![]() One detail I did find fascinating happens in #12: When the plan has been carried out, and Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, and Rorschach have all taken their leave, Dr. Explain the shit out of every little thing. After doing some research, I discovered that Moore’s original text of Ozymandias’ confession/plan-explanation/narration in #11 was actually even longer, but Gibbons was able to persuade him that the amount of action in the scene could not sustain such a long speech. For most of the book, on the rare occasions when the action turns to Adrian Veidt, he’s having a decidedly one-sided conversation with someone who works for him directly or is currently performing some sort of service for him. He’s basically pure id, government-sanctioned id!”Īlso, he rarely seems to have actual conversations. That guy spends a solid 50 years really messed up. My conclusion was something along the lines of, “Wow. For that second read, I observed much more of the character development at work here, but the only character I can truly say I saw differently was The Comedian. They would have been useful for this discussion. Statement on religion?” Man, I really wish I knew what happened to those notes. Clare of Assisi, patron saint of television? Dominique, similar to ‘dominica,’ Latin for Sunday. Significant?” or, “Two girls murdered by father named Clare and Dominique. Manhattan and the death of JFK are exactly four years apart. (So much for my relaxing re-read of familiar works.) I remember I even took pages of notes like, “Birth of Dr. I remember going over each panel meticulously, reading every newspaper headline, making connections. All the references seemed to jump off the page at me. (Yes, I read other books to relieve the pressure of all that reading of books.) During this read, I was definitely reading Watchmen with a grad student’s eye. I was in graduate school at the time and didn’t have very much time for pleasure reading, so I found myself picking up things that I had already read as a means of relaxing. ![]() The next time I read Watchmen was about seven years later. But I do remember being genuinely shocked at the final act of the narrative upon that first read. I didn’t give either of the Silk Spectres much thought as they seemed trapped in some run-of-the-mill “girls and their mothers” drama that was removed from the story. I dismissed many of the relationships as simplistic. I remember finding it a bit too preachy, and I didn’t find any of the characters particularly compelling, except for Rorschach. history as I became in later years, so I didn’t pick up on nearly enough breadcrumbs or nods there. And I certainly wasn’t as well versed in U.S. Granted, I wasn’t familiar enough with the tropes of the superhero-comics genre to know how much Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were subverting them. I liked it well enough, but I wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. Confession time: I didn’t love Watchmen the first time I read it. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book (which had just come out a year or two before) as things I’d “probably be into.” This was the same person who suggested we try to read Infinite Jest together, but we’ll forgive him this and just focus on the comics. I had never been much of a comics reader, but I made friends with one who suggested Watchmen, Love & Rockets, and The R. The first time I read Watchmen was the summer after my freshman year in college. Manhattan leaving this universe to create human life, Laurie and Dan assuming new identities as a couple, and Seymour the New Frontiersman assistant reaching for Rorschach’s journal, a drop of ketchup smeared on his smiley-face T-shirt. The series ends with Veidt smugly reassuring himself, Dr. The group ultimately agrees that exposing Veidt would undo all the good that comes from his genocidal actions, with the exception of Rorschach, who is vaporized by Dr. Jon and Laurie return to Manhattan after Veidt’s weapon, witnessing the carnage before teleporting to Antarctica to join the action. Nite Owl and Rorschach encounter Adrian and are quickly incapacitated, forced to listen to him outline the plot that he concluded 35 minutes before when he dropped a giant telepathic squid on New York City, killing more than three million people. After pushing a red button, Veidt dictates his past to some of his servants, whom he poisons and kills by exposing them to subzero temperatures. While the dynamic duo makes its way to Veidt’s Antarctic base, a group of missing intellectuals and artists dies in a boat explosion. ![]() inch ever closer to nuclear Armageddon, Rorschach and Nite Owl investigate the “cape killer” theory, following the money that paid for Adrian Veidt’s would-be assassin and learning that the trail ends at Ozymandias himself. Watchmen # 10-12 summary: As Russia and the U.S. This week: Watchmen #10-12 and Before Watchmen: Ozymandias/Crimson Corsair.
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