.
Alex: And it’s only Laurie and Dan who have the two separated speech bubbles, where Laurie says, “Never tell anyone” would we really have to buy this. And then she says, “Jesus, he was right. All we did was failed to stop him saving earth. Jesus” Nite Owl basically does the same thing. And then Rorschach has his one panel joking of course, that’s it.
Alex: To answer your question though, he’s absolutely wrong. Adrian Veidt, I, from my perspective, no. There is no sacrifice of life as right, but there is a part of me that understands the thought of he already did it. If you expose him, it’s only going to make things worse again.
Justin: Interesting. You like the passive argument of just being like, well, I may as well not say something and go along with it. You’re saying he’s wrong because he wasn’t sure that it would actually be the end of the world.
Alex: I think that’s part of it. I think also there’s no scenario where killing millions of people is the right decision to go?
Justin: Well, I mean this is a direct sort of extension of the end of World War II, dropping the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think. Those questions are the most difficult ones for all of history. But it’s tough.
Alex: Well, I think I-
Pete: I don’t think he should be able to play God, I wouldn’t go along with it. That’s why I like Rorschach, Rorschach’s the only one who’s like, fuck this shit, I’m out.
Justin: But then he ends up being killed.
Pete: Well, fine. Sometimes you got to die for what you believe in, but it’s bullshit that he gets to do this and he gets a profit off it, and he gets to live like a King, off the fact that he was just, I’m just going to kill a bunch of people and blame it on a squid.
Justin: But I think…
Alex: First of all, never blame anything on a squid. I just want to-
Justin: Except for how good the Calamari is, you can blame the squid for that.
Alex: Blame the script for that. Man, you’re too delicious, buddy. I can’t stop eating you.
Justin: Just had to eat you, and dip you in some sweet chili sauce.
Pete: Oh, man. No man,
Alex: What about you, Justin? You mentioned Hiroshima and I think that’s very app, given that we’ve see the Hiroshima lovers sprinkled throughout the entirety of this comic book, for whatever reason, that didn’t occur to me, but I think you’re 100% of the buddy there, in terms of that being the metaphor they’re talking about, because yeah, I think what I potentially would say they’re leaving with is here, is that there’s always going to be that collateral damage.
Alex: There’s always going to be those innocents who suffer even though you think you’re making the right decision for the world. And then the question becomes, do you do what’s right for the world? Or do you do what’s right for the individual? And that’s what I think Rorschach choice comes down to, you in a weird way, And Pete, I know you’re going to yell at me of this, but I think Rorschach’s decision is selfish.
Pete: Oh fuck you man.
Alex: No, I’m not saying I disagree with him. I’m just saying he is making the selfish decision to say, “I’m going to do what is morally right for me, not necessarily what more is morally right for the world.”
Pete: You don’t know if that’s why he’s doing it. I think he thinks truth is what he needs to, put the truth out there, justice must be served, that kind of thing.
Alex: But who is he doing that for?
Pete: For all the people who died because he was wanted to go launch the squid at New York City.
Alex: I guess I could see that potentially.
Justin: But if that results in the world than going back and being blown up, is that the right choice?
Pete: I don’t know, man. If you ask somebody whose mom got blown up in New York City, they’re like, well, we did it for the right, for everybody as a whole because maybe a war would have broke out and maybe the retaliation would have been… there’s a lot of maybes man, that guy’s [crosstalk 00:48:44]
Justin: And how about this? There are plenty of times in our lives where we don’t speak harsh truths, because we’re trying to make the life easier for us and everyone around us. You don’t see someone with one eye on the street and say, “Most people have two eyes because you’re like…” it’s a truth that doesn’t need to be pointed out to that person. And that to extend that all the way out to this, at this point, to Alex’s point, they accept what’s happened. They believe that-
Pete: That’s why you can travel in time. You shouldn’t accept what happened-
Alex: He can travel in time.
Justin: He can travel in time.
Alex: He just exists in every time simultaneously.
Justin: He’s aware of what’s happening all the time.
Pete: Maybe his blue smart ass and figure some out man.
Alex: Damn, he’s coming for you man. Doctor Manhattan is coming for you.
Pete: Fuck Doctor Manhattan.
Alex: Also on the plus side, I would say, that guy whose mom died in the Manhattan squid accident, he’s still got some nice [galmad 00:49:42]. You know what I’m talking about?
Justin: That’s right. They’re going to eat for weeks.
Alex: Then Adrian Veidt leaves because he’s like, hey, I’m feeling pretty good about everything. Got some final details. Rorschach walks. Doctor Manhattan disappears and Laurie and Nite Owl left, and we go back to that thing that we talked about earlier where they make love by the pool.
Alex: Really if anything, I think this is just to give us that thing that you were hinting at earlier, Justin, which is we end with them by the pool. It’s a reflection of them and the pool. Just their shadows laid out exactly like the Hiroshima lovers. They are the thing that are left behind. That’s it. I think it’s just a set up for that.
Justin: Yeah. And they’re doing the very human thing of connecting and then having sex.
Pete: Sure, sure.
Alex: Which-
Pete: Right after-
Alex: We’re going to do at the end of this podcast, right? What? Sorry Pete?
Pete: Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Alex: Cool.
Pete: No, I just think that it’s like, it’s not realistic. You just had too much shit happen to you.
Justin: I mean maybe, but I do think some people like to fill a gap of, or a trauma up with some sex.
Pete: All right, all right.
Alex: Also there’s another interesting thing about the sequence, which is that Laurie pulls off Dan’s mask and earlier the whole thing has been… just to be blunt about it, he’s only been able to get it up because of the costumes and the heroics and that’s it. He’s been impotent. Otherwise, here they are stripped bare. They have become themselves. They finally can be just Dan and Laurie. They don’t have to be Silk Spectre and Nite Owl anymore.
Pete: You’re saying for this guy to get a boner, four million people have to die? Is that what you’re saying?
Alex: Yeah, I mean who, let he who is without sin throw the first stone, that’s all I’m saying.
Justin: I don’t know if that applies there Alex, but I like it. That he who’s without sin, get the first boner after the disaster.
Pete: Like Jesus preached.
Justin: Between that panel of the, Dan and Laurie’s shadows on the wall and the next panel there’s something that resembles that but in a different place. It’s two separate pictures or ideas put next to each other. And is there a term that you would’ve used there, the position of both of those things are interesting?
Pete: Yeah, I would call it something beside myselfism or parallels parallels-
Justin: Nearatude?
Alex: The ducks, ducks to, the Dexter-
Justin: I think it’s the-
Alex: … Dexter’s laboratory. Dexter’s laboratory.
Justin: … Dexter’s laboratory. That’s what it. The Justin position of these two images is very cool.
Alex: You did point that out. That’s a good name for it.
Justin: That’s what I’m talking about, the brand. Get the brand out there.
Alex: Yes. Yes of course it does cut to Rorschach’s mask, it’s, there’s no way of not seeing the Hiroshima lovers in his mask, even though I guess you can see whatever you want, it is Rorschach plot. And then we get one of the most famous sequences in the book as Rorschach walks outside, Doctor Manhattan approaches him and says, “Where are you going? He says, “Back to allyship, back to America, evil must be punished.”
Alex: People must be told, Doctor Manhattan says, “Rorschach, you know I can’t let you do that.” And he says, “Of course must protect Veidt’s new utopia. One more body amongst foundations makes little difference. Well what are you waiting for? Do it.” This is Rorschach and he takes off his mask and screams do it. Doctor Manhattan just blast them apart. Leaving his blood, smoking in the snow. And that’s it.
Pete: It’s a hell of a way to go out.
Alex: Man. We were talking about the last couple of issues how Rorschach and I think we all agree on this, has been regaining his humanity. This to me truly is the pinnacle of that. Him finally taking off the mask, being human, being himself, sobbing, looking directly into the camera and saying do it.
Justin: Yeah. I agree with that. The thing that is bothering me about this right now is why is Doctor Manhattan doing this dirty work? A couple pages later, he’s like, I’m leaving earth behind. I don’t care what happens. I’m going to go make my own planet. What does he care whether whatever happens here?
Pete: Exactly. Why is he killing dudes on the way out?
Justin: Why isn’t it Adrian Veidt who comes out here and it’s like, come on man.
