Appendix: “Under the Hood”

Back in the day, prior to the rise of the internet, comics used to print a letters page (or two) in every issue. Naturally, until letters trickled in on a new title, the first two or three issues had space to fill in the back, which is why Moore suggested doing three “excerpts” of Hollis Mason’s autobiography. By the time the fourth issue was going to press, everyone at DC Comics realized what a unique beast they had on their hands, and the execs had wisely decided to let M&G continue to play with those back pages, rather than devote them to readers’ letters. (I can’t complain about that decision — but still, wouldn’t you love to have some regular readers’ initial reactions documented in that way?)

The various text pages inserted between chapters have slowed down, even frustrated, more than a few “Watchmen” readers over the years. But here’s their genius: You don’t have to read them to get the main story. They’re purely supplemental material, designed to even more fully flesh out this crazy world M&G have created (and therefore enhance the engaged reader’s enjoyment) without being essential to the plot. That said, the three “Under the Hood” sections have always been my favorites, not only because I like Hollis as a character (he is, arguably, the only completely likable guy in the entire book) but because his backstory, including the history of the Minutemen, feels most germane to the comic.

Writing as Hollis, Moore adopts a very accessible voice and, initially, casts a warm light on the early days of costumed heroism. There’s a deliberate nostalgic parallel between the Minutemen and our world’s highly popular first super-team, the Justice Society of America, whose simplistic comic was a hit during World War II. (The main difference, of course, is that many JSA heroes — like the Golden Age versions of Wonder Woman, the Flash and Green Lantern — had super-powers; in the more realistic realm that M&G are creating, the Minutemen are mere mortals in masks.)

Speaking of famous superheroes, it’s amusing that, in the Watchmenverse, Superman debuts in Action Comics (as he did in our world) — but instead of kick-starting an entire capes-and-tights genre which still influences pop culture decades later, the Superman in Hollis’s world merely ignites a fad. “All these old characters are gone and forgotten now,” he writes. Comics are still popular enough to be available at newsstands, but it’s not superheroes that sell, it’s pirate tales.

Nevertheless, comic-book heroes inspire the creation of the Nite Owl alter ego. Significantly, good ol’ Hollis dresses up in a funny outfit and fights crime due to a drive to make the world a better place. He’s one of the few driven so selflessly: It becomes increasingly apparent throughout the book that most of the other “masks” don’t have such altruistic motives.

Moore’s deconstruction of superheroes and all their standard conventions even extends to the costumes. Adding to Laurie’s amusing lines about costumes elsewhere in the book (she mocks her own outfit in Chapter I, inspiring an funny response by Dan), here we get Hollis’ assessment of the dangers of bad design. By the way, writer/director/animator extraordinaire Brad Bird (“The Incredibles”), who’s clearly a big fan of superhero comics, has surely read “Watchmen.” Recall Edna’s cardinal rule about designing for heroes? "No capes!" A good funny bit in “The Incredibles” — perhaps inspired by Moore’s tragic tale of poor Dollar Bill, the Minuteman who dies young. His cape trips him up while he’s trying to stop a bank robbery, and the crooks murder him. “If he’d designed [his costume] himself,” Hollis writes, “he might have left out that damned stupid cloak and still be alive today.”

Throughout “Watchmen,” M&G love to play self-reflexive games with the reader. So when Hollis complains about how life changed after the Minutemen era had waned (“The new breed of villains ... weren’t as much fun to fight,” and the cases were “sordid and depressing and quite often blood-chillingly horrible”), that’s also a commentary about how the superhero comics had themselves changed. Starting in the ’70s, they slowly become invested in tackling social issues like racism and drug abuse. Those ills can’t be solved by a quick left hook from any hero, no matter how super; to this day, some fans contend that complex issues have no place in superhero comics, because they sap all the fun out of the adventures. Moore’s even issuing an ironic prophecy here, because the success of “Watchmen,” with its bleak but (arguably) realistic world view, bred an entire generation of comics that have become increasingly more violent and, to some perspectives, depressing.

