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.
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