It’s time to get the band back together as Dan and Laurie enact their plan to break Rorschach out of prison. Meanwhile, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen #8, “Old Ghosts,” serves as an overture to the rest of the series, layering in bits of the mystery and taking one major character off the board, permanently. Plus, are superheroes full of piss? We discuss.
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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:
to Watchman Watch Podcast about Watchmen where we watch Watchmen. You watch
Watchmen. We all watch Watchmen. I’m Alex.
we are going to be talking about Chapter 8 of Watchmen: Old Ghosts, as we
continue our walk through Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons classic comic book series
leading up to the premier of HBO’s Watchmen on October 20th. Speaking of which,
I think you were away last week, Justin. You were traveling across country with
our co-host, Alan Moore. And, then, this week, Pete’s gone and Alan’s gone.
sad to say we … So we drove all the way across country out to LA for a
karaoke contest. We got all set. We were both super excited. He was gregarious,
just like giggling, super happy.
know Alan. You don’t need to describe that.
exactly. This real giggle monster. Putting his name on stuff as opposed to the
other. And our song is, Paradise by the Dashboard Light, obviously, by Meat
unfortunately, we both wanted to sing the woman part.
we had to split up over creative differences.
no. So what’s going on? Where’s Pete? Is Pete off-
out there doing the male part. Alan flew him in. He’s got all that Watchmen
cache. So he flew Pete in to just do the guy part.
I mean, if there’s one thing I know about Alan, he’s always willing to put out
his own money for other people. He’s very into … He’s always dropping … and
it’s honestly a little annoying … “You guys know I’m the author of
Watchmen. And I’ve got a lot of money because of that.”
And he’s like, “This round’s on me. Everybody drinks on Watchmen” is
(affirmative). The other day we were hanging out and he started stuffing dollar
bills in my G-string. And I was like, “I’m not wearing a G-string, Alan.
You’re just stuffing dollar bills down my pants.
Though I will say those are very, very short pants, to be mistaken.
No, it’s good. Those are the smallest jorts I’ve seen in quite some time.
you. I really appreciate that. Let’s jump in and talk about Old Ghosts. Now, I
will mention that Pete did tell me about this issue. He’s very bummed to not be
here to talk about this issue. Of course, this is the big prison breakout
issue. A lot of Rorschach stuff going on. He’s very into it. This is … I
believe he said his favorite issue in the run.
How do you feel about it, Justin?
this is the issue where sort of all the gears are coming together. All the
disparate stories and characters are … sort of the squad is forming with
Doctor Manhattan appearing. Nite Owl and Silk Specter II, their relationship is
going strong. They’re fighting crime. They rescue Rorschach. Rorschach’s sort
of world view is expanded to almost all of us to including Nite Owl, the New
Frontiersman as we learn here. We get a sort of inside look at that. And we’re
all starting to sort of believe Rorschach.
I did want to talk about that a bit. And this is certainly jumping right into
the middle of the issue as well as the back matter of the issue. But we’ve
talked a lot on the podcast about Rorschach’s worldview, how it was different
back in 1986 when this was published versus 2019 when we’re viewing it now. But
even through that lens, the New Frontiersman, which Rorschach read religiously,
read it every single day as we know, man, that’s an anti-Semitic paper straight
up. What do you think it means? This is the thing that I was wrestling,
particularly reading the back matter because we get to see the staff of the New
Frontiersman putting together their paper. And then we read a snippet of the
dummy version of that paper. That they are both anti-Semitic, racist and
terrible, but also, closer to the truth than anybody else, what do you think
think it’s confusing. A couple things … I think it’s, like I was saying, it’s
meant to be sort of a larger reflection of Rorschach’s conspiracy-minded
thinking. I think, if I was thinking as a writer of this, I think it’s saying,
“Hey, even these outlandish things are sometimes correct. And even the
disgusting wrapper.” I’m assuming Alan Moore is not a racist, anti-Semite.
I think he was trying to say, “Even this disgusting package, sometimes
gets it right. A stop clock is right twice a day.” I think that fits with
a lot of the clock imagery we have here. That’s the way, sort of the charitable
uncharitable thing is back then in the ’80s, there were these zines and small
publications that had these bad ideas and put them out in the world and had a
small group of followers. And, literally, because of the Internet, that is why
our politics are sort of so messed up because you have these far-right news
sources that have moved into the mainstream. I feel like that’s a lot of what
the Watchmen series is going to be getting into … the websites like Breitbart
and Daily Wire, I feel like the modern translation of all this stuff, and they
have affected our politics in a huge way.
to get even deeper down this well, and we’re certainly going to be probably
digging ourselves a grave with a certain section of the audience I think, but
there’s a running theme through this entire comic that the outside people, the
people who are the deviants, the people that are removed from society, like The
Comedian, like Rorschach, like the New Frontiersman, they’re the only ones that
really see things for how they truly are. Versus Dan and Laurie for the most
part, they’re willing to just cruise in their lives. They’re just sort of doing
their thing. They’re going along, they’re ignoring everything. The regular
people are barely involved at all. They’re just sort of following along what
everybody else is telling them to do. And, ultimately, that’s Adrian Veidt’s
plan is … He believes, “Well, if I tell people it’s this thing, they’re
it’s a very cynical, very nihilistic view of the way the world works. And the
reason I said digging a well, is I think one of the very bad influences that’s
come out of Watchmen and seeped into comics and pop culture is this idea that
if you do stand outside of society, you were the person that is always right.
