September 12, 2019

Watchmen Issue #2, “Absent Friends”

31 minutes

It’s time for Eddie Blake’s funeral, and everyone is having fond memories about the departed Comedian. Just kidding, he was a monster, as we discover through flashbacks and stories. But how much does the extremely non-comedic Comedian represent America? And comic book characters of the time? Find out, as we break down Watchmen #2, “Absent Friends.”

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The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.

Plus, here’s a transcript of the episode for you to read through as you listen:

Alex: Welcome to Watchmen Watch, a

podcast about HBO’s Watchmen where we watch Watchmen, talk about Watchmen and

watch you watching the Watchmen. I’m Alex.

Justin: I’m Justin.

Pete: I’m Pete.

Alex: And we are going to be talking

about the second issue of the Watchmen comic book series as we ramp up to the

HBO series here. Very exciting. It’s coming out October 20th. We know that now.

Justin: We know that now.

Alex: It has been known. We’re very

excited.

Pete: 10/20.

Alex: But to bone up, we’re reading

through the book. So, issue two, this is not called Almost Friends as I wanted

to call it.

Justin: No. And it’s not called Friends,

the pilot of the TV show Friends.

Alex: Right, because Alan Moore and

Dave Gibbons were on a break.

Justin: That’s true. We should mention

Alan Moore can’t be here today.

Alex: Right.

Justin: Our fourth host for this podcast.

He texted me. I accidentally told him we were meeting at a campsite outside of

Stonehenge. We had a mix-up.

Alex: Oh, okay.

Pete: How can you accidentally mix up

this address with that address?

Justin: Just a classic mix-up.

Alex: Auto-text, right?

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: I hate that.

Justin: I meant to write the pit loft

where we tape our show. Instead I wrote a campsite just outside of Stonehenge.

So, he’s there. It’s my bad because he was definitely showing up this week, but

I texted him back. He’s totally fine with the mix-up.

Alex: Oh, he’s going to be back next

week?

Justin: He’ll be back next week.

Pete: It kind of works out because the

title of this is Absent Friend, and he’s our absent friend.

Justin: That’s true. He said the same

thing.

Alex: Oh, that’s very true. Absent

Friend, not Almost Friends because me and Alan Moore almost hooked up that one

time.

Justin: That’s true.

Pete: Really? Yeah.

Justin: And he’s not weird about it.

That’s not the real reason he’s not showing up.

Pete: Was that at that San Diego Comic

Con when you were wasted, and you almost hooked up with him?

Justin: Careful. Don’t start-

Alex: I don’t want to talk about it.

I don’t want to kiss and tell.

Justin: Don’t start talking about San

Diego Comic Cons and being wasted, Pete.

Pete: Yeah. What?

Justin: You know what you did.

Pete: I was the one who told Jim Lee

he was the king of San Diego.

Justin: No, that’s true. You tried to

smoke a joint with …

Pete: I didn’t try.

Alex: This is very far off field.

Pete: Yeah, I didn’t try nothing.

Alex: Let’s talk about Watchmen, you

guys. So, chapter two of the book, issue number two, Absent Friends. Definitely

going to remember that by the end of the episode. So, to get you guys caught

up, there has been a murder of Eddie Blake. Rorschach is investigating it, and

that’s pretty much kind of where we pick up this issue. But I got to say as

we’re going back through this, I know I said this the last time as well, good

comic.

Pete: Man, great comic.

Alex: This is a good comic.

Justin: Great comic.

Pete: Also, it was nice to see Blue

Man Group put on a suit for the funeral. I thought that was very classy of him.

Alex: That is rude to Doctor

Manhattan. I do want to seriously say, though, I know we mentioned this last

episode. It continues to be surprising to me, and it shouldn’t be, how good

Watchmen is.

Justin: 100% agree. It’s crazy how good

this is, how much Alan Moore is mixing up here. It’s important to remember when

you’re re-reading this or reading it for the first time, this shit had never

been done before. The idea of mixing up a comic this dark where the characters

have sort of nothing going for them or they’re all failing super hard. To see

that and to see all the references to comic book history, topical politics when

he was writing this, and just science, science fiction, everything, world

events. It’s amazing.