Hollis’s pessimistic thoughts also offer meta commentary about the very book we’re reading. Moore-as-Hollis writes: “Real life is messy, inconsistent, and it’s seldom when anything ever really gets resolved.” That sums up “Watchmen” almost perfectly. (Except for the inconsistent part — this book is meticulously planned.) The book poses a number of complex, potentially messy questions that don’t have pat answers: Who’s a hero? Who’s a villain? In a world that can’t be boiled down to simple right and wrong, who makes the wisest choices? Even after all these years and several readings, I’m still not sure I know.

Chapter III: “The Judge of All the Earth”

Frontispiece. A close-up of the “fallout shelter” sign, with the smoke partly obscuring certain letters. What we’re left with looks a lot like “all hell.”

Page 1. The front page of the New Frontiersmen* proclaims: “Missing writer.” I don’t know that anyone reading this for the first time could really put all the clues together and figure out where this grand scheme is heading, but nevertheless, M&G strew plenty of clues about.

* Incidentally, this right-wing newspaper provides the domain name for a nifty viral site for the film, containing lots of Watchmenverse background. Worth noodling around if you’ve got some spare time.

Pages 1-3. One of the most admirable things about “Watchmen” is its attention to detail — and that includes a completely perfect imagining of this intersection in Manhattan. On one corner stands this little news shanty, in front of the Institute for Extraspatial Studies. We’ll see this corner time and time again, from multiple perspectives, throughout the story. Gibbons always illustrates it accurately, no matter what “camera angle” he’s drawing from.

And still there’s more: The comic-within-a-comic, that pirate tale from the pages of “Tales of the Black Freighter,” begins here. Moore uses the dark and overblown first-person prose of his hapless sailor protagonist tale to echo the events and themes unfurling in the main story. Admittedly, this doesn’t make “Watchmen” easy to consume: All these narrative layers and odd juxtapositions are enough to deter any less-committed readers. (I personally know of several who never finished reading “Watchmen.”)

Pages 4-5. One of my all-time favorite bits in the entire book: “Jon, be one person again!” (Btw, I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks Laurie’s a little nuts for not enjoying herself. You can sign me up to have sex with multiple Dr. Manhattans anytime!) Of course, her reaction points to her larger dissatisfaction with their relationship, only further exacerbated by the hilarious discovery (well, hilarious to us) that he’s also been busy with research the whole time.

Page 8. A worker from the Gordian Knot Lock Company fixes Dan’s door, which Rorschach broke in issue 1. The name provides another of the seemingly endless examples of coincidence that come to the fore later on.

Page 10. One of the many visual tropes in this book involves the repetition of the image of the smiley-face with the splotched right eye. You could argue that we’re seeing an echo of that pattern here, in the image of Laurie’s eyes reflected in her cup of coffee. Reflections in general are also common in “Watchmen,” as is Gibbons’ penchant for drawing a panel from a particular character’s point of view, which includes their hands in front of them.

Pages 11-16. I doubt anyone’s ever alleged that “Watchmen” is a subtle work, but in this sequence, I believe we see a prime example of Moore overdoing it. He just can’t resist connecting the words of one sequence to the images of another, and it becomes a bit too obvious here, meshing Doctor Manhattan’s ambush by the overzealous journalist with Laurie and Dan’s near-mugging by the knot-tops.

Pages 26-28. The sequences on Mars (specifically in the very next chapter and again in chapter 9) are among my favorite in the entire book. But the nascent astronomy geek in me must note that, despite our celestial next-door neighbor’s popular nickname, “the Red Planet” isn’t really red — nor pink, as colored here. If Mars is “red” at all, it’s the same sort of red we think of when we talk about redheads — in other words, more orange- or rust-colored. To be fair, it seems that even NASA scientists can’t really agree upon exactly how to describe Mars' ruddy color. For my part, I distinctly recall looking at Mars through several different telescopes several summers ago, when the two planets’ orbits brought us as close together as we’ll experience in our lifetime. (Remember that? He was just beaming in the night sky all summer long, back in 2003 or ’04.) Mars looked distinctly amber, really. I’m just sayin’.

