Very little needs to be said about the awesomeness that is the graphic novel, Watchmen. Published in single issues during 1986 and 1987, Watchmen is a murder mystery story involving retired superheroes, an impending nuclear war and much more. Featuring a dynamic cast of characters, Watchmen explores many issues within it’s covers. 16 concordances on Watchmen follow.
Image Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Watchmencovers.png
“Look down your backstairs buddy, somebody’s living there an’ they don’t really feel the weather” (Chapter 1, Page 10, Panel 1).
Here, Moore incorporates lyrics from the song “Neighborhood Threat” by Iggy Pop. The song is directed to a man who has someone living on his backstairs, most likely a homeless person. The idea of a homeless person living on someone’s backstairs implies a feeling of danger or threat. In Watchmen, the song appears in the foreground of a panel, coming from a boombox. In the background of the panel, Dan Dreiberg (Nite Owl) can be seen walking home late one night. The lyrics in the panel suggest that Dreiberg is in an unsafe neighborhood and also foreshadow the break-in that Dreiberg is about to discover. By using a song like “Neighborhood Threat”, Moore sets the mood as dark and gloomy, and hints at what the rest of the novel might be about.
Chapter 2, Page 1, Panels 2 and 3
In the second and third panels of Chapter 2, Laurie and Moloch are both seen holding red flowers. Laurie’s flowers are a gift to her mother; she uses them as a gesture to show that she cares about her mother. The color red symbolizes her love and affection for her mother. Moloch brings his red flowers to Blake’s funeral where he is paying his respects to Blake. The flowers are red roses, which symbolize love and respect. The abundance of red flowers in this chapter shows the close bond between the characters, despite the years of separation and disagreements. Gibbons purposefully used the color red for the flowers to show the connections between the characters and to give readers more knowledge about the characters and their traits.
Image Credit: http://www.oxtonflowers.co.uk/acatalog/Wreaths_and_Posy_Pads_to_UK.html
“Yeah, well, so’s Dachau. I’d never forgive somebody who did that…” (Chapter 2, Page 2, Panel 1).
Laurie compares her mother’s near rape to the political concentration camp from World War II, Dachau. Comparing the rape to Dachau is significant because the United States desperately trying to prevent a third world war, and this mention of a World War II concentration camp foreshadows the impending war and the atrocities that will come with a war. Moore uses Dachau as the concentration camp to compare the rape to because Dachau was primarily meant for political prisoners and anyone who was not Jewish but still opposed to the Nazi regime. This connects to Blake, the man who tried to rape Laurie’s mother. Blake was politically active and the connection to a political prison camp shows Moore’s distaste for Blake’s political beliefs and for Dachau’s existence.
Works Cited: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Dachau." Holocaust Encyclopedia. 19 Feb. 2009 <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005214>.
Image Credit: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_ph.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005214&MediaId=1484
“Laetril. Phony medication made from apricot pits. Outlawed three years ago. Illegal.” (Chapter 2, Page 24, Panel 4).
Laetril (correctly spelled Laetrile) is an alternative medicine used to treat cancer. It is a compound that contains a chemical, amygdalin, which is found in the pits of many fruits, such as apricots, as Rorschach mentions here. Amygdalin was first isolated in 1830, and first used to treat cancer in Russia as early as 1845. Laetrile is a partly synthetic version of amygdalin that was patented in the United States in the 1950s. Laetrile’s relevance to Watchmen takes several forms. The first connection is to the time period that Laetrile became popular: the 1970s. Watchmen takes place during the 80s, just after the 70s when Laetrile gained popularity. By 1978 an estimated 70,000 people had reportedly been treated with Laetrile. The second form of relevance is to the motif of cancer. Moloch’s mention of cancer is one of the first in the novel; later in the novel it is learned that cancer is Veidt’s method of removing his past acquaintances so they cannot prevent him from his task of saving humanity. Moore uses the drug Laetrile, because it actually exists so that readers familiar with the time period of Watchmen might have knowledge about the drug. This gives the readers a greater sense of the reality of the novel, so they are more likely to believe that the events in Watchmen could truly take place.
Works Cited: "Laetrile/Amygdalin." National Cancer Institute. U.S. National Institutes of Health. 20 Feb. 2009 http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/laetrile/Patient/page2.