We’ve talked about it at our other podcasts about Joker. And certainly, we
haven’t seen the movie. I think by the time this episode comes out, the movie
will just be out in theaters. But that seems to be saying the same sort of
thing where it’s this cynical darkness, this outsider who truly is the person
who sees society for the grimy, bad that it usually is, and the rest of the
normies, like us, like you and me, frankly, are just kind of trucking along. But
I don’t think society is as simple as that, frankly.
And even in this book, I think … a lot of people, like we were saying, and
Pete even really reads into Rorschach as the hero or as the person that you’re
meant to identify with … and I don’t know. I think it’s pretty even-handed. I
think the mystery, the fact that it lines up with Rorschach’s conspiracy
theories makes it naturally feel like it’s from his point of view. But he
suffers through so much of this. And in the end, he doesn’t unravel the
mystery. The mystery sort of comes for the heroes. And they get drawn in by
Adrian Veidt as we will read eventually. And Rorschach loses. So to me, it
feels like … I don’t know … it’s not like we are … That’s is the wrong
lesson to take from this, that Rorschach is right the whole time and conspiracy
theories are meant to be believed.
I think part of that is they’re not offering a solution, right? They’re
pointing out the ills of society. They’re pointing out this corruption, this death,
this rot that is at the base of everything. But all they’re really saying is,
“See, this is bad” versus … Clearly, Adrian Veidt’s solution isn’t
good. Just trucking along and ignoring things isn’t good. But not coming up
with an out for that is also not necessarily good. Not figuring out a way
forward. And, ultimately, what I think they’re pointing out is … Well, one of
the things that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons are pointing out is that society is
broken. There is this rot under it. There is, through the government, through
our art, through our entertainment, through our everyday revelationships, they
it’s more holding up this mirror to this thing and saying, “Here,
see.” Like the New Frontiersman does, though obviously at a very extreme,
very broad way. And, then, ultimately it is up to the viewer to talk about
this. And to reflect on it and think about what they, themselves, are going to
then, who are we? We’re the pirate on a raft of dead bodies?
I think we talked about how Rorschach is the pirate, right? I don’t know who we
I would think the way that we see the curse of the Black Freighter through the
reader who … We see the comic book page in panel a lot. I feel like that’s
meant to be just a device to get us into that story. And we are, then, that
person suffering. Our lives are like long and tortuous. We have these goals.
And we’re always two steps away from them. And we sacrifice so much to get what
we want. And, then, it’s horrifying in the end.
if anything … I’ll just throw this out there, and this is a very unformed
opinion … but, if anything, maybe we’re Doctor Manhattan in a certain way. We
… I mean, you mentioned the kid who’s reading the comic by the newsstand. And
we get to see him again this issue. We’re him, and in a way, he’s Doctor
Manhattan who is able to experience all these things simultaneously in whatever
order he wants. It’s the same thing with us as the comic reader, right? We’re
looking at all these different panels. You can visually look at the full page
where you see nine panels at the same time. Or you can choose to focus in on
one panel. Or you can choose to focus in on multiple panels. Certainly, Gibbons
is offering us a way of walking through it and a way of looking through it. But
it’s up to us if we decide we want to flip five pages ahead or go back a couple
of pages. That’s how we do it.
that’s cool. I’ve always thought of Doctor Manhattan as the author, though.
of for the same reason, it’s the further outside perspective where the author
is deciding. It knows the whole story and it’s deciding the order in which we
one other thing I’ll throw out at you. And this might be old news by the time
we post this episode. We tape these a little while in advance. There was an
article that came out about a week ago, our time. In EW, there was an interview
with Damon Lindelof where he was talking about the HBO version of Watchmen. And
there was a bit of an uproar online because he said that the TV show wouldn’t
moralize. And people got very upset. They said, “Oh, what are you talking
about?” “Oh, great, this doesn’t seem true to the spirit of Watchmen.”
I would say based on our discussion right now, I think what Watchmen doesn’t do
and what it does particularly in this issue is it doesn’t moralize, it presents
you with moral situations. And then leaves it up to you, the reader, to decide
Yeah, I think so. And it’s pretty even-handed like we’re not meant to …
that’s why I think so many people are like, “Who’s the hero of
Watchmen?” It’s hard to say. If it was more moralized, you’d be like,
“Oh, it’s obviously Nite Owl.” Or, “Doctor Manhattan.” Or
whoever. Or “Adrian Veidt,” for that matter. So I do think it’s
pretty even-handed. When I finished watching it for the first time, I was like,
“Man, Ozymandias had that shit figured out.”
