The Annotated Watchmen by Doug Atkinson (good books for high schoolers txt) 📖

>Hallowe'en by Eleanor Farjeon.

The clock appearing on the covers counts the minutes to

midnight, similar to the clock in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,

which is an estimate of the world's closeness to nuclear war. The clock

stands at 4 minutes to midnight.

Cover: The "In Gratitude" statue of Nite Owl.

Page 1, panel 1: Hollis' apartment. Recognizable here are a can of

Miller lite, the Nite Owl statuette, the Minutemen photo, and the "Hero

Retires" front page. In panel 5 we see it's from the New York News.

Panel 2: Sally's retirement home. Note the Nostalgia bottle.

Panel 3: Today is the 26th, assuming that "last night" actually means

"early this morning." The calendar in panel 8 has it as the 27th,

though. (The fire would have made the news the same day, most likely.)

Panels 3-4: It's interesting to compare Hollis and Sally's viewing

material; Hollis is watching the news, Sally is watching a soap.

It's probably the six o'clock news Hollis is watching (using the same

Afghanistan graphic as last night), making it about 3:00 in

California and accounting for the differences in lighting.

Panel 6: Recognizable here are the "Silk Spectre" Tijuana Bible, the

group photo of the Minutemen, and a magazine with a "Nostalgia" ad.

Page 2, panel 3: At the bottom of the panel is the Dr. Manhattan

issue of Nova Express. Surprisingly, the "MultiVite" does not appear to be

a Veidt product.

Panels 2, 6: The statuette is visible in the background. Mirror

image (Hollis' face) in 6.

Page 3, panel 1: Lovers graffiti on the wall. This spread confirms

the assumed layout of the corner.

Panel 2: The Pyramid Deliveries truck again. "Spirit of '77" refers

back to the era of the Keene act. (The phrase refers to "Spirit of '76,"

used to refer to the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence,

signed in 1776.)

Panel 3: The Utopia is now showing "The Day The Earth Stood Still."

Panel 4: Bernard confirms the date as the 27th. There's a day

missing here somewhere: #6 has the date of Mal's first session as the 25th, which

would make the news broadcast Dan and Laurie watch in #7 the same day. The

action of #7 only covers mid-afternoon on one day to early morning

the next, so the tenement rescue would have been the 26th. The only

plausible explanation is that the media waited an extra day to report the fire,

or that Hollis waited a while to call Sally. (We can assume that page 3

is the day after pages 1-2, but that doesn't account for Sally's

calendar.

Panel 7: The radiation sign is visible in the background, as is a

Nova Express and New Frontiersman. This panel is an echo of 6:16:5.

Panel 9: Obviously, this is Mal Long.

Page 4, panel 6: "Reds Cross Pakistan Border" (something that never

occurred in the real world).

Page 5, panel 5: Notice the various images in the screens. Archie

has a variety of cameras, apparently.

Page 6, panel 2: The speaker is Big Figure, somebody Dan and Walter

put away in the '60's.

Page 7, panel 3: Figure's comment about "tomorrow, Thursday, Friday"

places this scene on Tuesday the 29th.

Panel 6: The "valley of the shadow" refers to the 23d Psalm: "Though

I walk through the shadow of the valley of death."

Pages 8-9: Obviously Fine knows who Dan really is. The date is the

31st.

Page 8, panel 1: The Gordian Knot man is back.

Panel 5: The Nova Express cover has pictures of Dr. Manhattan,

Rorschach, and Ozymandias, and the headline reads, "Superheroes in

the News: Spirit of '77." The Gazette headlines read, "Tanks Mass In

Eastern Europe: "Purely Defensive" Say Reds," and "California: Governor

Reagan Urges Hard Line." (In the real world Reagan was President in '85,

though he was California governor in the '70s.)

Panel 6: Dan must be worried about something; he has no specific need

to fix the locks, since Rorschach hasn't broken them for a couple of

weeks. (Unless Gordian is just so overworked by Rorschach's breaking and

entering spree that it took them that long to get out there.)

Panel 8: In reference to the "Sweet Chariot" cubes found in

Rorschach's pocket.

Page 9, panel 1: Fine has spotted Laurie's ball-pipe.

Page 10: This is Hector Godfrey, editor of the New Frontiersman, in

the Frontiersman offices. The issue being pasted up is the backup for

this issue. Notice the style of the clock in the background.

Panel 5: This is the same picture on the earlier cover, and seen on

the news in the last issue.

Page 11: The speakers are Max Shea (alive and well) and Hira Manish.

Hira is left-handed. Comparing it to the people in the background, the

thing under the tarpaulin must be enormous.

Panel 4: Max is referring, of course, to "Marooned."

Page 12, panel 4: Is Nova Express funded by Pyramid Deliveries?

Things are beginning to tie together in minor ways.

Panel 6: The juice over the eyes calls to mind the blood-spattered

smiley-face button.

Page 13, panel 2: This is Derf, who we saw in issue #1. "Katies"

refers to KT-28.

Panel 3: Joey again. Aline is her ex-girlfriend.

Page 15, panel 4: The splash of blood brings to mind the blood on his

coat from the kidnapper's dog in #6. Interestingly, though, this seems to

mark the beginning of a transition back to humanity for him: notice his

attempts at friendliness and politeness in later issues.