Alex: And to give it even more

context, the comic book industry was going through this massive change at this

point when this is being published. Who knows, necessarily, when it was

written, but 1985 you had Crisis of Infinite Earths that condensed the entire

DC Universe, had huge events. Killed off The Flash, killed off Supergirl. So,

those were traumatic in their own ways for superhero fans, and then on the

other side of the fence in Marvel, you had Secret Wars, which is this big

marketing grab that changed characters in a very different way and brought all

of these superheroes together. This always gets lumped in with The Dark Knight.

Was that ’84, I want to say?

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: Something like that. So, this

was in ’86, so they get lumped together as they’re these other takes while DC

was going darker and darker and Marvel was going light but more complicated in

a very different way.

Justin: Going big, I guess you could say.

Alex: Going big in a very different

way. This was huge. This was promoted very heavily, but this almost eschews

superheroics. That’s one the things I was really struck by with this issues, is

we got the murder mystery thing going on, but whenever there’s a fight, they

cut away from it.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: That’s not the point of what’s

going on. The point is the characters.

Pete: I got a little confused, but

thank you for explaining it when you said shoes superheroics. I didn’t know

what-

Alex: Eschew. Eschew.

Pete: Oh.

Alex: Which is different than his

shoe.

Justin: Yeah.

Pete: I thought you meant it shooes it

like, “Shoo, get away heroics.”

Justin: Oh, I see.

Alex: I’ll tell you what, you should

listen to our spelling podcast, which is very different. We read through-

Pete: You joke about me slurring

words, but …

Justin: E-S-C-H-E-W-S.

Alex: Yes. Eschews.

Justin: Not cashews, which was another

thing he says a lot.

Pete: I’m just saying. Glass house,

motherfucker.

Alex: The interesting thing about

this though is The Comedian eschews shoes and cashews for this issue.

Pete: Wow.

Justin: That’s true. Wow.

Pete: I would also like to point out

not only … We got into this a little bit in talking about the last issue, but

the panels are amazingly put together, but the transitions … Instead of just

showing a flashback, it’s the light off a picture frame that reminds her of flash

photography that brings her this flashback. Just really smart things.

Alex: The structure of this issue, to

get to it a little bit, is Eddie Blake’s funeral. We get to see flashbacks from

everybody, whether they’re there or not, to the past. We find out a lot more

about the event that was hinted at the last issue, which was Eddie Blake’s

assault of, not Laurie Jupiter, Sally Jupiter. The first Silk Spectre. So, we

find out a lot more about that as well as other aspects of all of the

character’s lives and their relationships to Eddie Blake. We find out more

about him as The Comedian. But the interesting thing about this issue, I think

structurally, to your point Justin, the first issue tracks very heavily in very

specific juxtaposition where you get the text and the images are not fighting

against each other, but complement each other in a different way. You get that

here, but it’s much more about the actions where you see Dr. Manhattan at the

funeral, but he’s also potentially in another time at the same time, flashing

back to his relationship with Eddie. It’s much more about a temporal

juxtaposition than a spatial juxtaposition like it is in the first issue.

Justin: The first issue moves so quickly

through a lot of sort of superhero tropes. It just takes them as accepted that

they were a superteam, and the past was a lighter, more fun period just like

the way comic history went. So, the juxtaposition now of actually seeing that

backstory and the temporal shifts that all the characters go through, I think it

really sets up what’s coming forward and gives context to what we read in the

last issue.

Alex: The other thing that’s

interesting with the whole superteam of it all is we get to meet two

“superteams” in this issue. The first on is the Minutemen, which is

like an analog of the Justice Society of America but without super powers.

They’re all masked vigilantes. It seems a little bit more like a social club.

That’s really only how we get to see them together. We never get to see them

fight crime together. The second one is the Crimebusters, which as far as we

can tell, meets once, and that’s it.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: Nothing else happens with them,

so again, it’s Moore and Gibbons and company really eschewing the

superhero-ness, the structure of it, where we would expect, okay, there’s a

team get together and then some big event breaks them apart, but in this case,

it’s just not the right time.

Justin: Yeah. And they’re not the right

people, and it doesn’t make sense. That’s what’s also so good about this is being

a superhero never makes sense for any of these characters in this comic, and

it’s great. They’re either way off, they’re not good people, or they’re just

way beyond it like Doctor Manhattan.