Image Credit: http://www.cytopharma.com/
“See, everything’s connected.” (Chapter 3, Page 2, Panel 4)
Bernard, the newsvendor, makes one of the most obvious, yet most profound statements of the novel. Bernard sees and hears everything that goes on in New York City, the United States, and the rest of the world through his job as a newsvendor. This allows him to reflect and comment on the society, including the connectivity of everyone. Most of the characters in Watchmen have some type of connection to Bernard’s newsstand, whether it is obvious or not. The connections to the newsstand brings all of the characters together without their awareness. Moore uses Bernard’s character and his newsstand to show the connections between the characters because Bernard is the most human of all the characters in Watchmen. Bernard sees life the way it is and he doesn’t try to make it out to be better than it really is, while the other characters have corrupt views of life. Moore uses Bernard’s reflections to keep the readers in tune with the truths of the novel.
Image credit: http://www.fivevine.com/?p=11
“This world, the real world, to him, it’s like walking through mist, and all the people are like shadows…” (Chapter 3, Page 9, Panel 2).
Laurie’s explanation that to Jon, people are like shadows, foreshadows the images of silhouettes that appear many times throughout the novel. The silhouettes are similar to those found in Hiroshima after the atomic bombing in 1945, except the ones in Watchmen are spray-painted around New York City by groups of boys. Seeing people as shadows shows Jon’s detachment from humanity, just like the detachment the bombers had from the Japanese when they released the atomic bomb. Moore uses Laurie’s description of Jon to indirectly characterize him and by doing so foreshadows some of Jon’s actions later in the novel.
Image credit: http://maasmedia.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/hiroshima_shadow.jpg
“Walkin’ on…walkin’ on the moooooooon…” (Chapter 3, Page 19, Panel 1)
“Walking on the Moon” is a song by The Police. Here, a government worker is singing the song while painting a radiation symbol on Jon’s bedroom door. In “Walking on the Moon,” the singer describes the elation he feels while walking back from his girlfriend’s house. The singer feels as though they “could live together / walking on, walking on the moon” (7-8). Moore’s use of this song foreshadows Jon’s trip to Mars and the conversation that Jon and Laurie have about living together on Mars.
Works Cited: "Walking On The Moon Lyrics." Lyrics Freak. 20 Feb. 2009 http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/sting+&+police/walking+on+the+moon_20132423.html.
Chapter 4, Page 1, Panels 2 and 9
These two panels contain identical images: a photograph of Jon and Janey Slater partially buried in the sands of Mars. Jon, for a moment, feels nostalgic, and uses the photograph to remind him of the days when he and Janey were a couple. After that moment, however, Jon realizes that he no longer has any connections to society and humanity, and he drops the photograph onto the barren Mars ground. This action shows that Jon’s character is depressed, detached, aloof, and no longer cares about humans even though he was once human himself.
“At play amidst the Strangeness and Charm” (Chapter 4, Page 5, Panel 4).
This line is found on a bulletin board in the Beastiary that contains photographs of scientists that have died. The photograph of Jon and Janey was among the photos of the other scientists because it was believed that Jon died in the accident. The “Strangeness and Charm” part refers to quarks, which are subatomic particles that make up matter. To say that someone is “at play amidst the Strangeness and Charm” is a scientist’s way of saying that someone is dead and is the scientist’s version of the afterlife. Moore and Gibbons try to add realistic details, such as this bulletin board heading, to the images and backgrounds of each panel to keep the novel from becoming too implausible.
Works Cited:
"Chapter III." Information Arts and Technologies. 21 Feb. 2009 http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/hypertexts/wm/AN/AN_III.htm.
"Quark." Answers.com. 21 Feb. 2009 <http://www.answers.com/quark>.
“Well, me, I think it’s astrological. Halley’s Comet is coming back around now. That’s an omen of doom.” (Chapter 5, Page 7, Panel 5).
Halley’s comet is an astrological body that orbits through the solar system. Halley’s comet passes by earth once approximately every 75 years. Many events throughout history have been blamed on the passing of Halley’s comet, such as the fire that destroyed part of New York City in 1835. Watchmen has a space motif throughout then novel, and this mention of Halley’s comet adds to the motif. Moor uses Watchmen to pose the idea of a scientific god as opposed to a religious god and challenges readers with the idea of a scientific god in the form of Dr. Manhattan. The space motif helps to portray Dr. Manhattan as the scientific godlike figure.
Works Cited: Kronk, Gary W. "Comet Hysteria and the Millennium." Cometography. 22 Feb. 2009 <http://cometography.com/hysteria.html>.