Anyway, as the chapter concludes, that “all hell” wording from the cover page makes more sense. As in: “All Hell breaks loose.” Given the events that just occurred — Doctor Manhattan’s self-imposed exile to Mars, leading to the Soviets’ quick invasion of Afghanistan — that cliché sounds about right. The minute hand on the Doomsday Clock just ticked that much closer to midnight.

Chapter II: “Absent Friends”

Before typing up my thoughts this morning about Chapter 2, I think it’s worth noting the news reports now zipping around the internet about last night’s world premiere of “Watchmen.” Sure, it doesn’t open wide until March 6, but it bowed Monday in one of those fancy Hollywood events. Except, as with everything in the Watchmenverse, it was all a bit different: This didn’t happen in L.A. or New York but in London (entirely appropriate, given that the comic’s creators are all British); instead of dozens of movie stars, some of the celebrities who walked the red carpet were comics pros (including, naturally, Dave Gibbons but not, of course, Alan Moore, who’s famously sour on film adaptations); and the red carpet wasn’t red at all, but yellow. That last bit is precisely the sort of flourish that makes me smile. If this movie’s a hit, it’s going to be because of its astonishing attention to detail combined with a slightly askew sense of humor.

Now, on to Chapter 2 ...

Frontispiece. This was, of course, the cover of the original issue when it hit the stands in 1986. (I should dig those out of the boxes in the attic! It would be a hoot to page through them and see what kind of ads appeared 23 years ago.) This one is my favorite. It’s not only a beautifully drawn and colored illustration but an incredibly evocative one. The covers, of course, are all just tight close-ups of an image from the very first panel of page one (with one exception). Chapters 5 and 11 are the two others I like best, but like most of the covers, those are almost abstract images; this one conveys emotion.

Pages 1-3. M&G quickly pick up with a storytelling style that becomes de rigeur in this book —two intercut scenes that flip back and forth with each panel. Again, the colors allow us to instantly distinguish the two settings. It might seem like a simple-enough storytelling technique today, but back then it really was a breath of fresh air. (There’s a reason people call “Watchmen” the “Citizen Kane” of comic books — both works of art contributed fresh, innovative techniques to their medium.)

One side note about Sally Jupiter: What the hell is up with her kooky hair? I don’t have many criticisms of the comic, but here’s one of them (however minor): This character (whom I like, overall) is clearly vain about her appearance — so there’s no way she’d be sporting the exact same hairstyle four decades apart.

Page 4. This “Tijuana Bible”? They’re hilarious and, yes, for real. And Moore clearly has a fascination with them — and with sex scenes and porn in general — because it pops up in his other work. There will be sex scenes in later chapters of this book, of course, and also in his absolutely stunning “Promethea” (the one other Moore work I unabashedly and enthusiastically recommend, due in no small part to the out-of-this-world artwork by J.H.Williams III), and again in “The Black Dossier” (his nigh-impenetrable third volume of the otherwise excellent “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” series, which includes an entire Tijuana Bible sequence). And then there’s the really out-there “Lost Girls,” in which he and his wife/partner Melinda Gebbie attempt to elevate porn to art. Except they do it with childhood heroines like Alice and Dorothy. I think Moore’s a genius, but, as with many geniuses, the man’s not entirely right in the head.