Alex: We talked about this a little

bit in the first two episodes of the podcast with Rorschach, and I think this

very heavily comes up here in terms of how people misinterpret Watchmen that

being a superhero is bad. It is clearly a bad thing to do, it’s not a good

lifestyle choice. There’s nothing to hope for, and in fact, there’s a pretty

good argument to be made, particularly after this issue, that the rise of

superheroes leads to a worse world than we are currently in. They do not make

it better the way that they do in the DC Comics Universe or the Marvel Comics Universe.

Their addition cuts down on crime maybe, but it makes things ultimately worse.

Justin: Yeah. Should we walk through the

issue a little bit?

Alex: Yeah, sure. Well, actually

before we do though, there was one thing, an overall thing that I wanted to

talk about which is The Comedian. He’s the focus of this issue. His character

is the focus of this issue. He’s not that funny, it seems.

Justin: No, he’s a dick.

Alex: That’s surprising with his name

the way it is.

Justin: Yeah. What a weird accident.

Alex: Yeah.

Pete: You want to stop and explore

that some more?

Justin: He should have been The Tragedian.

Alex: Well, I mean, this gets back to

the juxtaposition as well, right? The Comedian, do you think … He certainly

makes this argument, but do you think The Comedian is the one who actually sees

the world the way it is? Is he actually seeing some joke there, or is it the

juxtaposition of, well, he is The Comedian, but he’s not funny at all?

Justin: I think, yeah, it’s the

juxtaposition. In the original Minutemen, he’s the goofiest, yet he’s the one

who assaults Sally Jupiter. In this issue, he’s wearing an old-timey, Italian

clown uniform. Then later in Crimebusters, he’s just being a regular dick, and

he’s sort of dressed like a ’90s superhero. He actually dresses like NFL

SuperPro a little bit.

Alex: Yeah, he does a little bit.

Justin: Which is a funny connection. I

doubt that was purposeful. And then, you see him doing more horrible things. He

shoots a woman who is carrying his baby in Vietnam, and we get to see that

happen, and then The Comedian moving forward. I think he’s meant to be a

reflection of the time, the different time periods. Back in the ’50s, ’60s,

everything is bright and sunny, but all the horrifying things are happening

behind closed doors. In Vietnam, it’s like Americans are being horrible

overseas. It is that sort of satirical take and juxtaposing this thing called

The Comedian. The bright veneer we paint over everything overlays horrifying

actions.

Alex: He is definitely a representation

of America. I think that’s very clear. It’s possible he might also be Alan

Moore commentating on comedy in comic books because Alan Moore, maybe not so

much at this time, but famously hates comic books. We know that when we hang

out with him off of this podcast.

Justin: Yeah, let me text him that

question and see what he says.

Alex: Yeah, well, maybe he can bring

it up on the next episode, but comic book superheroes aren’t actually usually

very funny, and so it’s possible he might be amping that up because he is one

of the only ones that actually acts like a comic book superhero. It might be

that he’s hitting this very old-timey kind of humor, which is like, “Hey

toots, why don’t you take off your dress?” And everybody is like,

“Haha,” but it’s not actually funny in a particular way.

Justin: It’s saying the horrifying thing

or saying the thing that this person actually wants to happen.

Alex: Exactly. So, that all said, I

was curious because I think that’s an overall character thing that we delve

into pretty deeply in this issue. But, yeah, let’s walk through it.

Justin: The first couple scenes we have

here are Laurie talking to her mom. They don’t get along very well. Sally sort

of wishes she was young again, basically, and is sort of bitter about the world,

saying she would rather go back to the life she had back then even though it’s

horrible. They set up the sexual assault from The Comedian.

Alex: This also ties into something

that we find out later, which is … Not Laurie. Sally.

Justin: Sally.

Alex: I keep mixing them up. Sally

does not like herself very much. They pull out that Tijuana Bible or whatever

it is that has her in a cartoon form. Somebody is having sex with her. Laurie

hates it. Sally kind of likes it, and is flattered by it. It’s, again, not to

keep using the word juxtaposition, but it’s a very interesting juxtaposition of

as terrible as things were for her, she has this sadness and vanity about the

olden times. Again, if you get into the comic book of it all because really, if

nothing else, Watchmen is a comic book that is commenting on comic books, you

can look at that as that nostalgia for the “golden age of comic

books” that, “Bad things happened, but overall, wasn’t it so

wonderful, and everything was so beautiful. Wasn’t that great?”