Alex: I don’t know. There’s a lot of wrap up from Doctor Manhattan over the next couple of pages, he takes care of Rorschach, he… as we mentioned, looks over Laurie and Dan who are aligning their post-coital, bathes them in blue light, almost like they’re his children. He walks over water and then he walks through walls until he encounters Adrian.
Alex: They have a brief conversation. He drops some info on him… just to throw something out here, this is kind of off the top of my head, but certainly there’s a lot of God imagery happening here, right?
Alex: Given that this is Ozymandias post-tachyons, post squid explosion, post the point when he knew what was going to happen, it’s a new world and he is the God of the new world. He is really doing some Old Testament shit here. He’s smiting people. He’s looking at Adam and Eve laying in the garden. He’s walking over the water. He is talking to his acolyte, his Adam and leaving him with some wisdom, potentially, that’s what we’re going for here.
Justin: I think that’s right. I also think he gets too, way too close to their naked bodies on that allocate, not necessarily.
Pete: I’d also like to say Zalben, don’t go off script like this. All right. When you go, start making stuff up that are going to [crosstalk 00:56:03]
Justin: Sorry about that. Do you just thought of that Alex? It just came to you right then?
Alex: Yeah. Sorry about that. I know for those of you who are listening to the podcast, this might not be immediately clear, but, Pete spends usually 60 hours a week scripting out our podcasts for us. These are not improvised in any way, including what I’m saying right now. It’s kind of amazing that pea, it actually scripted this part about us being unscripted when I just went off script-
Pete: I’m a good writer.
Alex: Yeah, you’re an amazing writer. I apologize for doing that. You’re really, I would say Pete, the Doctor Manhattan of this podcast.
Pete: Hey, fuck you, man.
Alex: No, no, no, no. I’m just saying because you’re a d-
Pete: Come on of all the characters, you’re going to…
Alex: … you’re just a dick, let’s just tag it out. That’s why-
Pete: … man you’re an asshole.
Justin: Sorry, line? Pete could you give me my line? No. Pete, if anything, you’re the Ozymandias of this podcast.
Pete: Man.
Alex: What do you want to be? What do you want to be in this podcast Pete?
Pete: I wan to be-
Alex: The Rorschach?
Pete: … Rorschach. Yup.
Alex: All right, we’ll blast you. Apart at the end of this.
Justin: Exactly. When this podcast ends-
Pete: It’s the only way to die, man.
Justin: … you dead Pete. To be exploded-
Alex: Here’s the thing though. The thin though is, nothing ends, nothing ever ends.
Justin: Oh boy.
Alex: You know what I’m saying?
Pete: I hope this podcast ends at some point.
Justin: Oh shit.
Alex: No, it’s not.
Justin: It’s happens [crosstalk 00:57:18].
Alex: It’s going to go on for hours at this point. I do want to ask about this sequence though. As Doctor Manhattan walks up to Adrian Veidt he walks into the middle of, I think it’s a bottle of an atom, which would probably make sense for Doctor Manhattan and then [crosstalk 00:57:33]
Justin: Also.
Alex: The solar system, and he says, “John, wait, before you leave, I did the right thing, didn’t I? It all worked out in the end.” And Doctor Manhattan says, “In the end? Nothing ends Adrian, nothing ever ends.” He says, “John, wait, what do you mean by… and Doctor Manhattan disappears. What did he mean by that? What did he mean by nothing ever ends?
Justin: I mean, this whole sequence is interesting because the panel right after that, to add it to what we’re talking about, Adrian Veidt is looking, he’s positioned away from the camera. His shadow is looming in front of him, and he looks ashamed or scared about what has just happened.
Pete: I’m really surprised. You don’t know what he means by that. This is a plug for the Never Ending Story, which is a movie that came out very soon after this.
Alex: Oh, right. It’s a tease.
Justin: Another product tie in from Allen wild wings Moore.
Alex: Yeah, it makes sense then. That explains why Falcor shows up on the next page.
Justin: Yeah. I-
Alex: I, go ahead Justin.
Justin: … I think what he’s saying is, first off he’s brushing him back and saying like, did I do the right thing? He’s like, come on man, grow up. I thought we were beyond these human concerns because I do think these two characters in this issue are like, we’re bros, we make big decisions. Cool what you did, you got best of me, and this is Doctor Manhattan and then one last moment being like, I’m still a god. I know that nothing ever ends, because I see beyond you. You’re, at the end of the day, you’re just a human. Hey, great job on this plan. Great game out there, but I’m a god.
Alex: Yeah, I think that may make sense. It also points to, again, like a five page beyond tease, but it teases what happens at the end of the issue, which is even though we’re getting to the end of the comic book, comics continue stories continue. They can continue beyond something that I do want to touch on in a couple of pages here. But I think that’s also what he’s setting up than it is Alan Moore being metatextual here as well.
Justin: Yeah, and also this story doesn’t end. Maybe Doctor Manhattan has seen that vortex journal will eventually come out and like this is far from over for you, Ozymandias.
Alex: Then we get into the next sequence, which we’ve already talked about quite a bit. Where Laurie and Dan show up at Sally Jupiter’s place. They’re sporting new hairdoes new looks. Dan has a very terrible mustache on, nothing wrong with mustaches in general, but he has a very bad mustache, I would say. And we get that kiss on the photograph that we talked about earlier, that complicated kiss. Anything further to say about the sequence though?
Justin: I mean, just looking at it, she, it’s not like she’s sweetly kissing that photo. She’s upset and we see in the foreground in the last look at it, like the lipstick on the picture and she’s like sobbing. I do think at the very least, this is a very complicated moment, and not a like expression of like, you know what? I guess I do love the man who assaulted me.
Alex: Yeah. The other thing that I will mention that I forgot about that happens right before this is as Dan and Laurie are walking off, they talk about, hey, you know what? Maybe we should be mass vigilantes again, and Nite Owl sorry, Dan says, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre sounds neat. And she says, Silk Spectre’s too girly, plus I want a much better costume that protects me.
Alex: Maybe something with leather with a mask over my face. Also maybe I ought to carry a gun, which cuts to then [shoot 01:01:15] her kissing the picture of Comedian. It’s very clear. She’s talking about The comedian’s costume. That’s what he wore, leather, a face mask, carried a gun. To the point that you were bringing up earlier, Pete, I think Laurie’s journey, you could say over the course of this comic book, is going from being inspired by almost the worst aspects of her mother, to being inspired by the best aspects of her father. I don’t know.
Pete: Oh man, that’s weird. That’s a weird thing. I don’t know how I feel about that, man. I mean, when I write it and then rewrite it, I didn’t know that. She was like, yeah, I want to carry, I think she wants to carry a gun because it’s a fucked up world. I don’t know if she was trying to be The Comedian, but that’s one way to look at it.
Alex: Yeah. I mean there’s the thing from the riots, right after the bombs are dropped in the Vietnam war [crosstalk 01:02:16].
Pete: No, no. Community in [inaudible 01:02:18] I’m familiar with it.
Alex: All right, well then we get the last couple of pages. We see a headline that says RR to run in ’88, which is Robert Redford running for president, one world, one accord, we see the millennium perfume.
Justin: In the panel above. We see burgers in borscht. Russian stuff is cool in New York City, obviously. I thought it’s interesting, in the next panel we have watch the skies rather than who watches the Watchmen on graffiti down the wall.
Alex: Everything has changed and we see two people who did survive the massacre in New York are the nebbishy assistant and the head of the conspiracy newspaper, he’s pretty pissed off. They’ve got to fill some stuff, but nobody wants to piss off the Russians anymore because there’s the tentative peace. And you talked extensively about this, a couple of episodes back, Justin, but this dude is wearing The Comedian’s button on his shirt.
Alex: He’s told to get something from the crazy pile and he goes and immediately potentially reaches for Rorschach’s journal and says, “I leave it entirely in your hands.” And there’s so many things going on at that one panel. It’s such a lovely last panel.
Justin: It’s great. It’s so smart nice little twist to the knife at the end.
Pete: But it’s just-
Justin: Or maybe he just reached over the journal and grabbed a letter that said Elvis is my dad. And that’s what changes the world.
Pete: It is just a smiley face t-shirt that he spills ketchup on, it’s not like he went out and bought a Watchmen t-shirt. But I think that-
Alex: It’s again, Alan Moore all about that product placement. You know what I’m talking about?