Image Credit: http://www.unmuseum.org/halleycomet.htm
“Oh, uh, well, it’s short for Archimedes, Merlin’s pet owl in ‘The Sword in the Stone’. I saw the Disney version once and…well. You know. It’s just a stupid nickname” (Chapter 7, Page 7, Panel 5).
The Sword in the Stone is a novel written by T.H. White in 1938 and produced as an animated movie in 1963. In the novel and the book, Archimedes is a talking owl who helps Merlin teach his student, Arthur, life lessons. Dreiberg has a fascination with owls, and the fact that he named his ship after one of the most famous owls in history shows his respect for the creatures. Society tends to give fictional superheroes special powers and qualities that many do not possess, making them inhuman characters. Moore gives his characters human qualities, like Dreiberg’s interest in owls, to help readers realize that the superheroes in Watchmen do not possess and special powers and are exceedingly human.
Works Cited: White, R.J. "The Annotated Watchmen." Capnwacky.com. 23 Feb. 2009 http://www.capnwacky.com/rj/watchmen/chapter7.html.
Image Credit: http://trevdenton.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html
Chapter 8, Page 1, Panel 2
Panel 2 centers on a bottle of Nostalgia perfume, an item in the Veidt cosmetics line. Throughout Watchmen, bottles of Nostalgia perfume appear in many characters’ homes, in newspaper advertisements, and in television commercials. The ubiquitous presence of Nostalgia perfume, a Veidt product, shows the overwhelming and obscure control the Veidt has over society, which he uses to his advantage as much as possible. Moore uses the image of the Nostalgia perfume as a simple motif, but the importance of the motif is not noticed until later in the novel when Veidt admits to being the person behind the mysterious murders and disappearances and the attack on New York City.
Image Credit: http://www.fasthack.com/posts/1977/
Chapter 8, Page 3, Panel 3
This panel shows and advertisement for a movie playing at the Utopia theater. The movie playing is “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, which foreshadows the events that occur at the end of the novel. “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is a 1951 sci-fi movie about an alien invasion. At the end of the novel, New York City is attacked by what survivors describe as an alien life form. Every image or piece of dialogue that Moore includes in Watchmen is there for a specific reason, and in the case of the movie advertisement, it is to foreshadow the attack on New York City.
Image Credit: http://www.comicmix.com/news/2008/09/27/original-day-the-earth-stood-still-gets-special-edition/
“You’re alone in the valley of the shadow, Rorschach, where your past has a long reach, and in between you and it there’s one crummy lock.” (Chapter 8, Page 7, Panel 6).
The “valley of the shadow” refers to verse 4 of the famous 23rd Psalm:
4 Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me. (NIV)
One of Rorschach’s enemies , Big Figure, tries using the Bible verse to intimidate and scare Rorschach by telling him that he is alone in the valley of the shadow, meaning that he does not have God’s guidance. One of the themes of Watchmen is a debate between having a god of science and having a god of religion. Here, Moore uses a reference to the Bible to keep the god of religion in the argument.
Image Credit: http://www.landofmysojourn.net/2007/08/valley-of-shadow-i-was-sent-article.html
Works Cited: "Psalm 23:4." BibleGateway. 24 Feb. 2009 <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=23&chapter=23&verse=4&version=31&context=verse>.
“Hey… ‘Sweet Chariot’ sugar cubes! Only come in catering packs, right?” (Chapter 8, Page 8, Panel 8).
Detective Fine uses the sugar cubes found in Rorschach’s pocket and in Dreiberg’s kitchen to connect the two characters. By connecting Dreiberg to Rorschach, Fine believes he can uncover more of the plot behind Blake’s murder. The sugar cube image appears throughout the novel, but Moore keeps the importance from becoming clear until this interaction between Detective Fine and Dreiberg. Moore uses this style of placing images abundantly throughout the novel and only explaining them later on.
Image Credit": http://www.watchmencomicmovie.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2168
Chapter 10, Page 1, Panel 2
On the instrument panel of the military plane shown in this panel, a indicator light shows that the nation is in DEFCON 2. DEFCON stands for DEFense CONdition, and contains 5 different levels which vary the military severity according to the dangers the nation faces. The lower the number, the higher the military severity. At this point in the novel, the United States is on the brink of a war because Dr. Manhattan has left the planet. Moore uses military references that actually exist to keep readers feeling familiar with part of the text. Then, when they encounter something that they find hard to believe, they can recall that parts of the novel are plausible and familiar to them, and then they won’t doubt everything they’re reading.
Image Credit: http://www.watchmenfansite.com/comic-book/chapter-summaries/chapter-10/