Justin: Yeah. Someone who would dress up

in a costume … None of these people have powers. They’re just regular people,

and be like, “I’m going to go do this,” is goofy and vain.

Alex: Right.

Justin: To take that for real, I thought,

is interesting.

Alex: And we find out more about

that, I believe, in the under the hood section at the end where Hollis Mason

talks about she was the first one to be like, “Hey, I’ll have a PR agent.

What do you think about that?” She did it for the PR more than anything, more

than the crime fighting.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: So, that’s sad. It’s a sad

character.

Justin: Indeed. So, we flash from that, as

Pete said, from the picture frame in the reflection to a flashbulb where we get

to see Sally and the rest of the Minutemen. Their costumes are all sort of

goofy, I mean, very much like the actual golden age comics where it’s

ridiculous. Dave Gibbons does such a good job of showing them as goofy people,

and then you see this horrifying sexual assault scene where they’re all in

their costumes, but they’re talking like regular people doing horrifying

things.

Alex: There’s an interesting thing

that happened in the first issue as well. I mean, it’s a pretty typically

camera angle thing which is, again, one of the things that I don’t think was

unique necessarily to this comic book but that Dave Gibbons did so well is

using [filmic 00:14:30] framing angles for things. There’s a shot, I believe,

of The Comedian on the floor between Hooded Justice’s legs, which is very

similar to a shot of The Comedian from the first issue where it’s showing that

Hooded Justice is dominant over him. Even if The Comedian pushes himself as

this uber mal, he’s really not. The other thing that happens, I believe … I

don’t remember which panel it is, but one of the panels in there, there’s a

splash of blood on The Comedian that he’s wiping off that is the same as the

splash of blood that’s on the button from the first issue.

Justin: Yeah.

Pete: Wow.

Justin: Showing that when he dies, he’s

still marred by all these horrifying things he’s done. He’s not a hero at all,

and he goes out as not a hero.

Alex: Yeah. Again, I know we keep

going back to, “Hey, great comic.” Big surprise, but it’s also the

layers of preparation that they clearly did to put this together. This is very

different from a modern comic book where it doesn’t get the chance to plan it

in advance, right?

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: You got to meet that monthly

schedule, so at most, they have three to four issues ready before they go.

Here, I don’t know this for a fact, but I have to assume they had everything

planned out before they were ready to go.

Justin: It’s so meticulous. Every frame,

every panel means something. The last panel of this scene, you see Hooded

Justice who stops the assault is still such a jerk to Sally. He doesn’t help

her really. He says, “Get up, and for God’s sake, cover yourself.”

He’s the hero of that scene, and he’s still a monster. She is surrounded by

monsters. And then, it cuts right back to this Tijuana Bible thing, and it just

shows that, yes, she’s unhappy, but she’s dealt with all these horrifying

things all the time.

Alex: Right. Well, let’s talk about

Hooded Justice for a second. He’s just a fascinating character who isn’t dealt

with, as far as I remember, a ton in the comic book series. But he’s the first

hero that comes out. He’s the one that sparks all of it, but he’s also the only

one that really fully hides his face.

Justin: Yeah, you never see it.

Alex: Right. Part of that, if I

remember correctly, he’s gay, right?

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: I think that’s what-

Pete: Because that’s the joke The

Comedian makes when he’s being beaten up by him. He’s like, “You’re liking

this, aren’t you?” That makes the Hooded Justice stop.

Alex: Right. That makes him stop, and

that’s why he takes that pain and that shame of being homosexual and throws it

right back on her. Again, this is painting the times that they live in, the

fact that it isn’t necessarily accepted at all. He’s scared of it coming out

and people finding him out, so he takes it out on Sally.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: But yeah, then we get this

memory from Adrian Veidt. This was another interesting thing that I was reading

some notes on this. I didn’t necessarily every pick up on this before, but

Ozymandias’s costume is the same colors, I believe, as The Comedian’s original

costume. So, if anything, there’s something there in terms of him picking up

from where The Comedian left off.

Justin: Purple and yellow, being the

villain.