Justin: Yeah. That Alan Moore special gloppy ketchup that he sells on the side?
Pete: Dude, that ketchup is good though.
Justin: Yeah.
Alex: It is very good.
Pete: [crosstalk 01:04:17] a gloppy.
Alex: The couple of things that I take away fore going the panel one, it’s The Comedian’s final joke, right? Is that ultimately the journal is there. Two, is he reaching for the journal? Is he reaching for a letter? That’s up to your interpretation and that last thing, I leave it entirely in your hands, that’s Alan Moore saying it to the reader, that I leave it up to you, what do you think happens next? And it’s funny to me to see that ending, given the preciousness that’s been over Watchmen over the past several decades, and we’ve certainly talked about this quite a bit, but with things like the Watchmen movie with things like before Watchman, which is a project that DC comics did, where they told stories about these characters before the events of Watchmen, and particularly with the Watchman HBO series, where people have said, “No, Watchmen is this untouchable masterpiece,” and what I almost take away, and even to the point where Alan Moore’s like, “You know what? Take my name off of this thing. I don’t want to be involved in this.”
Alex: But this last panel, it’s very clear to me that he’s saying, “Comics continue.” That’s the point is that nothing ever ends like Doctor Manhattan says earlier. I leave it up to you. If you’re going to continue it, you’re going to tell more of a story, fine. If you’re not going to tell more of the story, that’s fine too. Ultimately we’ve said what we need to say in this 12 issues and we’re done.
Justin: I agree. He means, I leave it entirely in your hands except for movies, television, other comic books or really anything at all associated with this thing you just finished reading.
Alex: As long as it’s mayo chip then it’s fine. Watchmen brand mayo chip. Cool. And then we don’t get any back matter here. I have the deluxe version, so there’s some very deep back matter where there’s development art that Dave Gibbons did, that he contributed-
Justin: Flex.
Alex: … here. I’m pretty cool [crosstalk 01:06:21].
Pete: What’s up big time?
Alex: But honestly I definitely recommend picking it up if you can, just because there’s also some French portfolio covers that he did that have all the individual characters on the cover. There’s nothing too shocking in here but it’s just great to see the additional information and everything. Before we wrap this up, we’ve certainly talked quite a long time about this 12th issue here. Any final thoughts on Watchmen, the comic book? Pete?
Justin: Go ahead.
Pete: I mean it’s an insane story that takes people places and really rips and tears at your questioning of life. And what we’re supposed to be doing, it’s a powerful piece and it’s really well done.
Alex: Justin, what about you?
Justin: I mean it’s very similar, Pete, this is like, there’s a reason this comic is held up as the best comic or the ultimate holy grail of the comic book industry. And I think we could talk about this forever. There’s so much depth to it, so much complexity. A lot of people read this being like, this is a great superhero team and this is so far from what they actually are, they’re just a bunch of complicated, messed up characters who, heroes and villains and the line between hero and villain is blurred throughout this whole series.
Justin: It’s great. I always recommend reading this only after you’ve read many years of other kinds of things.
Alex: Yeah, that was the thing I was going to say to you, just to bring it back to what we mentioned in our preview episode, in the first episode, just to, really wrap this up, but don’t read it first. But I’m so happy we’ve read it again, because it’s a good book just beyond the density, beyond the weight of it, that it’s had in comic book culture. It’s a fun book to read. It’s a good story. It’s well drawn, it’s well colored. And it’s an entertaining mystery throughout. That to me has been the big thing that I’ve taken away from it. Is I feel I have a better appreciation of it, not just on a textual level, but just also on an entertainment level, that it’s the sort of thing you can recommend to people as, hey, this is something you can take a lot away from, or a little away from but, at the same time you’re going to get something from it.
Alex: Now a little order of business before we move on, starting next episode, we’re going to move to once a week for our episodes. We’re going to be recapping episodes of the HBO show, those air Sundays on HBO, so our episodes recapping and breaking down those episodes, will go up a little later in the week. Stay tuned for that, versus the twice a week schedule we’ve been doing it for the comic book.
Alex: But that said for any information on that and when that’s coming up, you can check us out at Watchmen Watch Podcast on either Instagram or Facebook. You can also do Watchmen Watch1 on Twitter, patreon.com/comicbookclub to support this show and many more. And please do, if you can chip in a couple of bucks to do things like transcripts, et cetera, cost a little bit of money. We really appreciate the support.
Alex: Plus we’ve been having, as we mentioned at the beginning of this episode, some great discussions about Watchmen in our Watchmen watch room on our patriot and on the slack, we would love to have you join there. That would be awesome. We also do a live show every Tuesday night at 8:00 PM at the People’s Improv Theater Loft in New York. Come on down, we’ll chat with you about Watchmen and other things. And remember, we taped this episode 35 minutes ago.
Justin: And I’m Alan Moore singing off.
Alex: He came back.
The post Watchmen Watch: Issue #12, “A Strong And Loving World” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy1h 11m - Oct 17, 2019 - Watchmen Issue #11, “Look On My Works, Ye Mighty…”
As Nite Owl and Rorschach approach Ozymandias’ fortress, Adrian Veidt takes a walk back through his history, and our Watchmen podcast breaks down Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons Watchmen #11, “Look On My Works, Ye Mighty…” Plus, one of our hosts has seen the first episode of HBO’s Watchmen series and gives their spoiler-free impressions.
SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.
The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.
Plus, here’s a transcript of the episode for you to read through as you listen:
Alex: Who watches the Watchman and who watches you watching the Watchman? We watch you watch the Watchman right through your window like a bunch of creeps. I’m Alex.
Justin: I’m Justin.
Pete: I’m Pete, but your-
Alex: And this is-
Pete: Your intro is getting creepier and creepier, man. You got to figure something out with that.
Justin: So is Watchman. So is Watchman, Pete.
Alex: It is, and we got a lot of episodes together. We got two episodes to go here on the comic, and then we’re going to be jumping into the TV show and by the end, things are going to get real fucked up.
Pete: Yeah.
Alex: Yeah. that’s 100% truth. Speaking of fucked up, I’m sorry to do this. Our fourth host, Alan Moore, the landmark, the benchmark [crosstalk 00:00:42]-
Pete: Can you even call him a host at this point?
Justin: What are you talking about? He’s been here for a couple of the episodes.
Alex: Yeah, I remember he had some good things to say about the last issue, I think.
Justin: Yeah, he really, really blew himself up over that last issue.
Alex: Oh boy.
Justin: It’s like, “Chill out dude. We get it. You’ve Rowe Watchman. But anyway, so he just texted me and he was like, “Hey, I was there 35 minutes ago.” So I don’t know if we missed him.
Alex: Well, I’ll tell you what, as long as he recorded his part of the podcast, we’re doing this one over Skype. I could just edit it in. I can edit it in afterwards, and I’m sure it’ll be seamless. So, just throughout this podcast episode, let’s take incredibly long pauses.
Justin: Yeah, that’s true, and we’ll just drop in some Alan Moore Bond Moe’s.
Alex: Yeah, oh, I thought you were going to say beneas for some reason. I don’t know why.
Justin: Interesting, it’s two different words. Bond Mose, means good words. Beneas means doughnut for rich people.
Alex: Speaking of doughnuts for rich people, we’re going to be talking about chapter 11 and not going intellectually bankrupt over it. As we talk about Look on my Works, ye Mighty the second to last issue of Watchman by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. As mentioned, the show is premiering on October 20th. I don’t know if we want to get into this on this podcast. I will mention we’re about a week out. We tape these episodes about a week in advance, and we’ll probably catch up when we get to the show. I did see the first episode [crosstalk 00:02:14] at Comic Con.
Justin: What?
Alex: What? No, I did. I don’t know if we want to talk about that at all on the podcast before we get into the issue.
Pete: What was it like man?
Justin: Well it’ll be one side of the conversation, but yeah, let’s do it.
Alex: Sure, I’m not going to spoil anything for anybody because I do want us to talk about a clean and fresh on the podcast itself, but two observations I will give you all your listeners. The first one, so they showed off the first episode previously at TCA, the Television Critics Association. I did talk to some coworkers and friends there who had seen it, but generally that’s kind of mum, that’s a very private situation for people watching that stuff. So this New York Comic Con, this was thousands of fans inside the Javits Center.