Pages 5-7. The infamous rape scene. Nobody had ever seen anything like this in superhero comics. (I imagine the shock of it compares to the one moviegoers experienced in 1960 when they encountered Hitchcock’s boundary-bursting shower scene in “Psycho.”) This sequence sets up a visual theme in Eddie Blake’s life: The actions that reveal his soul to be increasingly ugly are reflected in his increasingly ugly visage: Sally scratches him trying to defend herself — and then Hooded Justice breaks his nose, permanently disfiguring him. (Although that’s nothing compared to what awaits him on page 14, exemplifying his brutality in Vietnam.) That shot of Blake on page 7, panel 6, directly foreshadows his final fate in the hands of his killer (seen in chapter 1, page 3, panel 3) — right down to the dripping blood splotch.

Page 8. “It rains on the just an’ the unjust alike, except in California.” And except at Blake’s funeral, where, among the notable mourners, precisely two of them aren’t getting rained on: Adrian Veidt (who’s got an attendant to hold his umbrella) and Dr. Manhattan (casting a waterproof aura around himself). Are these characters neither just nor unjust? Certainly they both see themselves as above the rest of humanity.

Pages 9-11. This ill-fated meeting of “The Crimebusters” (a.k.a. the Watchmen) is the only time we’ll see all six of our major characters together in one room: The Comedian, Ozymandias, Dr. Manhattan, Silk Spectre, Nite Owl and Rorschach. For the most part, these aren’t personality types that play well together; throughout the rest of the story, they almost always appear either solo or in duos. Also, note Rorschach’s dialogue: He’s speaking in full sentences, and the word balloon itself is even drawn differently. At this point, he hasn’t experienced his nihilistic epiphany — he’s not truly Rorschach yet.

Page 20. Another great example of the visual power Gibbons achieves by very selectively breaking out of the nine-panel grid. Also, this bottom panel is a perfect example of another way that “Watchmen” differs from so many superhero comics: It eschews the onomatopoeia — those often-silly sound effects which the old “Batman” TV show played up to hilarious effect.

Pages 22-23. The striking back-and-forth color scheme on this spread, as we’ll learn in Chapter 5, is the result of a flashing neon sign outside of Moloch’s apartment. The lighting amps up the drama of Blake’s confessional — the only time we see him behaving like anything but a villain.

Though it might not have been clear in Chapter 1, by the end of this chapter we know that M&G are most definitely not trafficking in a standard superhero story: These so-called heroes range from ineffective to aloof to brutal to downright evil.

Chapter I: “At Midnight, All the Agents ...”

... aaand, away we go! Hopefully, you’ve gotten started (re-)reading. At this point, the film opens in 11 days*, and of course there are 12 chapters. I can’t promise I’ll make a post per day, but who knows? Some days I might double-post. We’ll be in flow — like that frothy mix of blood and water on page one, trickling down the gutter (before the drains finally scab over and drown all the vermin).

So, without further ado:
Page 1. Best. First. Page. Ever.

What else is there to say, really? The text from Rorschach’s journal sets an extreme tone that perfectly suits this grim tale, yet it wouldn’t work as an intro without the genius visual, progressively pulling away from the close-cropped smiley image, up and up, all the way to the top of a very tall building. “That’s quite a drop,” says the cop. No kidding! And just like that, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons rope us in immediately.

Although you don’t notice it upon your first reading, Moore and Gibbons (hereafter referred to simply as “M&G”) don’t waste any time packing each panel with incredible detail. Some of it’s germane to the plot, though we won’t find out precisely how until later; some of it is just part of the background minutiae. There from the start, for example, is the “End is Nigh” freak, working the sidewalk; also there on page one is a truck with a pyramid logo, changing lanes in the street.

(Side note: I’m not going to write much about the film until after it opens on March 6 — you should all get the chance to form your own impressions — but I will offer this head’s-up: As counterintuitive as it might seem at first blush this incredibly effective, highly cinematic pan shot not how the movie begins. (And I’m OK with that.) Meanwhile, if you wanna enjoy Page One as a movie (of sorts), then check out the “motion comic” (available from iTunes — I downloaded the first chapter when it was free a few months back). It animates Gibbons’ artwork and turns “Watchmen” into a freaky cartoon/audiobook hybrid. It’s a bizarre thing, weird and cheesey and awesome all at once, but no matter what you end up thinking of it overall, the first minute is really delightful. Take a peek of it in action here: Some crazy YouTuber has found audio of Alan Moore reading Rorschach's lines. The British accent is all wrong, of course, but damn, it's still creepy.)