Alex: Right. It’s almost a reverse. Looking

at this panel right now, we’re looking at the big panel of the first meeting of

the Crimebusters, and Ozymandias has this purple swoop versus the part that

left over … The part that is yellow on his neck is the part that was purple

on The Comedian, so in a way, he’s almost the opposite of The Comedian.

Justin: Right. That’s cool. They’re not

facing each other. This, we get Captain Metropolis who is forming the

Crimebusters. He’s still in the golden age dressed like a goof. Then, it’s this

random mix of people. Ozymandias, we talked about his costume, but he’s also

dressed like a god as opposed to everyone else that’s sort of in various stages

of superhero dress. The fact that he ends up sort of coming out of here squeaky

clean based on his confidence, basically, is interesting I think.

Alex: The other thing that’s

fascinating about this scene, particularly when you’re going through the book a

second time, which wouldn’t have been ultimately clear the first time through,

is this is Adrian Veidt’s memory of this meeting of the Crimebusters where

Captain Metropolis is proposing this plan. He says, “Look at all these

things going on in the world.” It’s fascinating that he mentions, I think,

it’s promiscuity and other things like that. The Comedian is like, “This

sucks. This is a stupid plan. You’re never going to do this. You just got to

burn it all down and figure out what to do next,” and Adrian Veidt is

looking at the map. Through the lens of this just being the second issue and us

thinking Ozymandias is a hero and the smartest man alive, you would think he’s

lamenting it. He’s going, “Oh, no, we can save the world. We can figure

out another way to do this. This is so sad.” But in actuality, The

Comedian is giving Adrian his plan.

Justin: Yeah. And you see it right in the

second to last panel of the scene where Ozymandias is looking at the burn page

with the words, “Somebody has to save the world.” It’s all right

there.

Alex: Yes. That’s something that I

think is very undervalued about this series in particular is what a good

mystery it is. It’s very well-constructed as a mystery, not just as a superhero

series. Not just in terms of the characters and the commentary on it, but the

fact that it is a very good mystery that you really cannot figure out until the

end, but all the clues are there the entire time.

Justin: Yeah, and that’s why on a second

and third read, you really get to see so much more as it’s going. We get this

next scene with Doctor Manhattan’s memory of his time in Vietnam with The Comedian.

It’s just horrifying. The Comedian is being reckless. He shoots this woman

after she cuts his face, revealing that she’s pregnant, and Doc Manhattan

doesn’t stop him, even though he definitely could.

Alex: Yeah. The other thing, one

thing that I’ll mention that’s also great about these memories, these stories

that we get throughout, is we are learning more about Eddie Blake as we go,

plot-wise, but really we’re learning about the characters who are remembering

the stories. The big thing with Doctor Manhattan here is he doesn’t stop Eddie

Blake from shooting a pregnant woman. He’s also standing in the middle of a

table at the time and doesn’t notice it. So, what we find out about Doctor

Manhattan is, even at this early point in his career, he’s already retreated

from humanity. He can’t relate to human beings.

Justin: Yeah. He doesn’t feel. He’s almost

sociopathic in his understanding of the situation. He’s just like a scientist

viewing it from afar without any empathy for the situation.

Pete: Yeah, and that kind of really

shows in the way he’s standing in the table, and it’s the same stance as … In

both places, he’s looking over a dead body.

Alex: Yeah.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: And then, we get the Owlship

flashback, right?

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: Now this is where we get to see

the new mask that The Comedian is wearing. It’s a full face mask. Looks like a

gimp mask, which he likes to torture people, so I think that’s at least part of

the inspiration that’s going on there. But to set it in time, I believe, this

is when the Vietnam War either kicked off, or they dropped the bomb or

something like that. It’s one of those moments. It’s not particularly clear in

the book, but we get to see them going to the streets, trying to act like

superheroes, and I believe this is what ultimately leads to the Keen Act, which

is the act they pass where they shut down vigilantes except for

government-sponsored ones, clearly leading into the Ironman-Captain America

civil war that happens later in the series.

Justin: 100%, yeah. That’s, I think, issue

nine.

Alex: It’s weird that they brought

them in at that point, but it worked really well.

Justin: This is where we fully get a look

at the phrase, “Who watches the Watchmen,” being painted in the wall,

which has been sort of alluded-

Alex: But still not completely.