Alex: It was the first time they really publicly showing off Watchman, and Damon Lindelof came out on stage, and I don’t want to ascribe too much emotion for him because I don’t know him personally or anything like that, but he, in the sweetest way, seemed so nervous about what was about to happen, which you don’t really expect from a show runner. You expect somebody to come out, and usually expect them to come out and be like, “what’s up y’all? We’re showing of Watchman. He came out-
Justin: But I think that’s makes sense to me because these are the people … It’s like if someone were to come into your home and be like, “Hey, I made home videos about you and your family. Here you go.” Because the fans are that into it. They’re that rabbit about it. It’s like something so close to their hearts like family.
Alex: Yeah, and you could see he was carrying these handwritten notes, and you could see his hand shaking the entire time while I was reading them, talking about how much Watchman meant to him when he was growing up. How it was the first comics that his father had given him. They told him it will change his life. And he’s told this story before in the initial Instagram posts that he put up where he explained why I was doing the project. He repeated a good chunk of that.
Alex: He did, I thought this was a little weird to call out, but our fourth co-host, Alan Moore, he called them out at the top of the presentation. He said, “I could reference one person’s name. You know who I’m talking about, but I couldn’t do this without him and this goes out to him and I hope we have honored you, even if your name isn’t necessarily on this thing.”
Pete: That’s a classy move men.
Alex: Yeah, it was very sweet. I just wanted to-
Justin: I read that report and when you take your name off something, well how come you can’t even say his name? He could say is name.
Pete: No man, he was being respectful about it.
Alex: His name just doesn’t exist anymore. Like anybody who does it… could you imagine if somebody just used his name to promote their product? They’d be [crosstalk 00:04:59]-
Justin: Disgusting.
Pete: Wait a second. Oh, come on guys.
Justin: He’s our fourth co-host. We’re not exploiting.
Pete: Have you ever been hosting a podcast and then you just realize you’re a part of a piece of shit podcast. Oh, that sucks.
Alex: Jesus man, several times a week I got to tell you.
Pete: It’s a heck of a ride.
Alex: Well, anyway, that was … Damon Lindelof introduced it. I thought that was very sweet, and then we watched the whole first pilot episode. I got to tell you, I loved it. I thought it was really good. I’m very curious to talk about it with you guys here on the podcast because there’s a lot to talk about, but my general impression overall was even though, and we’ve talked about this from the very beginning, you don’t need to continue Watchman. You don’t need to riff off Watchman. You don’t need to do before Watchman in the comics or anything like that.
Alex: We talked about that back when it was coming out of D.C., but if you are going to do it, I’m glad that it’s good, and that’s what I thought about this pilot. It was clear that if nothing else, they have put so much thought into every single frame of it and to me it matched my hopes of what I wanted out of the show.
Justin: Wow. A greatness-
Alex: Being very vague about it. I don’t want to spoil anybody’s experience, but I was very happy at the end with the experience that I have. I’m very excited to watch it again because-
Pete: Would you say the first half was good, but the second half wasn’t or-
Alex: I know you like to make fun of me for doing that. No, it was good throughout. Regina King is amazing. The cast is amazing.
Pete: She is a national treasure. That woman is unbelievable.
Alex: It’s going to be a conversation piece, that’s the other thing. People are going to talk about it quite a bit because even when it honors, and echoes, and reverberates off of Watchman, the comic that we’re about to talk about, it’s very much its own thing, and it’s almost, in a certain way, in conversation with Watchman, the comic book. Again, I know that’s being very vague, but it’ll make more sense when you watch it.
Pete: Weird.
Justin: It’s in conversation.
Pete: You’re telling us to watch this Watchman show? Is that what you’re saying?
Alex: Yeah. I’ll tell you what, I know we were kind of waffling about this. Let’s [crosstalk 00:07:23].
Justin: Don’t waffle the Watchman.
Alex: But you buy our Watchman branded waffle bakers made with our good friend, [Wildland Bore 00:07:31]. We sell them by Le Creuset.
Justin: Le Creuset. Excellent partner for this Watchman themed waffle maker. Every nook and cranny is full of syrup and bean juice.
Alex: Oh, there was one other thing that I wanted to mention to you guys about the Watchman premier. So I went to the Watchman party afterwards-
Pete: Men, you went on all Watchman.
Alex: I was all Watchman all the time. Now, this was actually the thing that made me feel a little uncomfortable about the whole monetization of the whole thing-
Justin: I’m sorry, the what?
Alex: Monetization of the whole thing, where as opposed to the premiere where they were very respectful of everything to go in and hear like a DJ blasting 90’s dance music and people dressed in cosplay wandering all over the place, that was a little weird. But the main thing I wanted to mention to you, which I was very excited about, we’ve talked about previously in the podcast, they had Watchman theme drinks and in fact, they had Doctor Manhattan.
Pete: That’s good.
Justin: That’s nice.
Alex: Now, I know your recipe was a Manhattan with big blue dick in it, right Justin?
Justin: No, I believe my recipe was stirred with a regular dick. Didn’t have to be blue unless you happen to have a blue dick and not naturally then ice-
Alex: I’ve been freezing my dick all night just to make sure it’s nice and blue when I stir my cocktails [inaudible 00:08:55].
Justin: You could just get a vasectomy.
Pete: I just want to back up the truck for a second here.
Justin: It’s much cheaper to just stick it in the freezer. What’s up Pete.
Pete: You thought it was people who look like they were going to a Comic Con were at the party that was for Watchman.
Alex: No, what I mean by it is that Watchman is a very particular thing, without being too snotty or gate keeping or about it. It was just a regular Comic Con party where they were like, “Here we go now, Here we go now oh, oh, oh.” And everybody’s dancing around and getting drunk, and partying.
Pete: I like the way you’re putting a tone on that. I think it’s a great song.
Alex: Oh, you’re missing my point entirely, Pete.
Justin: Wait, Alex, are you saying you were bothered by the Alan Moore jalapeno poppers they were serving at the party?
Alex: Yes, can I give you the recipe for a Doctor Manhattan then we’ll move on?
Pete: Okay, great.
Justin: Yes, please.
Alex: Okay, Doctor Manhattan, according to them, is four roses bourbon, splash Curacao liquor, Bianca vermouth, and orange bitters.
Justin: Well, the Curacao is horrible.
Pete: That’s sounds disgusting.
Justin: [crosstalk 00:10:04] makes it blue.
Alex: I’ll tell you what, it made it blue, wasn’t great.
Pete: I could have told off from that list.
Justin: Curacao is a bad thing.
Alex: I’ll tell you what, I got drunk and I made some very poor decisions there that night, extremely poor decisions.
Pete: Good for you.
Justin: When do we get into those decisions?
Pete: Yeah, when do we talk about that? Which podcast is that?
Alex: Just very briefly then we’ll move on. I bought a ticket to go see Joker. [crosstalk 00:10:29]
Pete: I don’t care what you say. You’re a sellout, man.
Alex: I was very drunk. We’ll talk about this another time. Let’s jump into Look on my Works, ye Mighty, chapter 11 of Watchman. This is the big issue. This is the big one. Granted, some stuff happens in the next issue as well, but this is really where it all goes down, and for those of you who were, whatever reason, haven’t been reading to this point, we know now that Adrian Veidt is the villain. He’s been masterminding a plan. We don’t know exactly what that plan is. At night, Ellen Rorschach have headed to Antarctica to his base to confront him.
Alex: Even though they put together most of the clues, they’re still not quite sure why he’s done this or what exactly is going on, and they want to find out more from him. So, this is very much the Ozymandias issue. We’ve seen him a bunch throughout the comic, but this is the first time we’re really getting inside of his head, and it’s pretty huge. Before we get into a page by page or anything, any overall impressions of the issue, things you taken away, themes, anything like that?
Justin: Well, it’s interesting. So when Nite Owl and Rorschach head to Antarctica, they’re like, “Oh, Adrian Veidt is responsible for The Comedian’s death perhaps and threatening the other heroes.” But in the midst of this, they’re like, the world is probably ending, but they’re heroes and they’re like, “Hey, the world’s ending, but we should go investigate this murder our friend may or may not have accomplished.” I think that’s interesting that it happened to work out as we learn in this issue that they caught both problems at the same time.