Page 18, panels 4 and 6: His tracking the blood refers back to the

first issue, page 1.

Page 21, panel 1: Notice that Rorschach, for all his personality

flaws, is at least polite.

Page 22, panel 3: Rorschach is taking more sugar cubes, which

reappear later.

Page 25, panel 2: The shape of the can on the lower right is

interesting; it looks Japanese, or at any rate not American. The "Black

Freighter" page has a half-page ad (which had mostly phased out of our comics by that

time). One of the comics advertised is "X-Ships."

Page 27, panels 5, 7, 9: I am not sure if these are genuine

flashbacks or just symbolic. Hollis could not have had the same dog with his when

he was active as a hero (it would be at least 23), and he was never pictured

with a masked dog anywhere else.

Incidentally, the man in the skull mask is Screaming Skull, and the

Nazi with the monocle is Captain Axis. He may be based on Captain Nazi,

an enemy of Fawcett Comic's Marvel Family. Moloch is visible in panels

5 and 7.

Page 28, panel 1: The hair across the eye leads back to the

smiley-face.

Pages 29-32: The 10/31/85 edition of the New Frontiersman.

Page 1: Surely the "Issue IVII" is wrong. "IV" is 4, and "II" is 2;

even if this were the correct nomenclature, this isn't the sixth issue by

any means (it's been published since at least the fifties). (In our

world it would say "volume," not "issue.") If it's meant as "42," which is

more plausible (since Hector's father founded it), it should be "XLII."

Maybe Hector just doesn't know much about Roman numerals.

Page 3: This cartoon, signed "F," is by Feinberg, who may be the same

Walt Feinberg who drew "Tales of the Black Freighter."

Page 4: Surprisingly, Godfrey is actually onto something here. This

is important information. (There is evidence later that Deschaines

actually was psychic, making him the only super-powered character in the

series besides Dr. Manhattan.)

�

--

�

Chapter 9: "The Darkness of Mere Being"

Watchmen is a trademark of DC Comics Inc., copyright 1995.

These annotations copyright 1995 by Doug Atkinson. They may be freely

copied and distributed, provided the text is not altered.

Certain notes are true for each issue. Each one is written by

Alan Moore, drawn and lettered by Dave Gibbons, and colored by John

Higgins.

Moreover, each issue has a continuing motif, a reoccuring object

or pattern that is seen on the cover, the first and last page (usually),

and throughout the issue. This issue's motif is the liquid-filled

sphere.

Another trend is the title, which is always an excerpt from an

apropos quote shown in its entirety in the last panel. This issue's title is

from Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

The clock appearing on the covers counts the minutes to

midnight, similar to the clock in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,

which is an estimate of the world's closeness to nuclear war. The clock

stands at 3 minutes to midnight.

Cover: A bottle of Nostalgia perfume, thrown by Laurie at the end of

this issue.

Page 1: A flashback to last issue. Jon is mistakenly given the

darker blue skin tone here.

Panel 1: The thrown Nostalgia bottle.

Page 3, panel 1: The Nostalgia bottle.

Page 6, panel 7: Another liquid-filled sphere (see next page).

Panel 8: Is it possible Jon is doing something to help Laurie

remember?

The clarity seems unusually good for a childhood memory.

Page 7: The man Sally is arguing with is Laurence Schexnayder, her

soon-to-be-ex-husband. They are arguing about a tryst she had with another

man. (His identity will become clear later.)

Panel 4: Sally had the same trophies here she has in Nepenthe

Gardens. The wedding picture and childhood picture of Laurie (on top of the TV)

are notably absent later.

Panels 7-9: The liquid-filled sphere again. (See issues 3 and 6.)

Page 8, panels 1-3: The sphere and the bottle.

Panel 4: A good guess, with the information she has, but wrong.

Page 10, panel 3: The bottle is a half-sphere, and the glass is two

half-spheres.

Page 11, panel 4: The year is 1962, and the "new boy" in question is

probably Nite Owl II. Lewis will be admitted to a clinic soon.

Page 12, panel 3: Byron Lewis is Mothman.

Panel 7: The Nostalgia bottle again.

Page 15, panel 6: The hair is another hint to her parentage. Compare

hers to the other characters.

Page 16, panel 8: The Nostalgia bottle.

Page 20, panel 1: Not a sphere, but a circle of fluid...

Panel 2: Ford is Vice-President Gerald Ford. Liddy is G. Gordon

Liddy; probably CIA director at this point. Al Haig is/was Secretary of

Defense.

Panel 4: In our world, Woodward and Bernstein's discovery led to

scandal and Nixon's eventual resignation; they didn't get a chance to pass it

on in this world.

Panel 5: Note the button. I find it interesting that he wore it in

both identities but his identity doesn't seem to have been public

knowledge (Joe and Steve didn't know it back in issue #1, and Rorschach didn't even

know it until then). Especially since for a long time he only wore a

domino mask, without even covering his hair...This is a government

gathering, though, and maybe everyone here already knew.

The reference to JFK: It has been suggested that Blake had something

to do with his assassination.

Page 21, panels 2 and 4: The streak of hair over Laurie's right eye,

and the splash over the button, bring to mind issue #1's motif.

Panel 5: Once again the Nostalgia bottle.

Panel 6: This scrapbook is the backup to this issue.

Page 23, panel