Justin: Not completed.

Alex: It’s still blocked.

Justin: But it’s the first time it’s

featured.

Alex: Right.

Justin: So, really starting to get … I

think that’s sort of the completion of the first act almost, or the table is

set for the rest of the story. This is sort of just a dark … Everything sucks

with these characters. Owl Man is just like, “Don’t do that.”

Alex: Nite Owl.

Justin: Sorry, Nite Owl. I keep saying

that wrong.

Alex: You keep calling him Owl Man.

Justin: Yeah, I don’t know why.

Alex: There is a character called Owl

Man.

Justin: It’s true. Nite Owl, I just never

have liked his name.

Alex: Really?

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: Why not?

Justin: Because it’s a phrase as opposed

to a name.

Alex: Yeah. Well, that’s where it

comes from. Hollis Mason talks about that in Under the Hood. He says that he

was looking for name. He wasn’t sure what to do, and he would never go out to a

drink with this co-worker of his. Instead he wanted to go workout because he

was trying to figure out how to be a superhero. He was like, “Oh, you’re

always such a night owl,” and he was like, “Yeah, Nite Owl. That’s

me.”

Justin: Yeah. Again, stupid. Not a great

origin story.

Alex: The existence of Nite Owl

implies the existence of a day owl.

Justin: That’s true. Find the day owl. We

get a moment where the new Nite Owl has Comedian’s pin, a clean one, no blood

on it, and throws it onto the grave. I feel like what is this? What is this

supposed to mean? Why is he the one that throws the pin?

Alex: Dan?

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: I don’t know. These parallel,

the way the button falls down is very similar to the way the button falls down

in the first issue. So, it’s some sort of parallel on him dying again, right?

Or putting the final nail in the coffin or something like that?

Justin: Yeah. Maybe setting him up as more

of the hero here or keying him as the main character. Not sure.

Alex: Yeah. I mean, there’s also some

stuff in here with him approaching Doctor Manhattan when already Dan, whether

Doctor Manhattan knows it or not, has become his romantic rival for Laurie’s

affections.

Justin: Yes. Nobody knows it really here.

Alex: Right. But it’s pretty clear

when you’re reading it that it’s setting them up. There’s that shot of them

having the handshake where it’s like, “Oh, here we go.”

Justin: Yeah. Doc Manhattan is just

looking around. “Who’s going to try to fuck my wife,” is what he’s

thinking.

Alex: Which one of you fuckers …

Justin: Rorschach leaves silently. And

then, we get this great, awesomely drawn sequence of Rorschach going after

Moloch, the former villain for Doc Manhattan.

Pete: This is when the shading and

lighting of the panels really takes off. From this point on, it’s really just

unbelievably beautiful.

Alex: Yeah. The Moloch thing is

interesting because it introduces supervillains who were teased, I was about to

say weirdly enough, but appropriately enough during the rape/assault sequence.

That’s the time where you get to see their trophy room. You get to see a lens that

Moloch set up before which paints him as sort of this goofy, ’60s-style

villain. Sort of very Adam West, Batman-y-style villain, which obviously he’s

not here at the end. We also see, it’s called Killer Ape or Gorilla Man or

something like that. There’s some sort of mask in the trophy room as well,

which I think emphasizes the animalistic nature of what Eddie Blake is doing to

Sally at that moment. But we never really see any supervillain action. To the

point of the superheroics, we haven’t really had them established other than

that glimpse. Here, we finally get to see Moloch, and he is a cancer-ridden

husk of himself.

Justin: Yeah. Sad. You wonder how this man

could have ever threatened Doctor Manhattan who is all-powerful, basically. He

tells this story of The Comedian coming to visit him and basically saying,

“The world is fucked,” after he’s realized sort of the plot that we

ourselves, the reader, find out later.

Alex: He talks about the island a

little bit. He talks about some writers and other things, I believe, throughout

the scene, which teases again. If you’re reading it through the second time,

you know that Veidt is setting up this big story and teasing and building this

thing, but it’s very unclear exactly what The Comedian is talking about at this

point to anybody who hasn’t read Watchmen.