Alex: Well, but I think, maybe I’m not remembering correctly, but I believe they made that decision last issue, right?
Justin: Yes, they did.
Alex: They decided let’s tackle the solvable, potentially solvable problem versus, hey, we’re going to stop nuclear annihilation between the United States and Russia, right?
Justin: Right, but don’t you think … I guess maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s the like, oh, as humans we can’t actually solve these larger problems, so let’s just do what we think we can handle because I think that plays into a lot of the themes of this issue, which is all about how we as humans set our own traps and end up causing our own problems that come back and get us killed or ruin our lives basically.
Alex: Well, and the other thing that is playing throughout the issue, that’s actually been playing throughout the series, but really comes to bear here is just kind of the idea of knots. Every issue has its own theme and that’s something that’s gets pushed very heavily. The image on the cover and in the second paddle this time is these butterflies and this fully age peeking through the snow. It’s in the shape of the stain on The Comedians button. So it’s the same sort of thing, but it also kind of looks like a rope tied together.
Alex: We’ve had the Gordian knot locksmiths or Gordian lock, I think it was called, that’s popped up throughout sort of that running joke about Dan Dry berg’s door keeps getting knocked open and they keep coming back and fixing it. But throughout this, we get the idea of knots, and what I took away from that is that we are all intrinsically tied together, but often it’s hard to tell a knot from a tangle, if that makes sense.
Justin: Interesting.
Pete: Wow
Alex: Well, I’m riffing a little bit off of your point here, Justin, that everybody is so tied together. When you look at it up close, Nite Owl and Rorschach are heading there and they’re like, “okay, what is this small solvable thing? We can untie a knot, right?” But ultimately they find that it’s this enormous bundle of rope that is stretched all over the world.
Justin: Yeah, I mean, to take that as a larger metaphor for this whole issue, like this issue is crazy complicated. There’s so much exposition. All the Black Freighter stuff, when I was younger reading this, I was like, “Okay, let’s get back to the story.” But I feel like maybe it’s a sign of maturity or growing up or being interested in different things anyway, is that’s the stuff that is so intense here. The metaphor of that is so great juxtaposed against both the people at the news stand, and the crime that happens there, and then the larger story of Adrian Veidt Rise from being just a rich genius to having this plot to save the world by killing half of New York city.
Alex: Well, I just want to mention, to get back to the thing that you said about the Black Freighter stuff, I agree with you as the same sort of thing. I basically skimmed it the first time I read it when I was younger. So yeah, going back now when we’re really delving into it, it certainly makes a lot more sense, but there’s a very funny exchange towards the middle/end of the issue when Bernie, the news stands dude, finds out that the dude has been reading the Black Freighter the entire time is also named Bernie.
Alex: He says, what we’ve all been thinking, the dude on the ground, he says, “Why do you keep coming back here for weeks and reading that over and over?” And the younger Bernie says, “Because they don’t make sense man. That’s why I got to read them over.” And I think a, that’s a very funny exchange. B, it ties into that whole knot thing of him trying to unravel what’s going on with the Black Freighter, but I think that also points to exactly what you were saying is that divide between youth and older. Not that Bernie, the newsman, has any real idea what’s going on, but the younger Bernie is just like looking at as a kid and it’s like, “I don’t know why these pirate comics are like this.” And that it isn’t until later that you really get them.
Justin: Yeah, it is funny that the Bernie character there also, he’s young and he also doesn’t read it. Just like we also didn’t really read it when we were meeting this comic. Man, Alan Moore gets it, except for showing up on time for a podcast.
Pete: I mean overall it starts kind of real interesting, tying stuff in but the ending is so massive. That ending blew me away so much that I was like…. that’s when I went back and started rereading stuff and the interview at the end of this, I read that all the way through. That’s the first time. That ending was so bad-ass and that was such an amazing villain monologue thing that I was like, “Oh my God, this comic just went from being really interesting and beautifully drawn, and well done to a whole different level of respect.”
Justin: I mean, I agree with you, the level of just mastery of the art form to pull off telling a story this complex with all these crazy details in it, and also making the end reveals truly shocking and have a great fight sequence in the middle. This revelation about Adrian fight and he kills his assistance through boredom mostly, I think, is great. It’s just such a great issue and it does so much.
Alex: I don’t know if you’re talking about reading this time or the first time you read it, Pete, but I got to tell you, I knew exactly what was going to happen. But when you get to that final line of Adrian Veidt where he says, “I did it 35 minutes ago,” I cackled when I read it, this time too, because it’s so good. Even if you know exactly what’s coming, the way-
Justin: It still gets you.
Alex: … the way the word bubbles are paced out too it just hits it at a perfect rhythm. It’s amazing.
Pete: Yeah, it really does.
Justin: And he’s a cocky motherfucker. He’s a cocky motherfucker, this guy.
Alex: So, the other thing that we’re touching on a little bit here that we should mention, and then I guess we probably, we’ll page-by-page a little bit, but there’s two things that are going on in this issue. We’re following Nite Owl and Rorschach as they are approaching Adrian Veidt to the palace, fortress, whatever you want to call it, and confronting him. Ultimately him laying out his whole history, and plan, and exactly what’s been going on the entire time, cresting in this I did a 35 minutes ago. And then we’re watching what’s going on the street corner with the new stand as every single regular human character we’ve encountered over the course of the past 10 issues all come together at exactly the same time, exactly the wrong time.
Alex: But it isn’t until later that we realize that we’ve been watching what happened to the past. We’re watching 35 minutes ago through this entire thing. You can tell if you look at the clocks, but they’re off to the side in such a way that it’s not immediately clear until for Nite Owl and Rorschach, it’s far too late.
Justin: Yeah, and the fact that seeing the Hiroshima lovers shadow here and the fact that that’s the blast point where that hits, everything starts to resonate for us backwards as well. That this is the flash point where this disaster happens and all of these characters are the victims of it. I feel like it just … We get to live like Dr. Manhattan because we retroactively feel so bad for these characters that we’ve been following their sort of boots on the ground story this whole time.
Pete: Also a lot of people are like, “Oh, why do you like Rorschach?” This right here is a moment that I really like Rorschach where even though he’s beaten, he still keeps getting up and trying to win. He does that move behind his back to block Rorschach and that to me, I love the fact that he’s not willing to accept this and is still fighting to the bitter end.
Alex: I got to say he uses a fork, right? Are you sure he’s not trying to eat Ozymandias because he’s so hungry?
Justin: He’s been in the snow for so long and that’s a tasty dude.
Alex: He’s only had a sugar cube tea.
Pete: Oh man.
Justin: Yeah. And let me ask you, Pete. In this story, in this issue specifically, what character do you want to be or what character are you?
Pete: Rorschach.
Justin: Alex, what about you?
Alex: What character do I want to be?
Justin: What character are you like, I’m him or her?
Alex: Oh, I’m having a little trouble wrapping my mind around it. In the real world, I’d probably be one of the assistants that dies in the snow.
Justin: Come on dude, that’s the saddest answer you could ever say.
Pete: It’s honest though. It’s honest.
Alex: Yeah, man.
Justin: One of the assistants who dies in the snow, come on man.
Alex: Yeah, or maybe the lesbian who’s getting beaten up by her lesbian lover.
Justin: Wow, jeez. Alex, be best.
Alex: Okay, [Bu Bust 00:21:31]. Maybe I’ll be Bu Bustiest.
Justin: There you go.
Alex: Wait what about you? What are you getting at here? What’s your game Justin?
Justin: There’s no game. I just think it’s funny-
Pete: Are you the villain monologue in, are you?
Justin: Yeah. I’m Adrian Veidt.
Alex: I knew it. Well, what I thought you were getting at was the idea that you touched on Justin, either a podcast or two back about the idea that, sure, we look at Adrian Veidt as the villain, but maybe he actually is the hero of this story. Is that where you’re getting at or not at all?
Justin: No, definitely. In technically if the way … I mean, the next issue we technically don’t know what happens in that because we’re reading this issue, but if the story continues, and we’re going to find out in the TV series, he saved the world from nuclear disaster. So he is really the hero in that way even though he murdered half a million people or half of New York city, and killed a bunch of heroes and all this other stuff. It radiated a bunch of people. But I also think like this issue sets him up in that way because he’s talking about how the ills of the world, how humans just are built to kill each other and kill the environment, and these things resonate so hard with our current life and politics and global disasters. It’s crazy how this series was written so long ago and feels so present.