Pages 2-4. M & G quickly establish one of the series’ hallmarks: the chronological intercutting. It could’ve been tricky to follow, considering how they leapfrog back and forth with every panel, but colorist John Higgins comes to rescue with his clever color scheme, casting the Comedian’s death sequence entirely in red hues (except, of course, for the yellow smiley-face badge).

Despite Eddie Blake’s darkly ironic code name, “Watchmen” isn’t anyone’s idea of a comedy, yet the story does contain a few laugh lines. (At least upon later readings, if not initially.) At the bottom of page 3, we get our first grim joke: “Ground floor, comin’ up.”

And on page 4, M&G establish a few more background details: There’s a kid reading a “Tales of the Black Freighter” comic (can you imagine your 9-year-old reading that shit?!); there’s the Gunga Diner; and there’s that placard-parading nutcase again. Shiver. And what time is it? Eleven o’clock. That’s a.m., of course, not p.m., but still: Eleven o’clock is just one hour till midnight ...

Pages 5-8. Our first extended silent sequence. (There are precious few of these in the whole book; Moore usually has text juxtaposed with Gibbons’ art. I’ll keep an eye out for this as we go along, but off the top of my head, I’d say that the only other time we get this much purely visual storytelling is during one other sequence in Chapter 6, when we’re following who else but the taciturn Rorschach.) Anyway, I like how M&G encourage the reader to exert a little mental effort here, piecing together Rorschach’s thought process by following his actions (and his body language).

Two other random thoughts: One, we get our first glimpse of the Minutemen — which provides a great transition into the next sequence, introducing both Nite Owls. Two: How badass is Rorschach?! Him and that freakin’ grappling gun! Blake lived in a penthouse way at the top of that skyscraper. “Quite a drop,” nothing — that’s quite a motherfucking climb!

Page 9. I love Hollis. Also: More incredible detail, filling in background elements — a framed newspaper about Hollis retiring; a statuette of his costumed alter ego, awarded “in gratitude”; two copies of his autobiography, “Under the Hood”; his auto-repair business sign out front, ironically noting that he specializes in “obsolete models.” And — ah! — the first instance, I think, of some key graffiti: “Who watches the watchmen?”

Page 11. “Human bean juice”: Rorschach cracks a funny.

Pages 14-16. “I believe I shall take my exercise” — is this him cracking yet another joke? Hard to say. But his imminent exercise involves torturing innocent people who just happen to be hanging out in dive bars like Happy Harry’s. It says a lot of Rorschach’s badass factor that nobody dares challenge him while he breaks this poor guy’s fingers.

We’re also getting one of our first glimpses into the little ways that this world differs from ours: People tend to smoke out of those bizarre devices that look like a long cigarette holder, but instead of sticking a cigarette in the end, you apparently put the tabacco (or whatever?) into that little globe. Happy Harry notwithstanding, there are four different denizens of this underworld smoking from such a device.

Pages 17-18. Quick intro for Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias. More props to colorist Higgins: Veidt’s office, like his clothes and his costume, is awash in violet tones — purple long being a color associated with kings.

Higgins does great work throughout this book, often making counterintuitive choices. There’s a lot of great insight from Gibbons and Higgins about the color scheme in “Watching the Watchmen,” which just came out last autumn. There's plenty to say just about the coloring, but for now, I’ll simply note that superhero comics tend to traffic in full-spectrum color, with plenty of primary blasts of red and blue and yellow. (Even superhero costumes are full of primary colors, the notable exception being, for obvious reasons, Green Lantern.) Yet in “Watchmen,” Higgins sticks to secondary colors and earth tones whenever possible — the major exceptions being the yellow smiley face, Silk Spectre’s yellow costume, and blue Dr. Manhattan.