Justin: Yeah. And he sets up Janie Slater

who is Doctor Manhattan’s first wife, I believe, which we learn about later on

in the series. It’s just such a haunting scene because you are seeing it

through the eyes of this ruined villain, and it just sets up all this tension

that we have no idea, this conspiracy that really put The Comedian to his

death. It really feeds in to Rorschach’s panic and his actual believing. He’s a

conspiracy theorist, and this is proving to be true.

Alex: Well, to the point, I may have

the time period a little bit wrong, but if The Comedian is a reflection of

America in a very similar way to Captain America is over in Marvel Comics, this

is the point, the late ’70s, early ’80s or so when America started to realize,

“Oh, wait. We’ve fucked everything up.”

Justin: Yeah. American disillusionment.

Alex: Exactly. It certainly came

earlier than that, but whether it’s hitting The Comedian late or not, that’s

what’s going on there. He’s realizing there’s all of these things going on

behind the scenes that he’s not the big man about. He’s not the guy in charge.

He’s not the most important thing in the story. Everything else is happening

around him. I think ultimately that’s why he dies, right?

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: Because he has reached the end

of his usefulness. His time is literally over.

Justin: Yeah. He’s done too many horrible

things to continue on.

Alex: Yeah, he should have died

earlier.

Justin: He’s being replaced by this new

world order that we come to find out later is Ozymandias’s sort of stake.

Alex: Yeah. Who among us has not been

replaced by a squid?

Justin: Yeah, indeed. I also think the

death of The Comedian is sort of where the fiction starts. I think The Comedian

is meant to represent what America actually did, and this is sort of the flight

of fancy out of it where we realize the consequences or a take on what could

happen to bring the world back together. We get the famous Pagliacci joke at

the end which is great.

Alex: Great joke. Actually very

funny.

Justin: Super funny.

Alex: After The Comedian not being

funny for an issue, funny joke at the end, huh?

Justin: Hilarious. And the last image we

see here is Rorschach grabbing a flower off of Eddie’s grave and taking it with

him.

Pete: Which is cool because we see

earlier in this issue, everybody is putting things into the grave, right?

They’re putting the body down, they’re throwing the pins in. Rorschach comes

and takes something.

Justin: That’s great, yeah. Because

everyone is putting away their memories. They’re like, “This guy who did

bad things, I don’t want to think about this anymore.” He’s like,

“I’m going to take this clue with me on into the rest of the

mystery.”

Alex: Yeah, and to what we were

talking about with the first issue as well though, that’s Rorschach kind of

going off in the wrong direction, right? He is holding on to this Comedian

mystery that is part of it, but he doesn’t know what it is quite yet.

Pete: And again, the shading and the

paneling. From panel to panel, completely different time periods flow so

nicely. But also, there was a panel where it was the same part of the

newspaper, and then the next panel is just a bigger part. So cool.

Justin: Very cool.

Alex: Now, one thing that I did want

to point out actually because I was looking at both of your guys’ copies. You

have a paperback print copy, Pete, and you’re looking at it on your computer.

The coloring is different on both of them.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: So, in Pete’s I think it’s a

little bit closer because the roses, I believe, are the same red as the blood

on The Comedian in the first issue. So, when Rorschach is walking through the

blood at the beginning, at the end of the second issue, he’s pulling it back

out again. So, I don’t know. It’s interesting. I assume there’s an absolute

edition out there somewhere with the correct colors, but it certainly affects

the experience quite a bit. Guys, thank you so much for listening to Watchmen

Watch. We will be back with the third issue pretty soon.

Justin: Very soon.

Alex: Check out all the ways to

subscribe at comicbookclublive.com. You can support this podcast and more.

Patreon.com/comicbookclub. Also mention, you can follow us a bunch of places,

@watchmenwatch1 on Twitter. Also on Facebook and Instagram, Watchmen Watch

Podcast, you can check them out there. We got some shirts. We got shirts, guys.

Justin: Get those shirts on.

Alex: Comicbookclub.threadless.com,

check it out there. And remember, we taped this podcast 35 minutes ago.

Justin: Alan just texted me, and he said

he’ll definitely be here for the next episode.

Alex: Oh, that’s great.

Pete: Great.

Justin: Again, my bad. Stonehenge.

Alex: I hope he had fun camping.

Justin: Yeah, he loves camping, and he

loves mysterious stones.

The post Watchmen Watch: Issue #2, “Absent Friends” appeared first on Comic Book Club.

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