Alex: I completely agree with you of that. I would argue that this issue makes a very strong and not completely subtle case that Adrian Veidt is a psychopath, like unrelenting-
Justin: A sociopath.
Alex: Sociopath, yes. So, just to walk through this a little bit because I do want to talk about that. Actually, I’ll mention a couple of things that come to mind in terms of Adrian Veidt that I think you could certainly read into it. When he’s telling his story to his assistants, he tell his backstory, explains that he was raised rich by his parents. They died when he was 17. There’s a shot of him, I believe, sitting on one of the graves, and the implication that I took away from that is he probably killed his parents.
Pete: Yeah, he murdered them.
Justin: I agree with you.
Alex: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:23:53] says particularly because Rorschach says he’s never killed anybody, which contrast very directly with, yeah, but he probably has been killing people as long as he has had the capacity to kill.
Justin: Yeah, I mean, I think he’s someone who doesn’t value other humans lives, the lives of other humans, and that’s true sort of especially through this story. Then, again, at the end when we realize what he’s done because he thinks of himself as this person, the man above all other people.
Alex: Right. There’s also the other thing that’s running through Ozymandias’s backstory is his rivalry with The Comedian that plays out through this issue, which very much straddles the line in terms of how you interpret it. Extensively on the surface, he talks about the first meeting between Ozymandias and The Comedian. It’s something they revisited in the back matter, which seems like this very classic heroes fight before they team up type thing, but they’re very clear about the fact that The Comedian beats Ozymandias, which, again on the surface, if you wanted to read The Comedian as hero, he’s actually beating a villain in that case and once again that paints Ozymandias as a villain, except for the fact that as we know throughout reading this comic book, comedian is a pretty awful dude himself.
Justin: Well, I think they see each other, or at least this is mostly from Veidt perspective, but they’re both still sociopath’s in the way they value other human lives. I think the fact that Adrian Veidt is using The Comedians… his whole plan is inspired by The Comedian and is basically a joke or as he calls it a prank. So, I do think he kills him to prove that he’s the better man but The Comedians sort of POV or philosophy is what Adrian Veidt actually just sort of steals and uses to execute in his plan.
Alex: Yeah, should we walk through this issue? Should we go a little page by page or two over here?
Justin: Let’s do it.
Alex: All right, so we do start off on that first page where he is laying everything out about his philosophy. I swore I wasn’t going to use this word again, but there is some really nice juxtaposition on this page as it goes, [crosstalk 00:26:12]-
Justin: Juxtaposition.
Alex: Let get something that I wanted to throw by you guys. So, he’s watching everything on his monitors. Bu Busts is walking next to him and he’s saying some very cheeky stuff about, of course, the ice they’re skating on is slippery and thinner that it looks. Let’s hope they don’t become reckless and overstep themselves. Let’s hope they know where to stop, and of course they don’t stop. They do keep coming. We had talked about in the last episode that part of Adrian Veidt plan was leading them here, luring them here and then laying everything out for them. Do you think there’s a part of him that thinks maybe they won’t make it, maybe they will turn back?
Justin: Yeah, and I think he’s the kind of guy who’s like, oh they’re still coming? Oh great. I’ll get to talk to them about my plan. My former partners in arms like this is a nice brotherhood, that I can really brag about what I’ve done in front of them. So I think, he takes pleasure in it a little bit and he doesn’t feel threatened in the least.
Alex: Yeah, neither should he. What were you going to say Pete?
Pete: I say agreed
Alex: Nice, so then they decided to go out anyway, and we get Adrian reaction to that, realizing that he has to go forth with his plan. He can’t put off things any longer. We get a very clear shot of the clocks in Tokyo, London and New York, so we know exactly what time it is, and there’s a large panel where he says, no time like the present playing off of those clocks. Also playing off of the very large picture of, I believe, it’s Alexander the great who I was named after. I don’t want to brag or anything.
Justin: Oh my God.
Pete: Did you just drop that in?
Alex: I mean, it’s not a big deal. Don’t even worry about it.
Justin: Your middle name is Alex… Your name is Alexander like the fine?
Alex: Yeah, my name is Alexander, the beat up lesbian. [crosstalk 00:28:07]. It’s very sad.
Justin: Is that a family name, a family middle name?
Alex: Yeah, it’s from my grandfather. So, then another very interesting secret, we see Adrian walking through. He says to Bu Bust not coming any further. No, fair enough. Wait here. This won’t take a moment. Why do you think Bu Bu stats who’s basically just a giant cat doesn’t want to come into this chamber and watch Ozymandias know what’s going on?
Justin: He’s worried about getting blamed.
Pete: No, he used to-
Justin: He’s like, let me chill out. I don’t want to be named in the court documents. I’ve got a life.
Pete: He knows where the dead bodies are. He doesn’t want anything to do with that place.
Alex: I don’t know. I agree with Justin. If you see a bunch of broken stuff on the floor, you’re immediately blaming the cat, not the smartest man in the world.
Justin: Yeah, exactly. That cat is like, oh, I actually like New York. I have some friends who are in the musical cats and I don’t want to be part of this.
Alex: Yeah. Now, two other things that I want to point out on this page. One, it’s so clear when you look back at it, but there’s a closeup shot if him pressing the button at 11:25 PM, which is exactly the 35 minutes ago. So if you’re paying attention to any of the clocks where they show up at New York, if you’re paying attention to any of the clocks in the actual scene, you know that it’s already happened. But then there’s the panel right after that, which doesn’t become clear until the next issue, but Ozymandias seemingly looks directly at us, the reader, and is bathed in a blue light before he turns back and finishes what he’s doing. It’s pretty clear there that Dr. Manhattan is showing up, right? I think?
Justin: I don’t know, interesting. I mean I hadn’t thought of that. I love this sequence. I mean we talked about the pacing in this a lot. That to me feels like that moment where you’re like, “Oh, what’s he doing? God, this feels important. I don’t know what he’s doing. I wish I could find out what he’s doing.”
Pete: Also, I agree with Alburn. It does look like the blue is like a nod to Dr. Manhattan.
Alex: Well, it might be, even if it isn’t specifically Dr. Manhattan showing up and I honestly do not remember from the next issue, it could just be based on the fact that for all of his smarts, for all of his planning, everything that he has is really based on dr Manhattan and dr Manhattan’s technology.
Justin: He’s a scumbag.
Alex: Exactly, he is. He’s stealing. He’s using other people’s works in order to do what he himself is just saying what he wants to do-
Pete: So you’re saying he hooked it up so when he presses the red button, a blue light goes off as like a F you to Dr. Manhattan?
Alex: No, I mean I think that’s … Again, I think we’re going to probably find out where we’re about in the next issue, if I remember correctly. But I do think it’s firmly indicating that no, this is not Ozymandias doing whatever is happening right now, it’s Dr. Manhattan, even if he would want it to be himself.
Pete: Oh wow.
Justin: Oh, interesting.
Alex: So then we get everybody coalescing on the same area as we get some of the tales of the Black Freighter. We do meet the girlfriend who also, she’s part of the Knot-tops. This gang that we’ve touched on now and again, that’s another knot reference in the issue. Then also we get the big revelation of the tales of the Black Freighter, which we kind of already knew from reading the previous issue, but the character himself realizes the classic, “Are we the baddies moment,” where he comes in and he’s beating up what he thinks is a pirate and it turns out he’s kicking the shit out of his wife in front of his kids.
Alex: In her, he realizes he’s become the evil that he thought was coming for him and coming for his family. Same sort of thing that’s going on with everybody in the world. They are becoming the evil that they thought was coming for them. And then we cut back to Ozymandias in his big dome entertaining his three assistants. Now, you mentioned that he’s being an asshole earlier, Justin. I think this is an Egyptian thing. He says, “You’re buried with your attendance, right?” So, instead of burying them in sand, he’s burying them in snow by the end of the sequence.
Justin: Yeah, but he’s not like, oh, I’m going to die too. He’s like, “Sorry dudes, you die. I’m going to go do some other stuff.”