Anyway, after a tense exchange, there goes our favorite badass rightwing nutjob antihero, grappling down the side of the building. (Surely Adrian would’ve let him use the elevator, but clearly Rorschach prefers to do everything on his own.) And the New York Gazette headline notes: “Nuclear Doomsday Clock Stands at Five to Twelve.”

Page 19. Rorschach’s best line yet (though you don’t get the humor until reading the comic for at least the second time): “Why are so few of us left active, healthy, and without personality disorders?” Also: In that first panel, setting the scene at the Rockefeller Military Research Center, Gibbons has slyly placed the iconic Superman “S” inside that badge on the sign — oh-so-appropriate, given that Dr. Manhattan lives here and he’s the only true superman of the entire costumed bunch.

Page 20. Dr. Manhattan knows how to make an entrance. (And M&G know precisely when to deviate from their standard nine-panel grid for maximum storytelling impact.)

Page 24. Here’s a poster for the Pale Horse concert coming up at Madison Square Garden — on the surface, it’s the name of a band, but of course it’s also a reference to the end times from the biblical book of the Revelation ("And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."). In other words, more doomsday mood-setting. And the “Four More Years” poster lets us know who’s still in office.

Page 26. I don’t remember finding this particularly funny the first couple times I read it, but this time around, I laughed out loud at the idea of Rorschach dropping the masochistic Captain Carnage down an elevator shaft. Not incidentally, this anecdote explicitly introduces Moore’s ongoing suggestion that the “masks” (as Rorschach calls them) have some sort of sexual peccadillo, fetish or dysfunction.

Addendum pages. I’m saving my thoughts about Hollis Mason’s “Under the Hood” until Chapter 3, which gives us our third and final such excerpt.


* ummm, 11 days, 12 hours, 29 minutes and 56 seconds ... 55 ... 54 ... according to my handy little “Watchmen” app. Head’s up, those of you with an iPhone (or an iPod Touch)! It’s free, too, and naturally jam-packed with stuff. Some of the videos are slightly spoilerific, though, so you might wanna wait to watch those.

Who Watches the Watchblog?

Welcome to this modest little discussion group dedicated to "Watchmen"!  I won't claim that I'll be offering any observations that haven't already been made about this seminal work of art, but I'm wading into the critical waters anyway. I do know more than a few smart and clever folks, some of whom have already expressed enthusiasm about participating here, so I believe our communal effort will evolve into an insightful and entertaining discussion, even if unoriginal.

Of course, I'm making a presumption — setting a prerequisite, if you will — that you're currently reading the comic, or have read it in the not-too-distant past. Also, I advise that you have your copy of the book handy as you read these posts. (I'm going to cite page numbers and panels far more than I'll be scanning and posting artwork.) While spoiler warnings naturally apply, I'm going to endeavor to approach my chapter comments as if I'm chatting entirely with "Watchmen" virgins, so as not to ruin revelations that don't occur until later. (Those of us in the know can comment on any given chapter's chapter's foreshadowing further on, as the story's various fragments begin to connect with increasing potency.) I ask that everyone here observe the same guidelines by writing spoiler-free comments. After all, the uninitiated should be able to discover on their own how the Comedian never got over the loss of his childhood sleigh.

I'd love to leap right into Chapter I now, but as it happens, it's already mid-afternoon on this sunny Presidents' Day Monday — and I've got to be downtown by 6 pm to watch ... well, you can guess what I'm watching. Yes, it's an early press screening. I'm sure I'll be sworn to secrecy, but I will post my general impressions here, later this week (after I file my article with my editor). Will my cautious optimism be rewarded? Are the various people tangentially affiliated with the film (Dave Gibbons included) being sincere in their recent praise and admiration of Zack Snyder's artistry, or are they blowing buzz-creating smoke? We'll know soon enough.