Alex: I mean, that’s the curious thing about it, right? Like you would think if he really was following this philosophy, he was really believing what he’d say like Alexander, he would die young. I know he says that he wasn’t planning on doing that throughout the issue, but also if he was following Ramsey’s in the Egyptian tradition, he wouldn’t plan on making it out of this, right? So he’s a hypocrite beyond anything else.
Pete: Also I’m really disappointed in a place that cool they don’t have HR. Like tell HR to let them go. They’ll do it a lot nicer. It will be … They’re not such a big thing. I don’t understand.
Justin: No, this is the best way to be fired.
Alex: When you said cool, I thought you meant Antarctica.
Pete: Cool, like pretty chill.
Alex: Yeah, pretty chill.
Justin: I mean it’s, especially fucked up that the last thing these three dudes have to hear is another boring story from their boss, and then the one dude’s got butterfly all over his face, like, come on.
Alex: I don’t know. That happened to me once in the Museum of Natural History. A butterfly landed on my head, very upsetting.
Pete: I’m glad you didn’t die at that exact moment.
Alex: Who knows? This could be some horrible dream that I’m experiencing right now. So dudes do die. We get this shot of him sitting on the tombstone with hay, or whatever it is, grass in his mouth. He’s kind of smoking it a little bit, and we start to get his archer story. He says that he divested all of his money, traveled the world. It’s not quite here, but we do get a shot of him. It’s actually two pages from there, as he’s continuing to talk to his assistants where he’s standing in front of the stars completely naked. He is bathed in red and it almost to me, I take it as the opposite of Dr. Manhattan.
Justin: Yeah, I think that makes sense, and he’s just had some hashish and he’s like going into that mental state where you can really become a true sociopath.
Alex: Right, the other thing that I’ll mention just in terms of the coloring is throughout the sequence he is a silhouette. He doesn’t exist. He’s not there. He’s the absence of things. We’ve certainly seen that with the Hiroshima Lovers and other things. I don’t know if necessarily there’s a connection there. The main way that I took it was that he is not yet the person that he wants to be, and it isn’t until he becomes Ozymandias that he is colored.
Justin: Oh, that’s interesting. I liked that a lot. I took it as he’s a void. He’s part of the abyss. He doesn’t contribute anything, he just draws energy and everything into him because he’s a villain.
Pete: Yeah, I thought it was like he had been changing into the villain that he wanted to be.
Alex: Yeah. So regardless though, as we mentioned, he does kill the assistants. He buries them in snow instead of the sand. Here’s a thing we should probably touch on, the whole Ozymandias of it all, why he’s called Ozymandias. “Look on me, my works, ye mighty,” the rest of that is and despair. But the way that I always interpreted that poem and the way I think you interpret that poem, is they come on this broken statue of a man and there’s nothing around him. It says, “Look on my works,” and there’s no works around except for this broken statue of Ozymandias. How does that connect with the Ozymandias and the book? How does that connect with what he’s doing? I bring that up here because he’s clearly causing the destruction not just of New York, but of his Antarctic hideaway base at the same time.
Justin: He’s vivarium.
Alex: Yeah.
Justin: I think he’s romanticizing the term. He likes the idea, I think, that he’s this super villain who is created this whole thing in his secret plan to save the world, and no one will ever know the true source of it. Because he does have plans, I think after this to continue his business and go back to his life as Adrian Veidt the hero businessman. But the Ozymandias side is you’ll never see my works because I have erased it from the earth myself.
Alex: I thought it was an interesting thing you just said, Justin, in terms of him stealing from everybody and not making anything on his own, that essentially he is this parasite on the entire world because if you think about it, he hears all of Alexander’s things and he goes and travels that journey and it’s like, “How can I do this better? I want to do this better.” He hears about Ramsey and he wants to do it better. Dr. Manhattan, but he wants to do it better. He takes all of that, The Comedian, he wants to do it better. That might be the same thing, taking on the name Ozymandias being like, “Yeah, but that won’t be me. I’m going to do better than the guy that said, look on my works of despair because you actually will look on my works and despair because they will last forever.”
Justin: Yeah, I think that’s totally valid. He definitely has that taking credit for other people’s actions while never being that creative force on his own.
Pete: I just think the guy’s a super douche.
Justin: Or that. That is what Ozymandias translates to directly.
Alex: Well thank you. You speak fluent Greek, I believe, Latin.
Justin: Oz is super and manias is douche.
Alex: So then we do get a page of the newsstand, the wife of the therapist/psychiatrist who’s helping out [inaudible 00:38:19]. Comes around, is looking for him, is wondering if they’ve seen her around. There is a uncomfortable/comfortably hilarious exchange where the guy’s like, “Oh, why don’t you go to the Negro watchmaker up the street?” And she’s like, “Do you think we have a club? What are you talking about?” And he’s like, “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” But what’s happening throughout this page is this exchange is interspersed with the man in the Black Freighter story. Seeing the Black Freighter itself and swimming towards it. I think what’s pretty clear is all of these people, as we see by the end of the issue, they’re all embroiled in this enormous fight. They’re swimming towards their own destruction, right? They’re swimming towards their own death.
Justin: Yeah, and to follow the Black Freighter line as he swims closer, trying to track down the answer to this mystery that’s plagued him, he realizes when he gets there, “Oh, I’m just joining this badness. All this time I’ve been fighting against this and I’m actually a part of it,” and he’s welcomed aboard and becomes one of the pirates of the Black Freighter.
Alex: Yeah. Now I want to talk about your favorite dude for a little bit, Pete, Rorschach, because then we get to the scene of Nite Owl and Rorschach sneaking into the hideout, touring through everything we’ve seen before. I think it’s pretty clear, at least to me, that Rorschach realizes how out of his depth he is almost immediately, and specifically I’ll call out two lines. As they’re outside, he says, “Palm trees buried in snow doesn’t make sense.” And then later on Dan is trying to open the door. He’s trying to open it with this laser, and is having a little bit of trouble the Rorschach says, “Nervous?” But Dan isn’t actually nervous. He’s fine. This is the sort of thing that he’s kind of used to. He’s just trying to figure it out, but I think Rorschach actually is nervous. I think he is scared of what’s going on because this is so much bigger than he ever could have imagined.
Justin: I 100% agree. In the last couple issues Rorschach has been so chatty. He’s been so verbose when they break into Adrian’s penthouse and find out all this information. He’s like talking for panels and panels, and in this section he is only speaking in sentence fragments, just like random little bits. I think he is terrified and I love the subtle way they present that.
Pete: I don’t know if it’s terrified, if he’s just kind of like taking it all in because they just rolled up on a secret layer that is really weird and freaky, and they’re kind of walking into… I think he’s just kind of like when you first go to a place you’re kind of looking around and soaking it in, and that’s how I feel.
Justin: No, I think he’s scared. He’s scared. He’s a scared cat.
Pete: You’re a douche
Justin: Do you mean Mandy is?
Alex: There’s one other thing that I wanted to point out. So as they’re walking through the base, we get to see a couple of rooms that we’ve seen before. We see the room with the big Alexander painting. We see the chamber where he transported the squid as we find out next issue. They walked through the stairs that he’s walked before. But right as they come in, we see a weird sort of doomed structure. Nite Owl says, I mean, what the hell is that thing? Half this equipment I don’t even recognize. Is that the chamber that created Dr. Manhattan or a version of it?”
Justin: Interesting, I mean, I had never thought that, but I guess it could be.
Alex: I don’t know, it just seems weird thing to call out in particular, right?
Pete: Yeah, kind of. It reminded me that’s the only thing we’ve seen close to anything like that. So you’ve got to kind of assume he tried to make his own Dr. Manhattan.
Alex: Yeah, if he wanted to do that, he probably should have gotten more blue Curacao. So then we get a two page sequence, a big fight sequence as Ozymandias takes down Nite Owl and Rorschach pretty handily. Pete, your dude taken out like a bitch. What’d you think?
Pete: Hey man, if you’re all class, he’s still fighting though. He’s still fighting.
Justin: Yes, he does. He uses his fork wisely.
Alex: So, the interesting thing, I think, about the structure of the issue here is the first half of the issue when he’s talking to the assistants, he’s repeating his past, right? He’s laying that all out. But then we get this big two page spread in the middle of this fight sequence that’s mostly silent, and then after that we get to see the superhero history that we’ve heard about and seen so far.
Alex: But through Ozymandias’ perspective, so it’s almost these two halves, these histories laying out. For the assistants who are part of the overall grand scheme, he’s laying out that part of the history. For the superheroes, he’s laying out the superhero history, is how I took that at least.
Justin: Oh yeah. I think that’s great. I mean, it fits nicely in the first part of his story and the second part of his story timing wise. But again, real cocky to be telling your plan literally while you’re fighting the heroes.
Alex: Yeah. On the Rorschach band, it’s so weirdly upsetting to see Ozymandias rotating his mask. I know that’s such a specific thing, but seeing him take his mask and kind of twist it so that what Rorschach has called his face isn’t on right makes be very sad for Rorschach in that moment.
Pete: I know.
Alex: Did you feel that way?
Justin: Yeah.
Alex: Pete?
Pete: Yeah, that was definitely like a low blow.
Alex: Yeah, cool. Thank you for elaborating.
Justin: If I was fighting you and if I had just like shaved off your goatee while I was fighting you.
Alex: Oh, Jesus.
Justin: Which is what I will do with shaving cream.
Pete: Well, since I have a beard that would be weird that you would do that unless you were talking about going back in time to when I did have a goatee.
Justin: No, but your goatee is your power. I will shave just the goatee and leave the beard, which is even goofier.
Pete: I would have to turn it into old school mountain chops then.
Justin: Yeah. And who, who can walk around this planet with-
Pete: That’s a good point.
Alex: Yeah. It just reminded me of like if you had someone who’s shorter than you and you will hold their head and they’re just kind of flailing their arms and they can’t hit you that’s kind of what he was doing. It’s a super douche move, you know, just like you’re not even worth my time. I’m just gonna pull on your mask and that’s enough to make you useless.
Justin: But they’re not, I mean, they show up here and he dispatches them instantly and then they are literally just following him around while he tells more of his story. They’re there to stop him and then it’s like, “Oh cool. Yeah. Take us on a tour of your cool place.”
Alex: Yeah. Got any snacks? We’re pretty hungry. Any sugar cubes or anything like that? Love a good sugar cube. So they do want it around. He lays out the whole plan. He explains how he killed The Comedian. He gave several people cancer in order to frame Dr. Manhattan and get him off planet. He heard about Rorschach thing. I thought this was an interesting detail. It sounds like he didn’t plan his own assassination until Rorschach started sniffing around. So it’s interesting that there’s a certain level of improvisation to what Ozymandias is doing.
Justin: That’s smart.
Pete: But also like this plan, the odds of it working out are insane. He started his plan by just irradiating some random people, that’s wild. The only reason it seems cool is because we’re here at the end of it hearing how great it was. If he walked up to you and was like, “I have this plan to save the world. I’m just going to irradiate these strangers for the next couple of weeks.” It’s like, what dude are you talking about?
Alex: That’s a real chest move, man. He’s using the ponds that he has. I think it’s a boss move. I mean, when you think about it, there’s so many villain plants and never really happened.
Pete: That’s what I’m saying. This is like a guy who like you’re playing monopoly with and he’s like, “ha ha, I’m going to run waterworks.” It’s like, “Okay man, we’re going to quit in 20 minutes, so do whatever you want.”
Alex: But that also points to something that we’ve talked about all along, which even to he cops too, everybody calls him the smartest man in the world. He’s not actually the smartest man in the world. He’s very smart. But to your point, Justin, his Bain plan is I’m going to build this big bod stir, get a bunch of Hollywood screenwriters to work at it and then teleport it into New York, and then cool times everywhere at that, and then most of the rest of the plant is, ah, shit. I gotta do a bunch of cleanup on all these people that figured out my plan. What do I do now? He’s remaining very cool about it, but it’s not as perfect a plan as he wants to let on at all.
Justin: No, he fucked up.
Alex: Yeah.
Justin: When you got shove a pill in a dude’s mouth and the fountain of your own building, like-
Alex: Yeah, it’s going to slop. It’s getting sloppy. Yeah. So then we get to the moment we get to the big moment as the New York city streets starts to clear out from the fight that’s happening in the background, which itself is very sad because we do get to see this lesbian couple devolving into a fight we didn’t even touch on. There’s this incredibly sad moment, uh, where the grapher member of the couple who’s being broke up with he’s like,”I just want to sleep with you. I just want to fucking sleep with you. I just want to feel something. I just want to be happy. I want to die,” and starts beating her up and it broke my heart reading that. We see the same thing with the therapist and his wife where they’re having almost the same conversation Lori and Dr. Manhattan had about are people worth it or not? So do you save the earth or not?
Alex: And then Bernie and Bernie are having a very similar conversation where Dreiberg is like, “I don’t care what’s the big deal? We have the same Big birdy.” They’re completely falling apart across the board. And as that’s happened and things are tightening and simplifying with Ozymandias to we get that paddle where he says, “Do it… Dan? I’m not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I’d explained to my master stroke if there remain the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it 35 minutes ago.” And then we cut to that paddle of Night Owl and Rorschach stnding in front of the clocks. We see that it’s one minute to midnight in New York, and the streets of New York have cleared off. But of course this is all happening into the past. And that final page, we see all the characters seeing what’s happening, which we don’t find out until the next issue.
Alex: And then the ultimate heartbreak, Bernie and Bernie turned to each other. They hold each other as it happens after younger Bernie has said, “No, I don’t want anything to do with you, man. Leave me alone.” And they fade. And we end once again with the same splash pattern on the comedians button. But this time it’s the dissipated molecules of Bernie and Bernie who had been blown apart the same way Dr Manhattan was created and we’re left with one white panel just like the snow in the beginning. So sad.
Justin: So sad. The fact that they have the line of like, “What does it matter that we’re both named Bernie?” And then it actually is the most meaningful thing at the end that they were, had a somewhat of a connection and there with each other when they die, such a great subtle little little package.
Alex: Well then it pays off. Like we touched on earlier in the podcast, all of these various things that of course aren’t randomly thrown in there, but feel like they’re similarly randomly throw it in there. Like the newspaper people like the therapist, all of these characters. We lived with them so long beyond the “main characters” in the book. All for this moment. Also, we could feel this moment and understand the weight of this moment. Pete, how did it hit you?
Pete: I mean it just it sucked man. Who really was it’s such a powerful ending after like such a Oh shit moment. It’s like, you know, you really feel it.
Alex: Yeah. And then the back matter of course is a rolling stone style interview where the interviewer puts themselves in the interview way too much where he’s talking to Ozymandias. Of note it takes place in 1975, which is about when he has started to kick his plan off. We have about 10 years there where he’s putting it into action. So there’s little hints there. There’s little touches there, but already you get a sense of where Ozymandias is heading even though the guy himself doesn’t realize it. Any final thoughts about this issue?
Justin: Just like I, like I said before, the storytelling here though, the way it all culminates here, we have gotten all of the heroes sort of origins and at this point all the characters origins and now we’re here at this final point moment where the trap is sprung and it’s just great.
Alex: Yeah.
Justin: I live for the day when I can somehow get captured the moment of like, Oh, I did it 35 minutes ago.
Alex: Yeah. Pete, any final thoughts from you?
Justin: I’m spent, dude.
Alex: Oh, man. [crosstalk 00:52:15]-
Justin: Well, I just think that we covered it. it’s a powerful ending.
Alex: It is absolutely a powerful landing and this is a powerful ending to our podcast. If you’d like to support us, patrion.com/comicbookclub. Also, we do a live show every Tuesday night at 8:00 PM at the People’s Improv Theater loft in New York. Come on by. We’ll chat with you about Watchman. You can follow us at Watchman watch podcast on Instagram and Facebook. WatchmanWatchone on Twitter, comic book club alive to up for this podcast, and many more. Also, subscribe and please comment on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Android, or the app of your choice. And remember, we taped this podcast. Oh God, I’m forgetting. What was it, how long ago. in the past? Oh yes. Six weeks. Six weeks. Yeah. We taped this a week ago. Oh, Alan texted. He’s definitely gonna be here next week for the last dish. I don’t believe him.
The post Watchmen Watch: Issue #11, “Look On My Works, Ye Mighty…” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy54m - Oct 14, 2019