I think the book’s meant to make you think … Who saved the world? He did
was, in his own way, his rigid morality … I mean, we’re going to talk about
this in a few issues, obviously … killed him and he lost. So, for the sake of
the world, or the fate of the world, he was a bit of the villain that was
trying to stop Ozymandias from saving the planet from itself.
Well, this is something we touched on a little bit in the last episode of the
podcast, Pete and I had talked about because the issue was so focused on Dan
and Laurie. And the same thing happens here. These two issues are the most
superhero comic we’ve gotten so far. And I think that’s because Dan and Laurie
are the most middle of the road characters. Both of them are kind of very
casual about being heroes. Dan was a billionaire and thought, “Yeah, sure.
I could be a superhero. That sounds like fun.” Laurie, as we were
revisiting this issue, only did it because she thought, “Well, my mother
did it, so I guess I should do it as well.”
at the same time, they’re the ones that get the most superhero action. So when
I first read Watchmen, they were the ones that I identified with, that I hooked
into the most because to me, they felt like the most recognizable characters.
I mean, I agree with that. That was definitely … they were the ones here
like, “Oh, I get this. And I like that they’re hooking up. And maybe in
love, maybe not.” You’re really pulling for Dan, I think, for a lot of
this where it’s like, “Work it out, dude.”
you could do it. I think, also, it’s very clearly painting him as a 40
year-old, overweight men with glasses is really gunning for the comic reading
demographic where it’s like, “Hey, that’s you. You’re this guy. You could
be Nite Owl. Get in the ship. Come on.”
He has a plan for everything. Yeah, that’s true.
You want to jump into the issue? You want to walk through it?
let’s walk through it a little bit. So we start with a conversation between
Hollis, the original Nite Owl and Sally Jupiter, the original Silk Specter.
This is just some fun nostalgia. I feel like nostalgia’s a big theme in this
issue. It’s Halloween night. There’s a bunch of kids going out for some fun.
And, then, to talk about the end of the issue, this bookends the comic, a bunch
of people who we see getting all crazed over the course of the issue, go and
murder Hollis in his house as these innocent kids then come to trick or treat
with him. I feel like this is very much the death of nostalgia, the death of
the old, and the world is different now kind of a take.
I think that’s fair. The other part of it which we actually haven’t talked
about at all over the course of the podcast, one of the running things in the
background that comes to bear this issue is that gang. And the way that I
understand that there’s this band … it’s not called … One of the members of
the band is called, Red Death, which is pretty directly from Masque of the Red
Death, the Edgar Allan Poe story.
the gang, I believe, is called the Pale Horsemen, which again, is a sign of
death. So they’re running in the background and they finally make a move here.
They’ve been sort of passing through things. They have occasionally … got
beaten up by Dan and Laurie a couple of issues back. And ultimately here, they
end up killing Hollis at least partially because they think that he is Dan
Dreiberg. They think that he is the Nite Owl that broke into the prison and
they want to take revenge on him. There’s a little part of me, and this might
be not remembering the last couple of issues well, but does wonder if this is
another part of Adrian Veidt’s plan to take people out. But maybe not.
this feels like, to me, just general society is crumbling because of the
pressure of nuclear war, and this is … I think, makes more of the case that
Ozymandias’ plan, that we find out later, is right. The society is crumbling.
And he needs to rewrite the course of mankind because it’s come to rely on
Doctor Manhattan to protect them and solve all their political problems.
But, like you said, it is nice and nicely laid out conversation as well. I
love, again, the juxtaposition between … and I know I’ve been saying that
word too much … but between the old pictures of Hollis Mason and Nite Owl and
Sally as Silk Spectre, and them talking about themselves in costume, in
particular. I thought those were just two fun, well-laid out panels. One thing
I want to touch on here because this is also part of the bookend, this takes
place mostly on Halloween night. We get to see three trick-or-treaters, who
later discover the dead body of Hollis Mason. A ghost, a devil and a pirate. I
think the pirate is very clear because we know that pirates are super popular
in the way that superheros are super popular. In the real world, ghosts
certainly seems to come from old ghosts. And, then, there’s the devil which
also could tie in death. But what do you take away from these costumes? What do
you take away from it being set on Halloween?
think it … Well, I mean costumes, the superheros wearing costumes, I think it
all, that all plays pretty directly. Last issue we saw the Nite Owl, he fucks
way better when he’s in his costume just like all of us. And I think part of it
is innocence wrapped in sort of horrifying things. So much of this issue is the
flip of that, horrifying things wrapped up in innocence where you have these
people that seem like they’re hanging out and talking to the newsstand people
and, all of a sudden, they go and murder Hollis. And that juxtaposition of how
we try to put ourselves out there and what is actually lying underneath.
Well, then we jump over to a sequence set at the newsstand. We get to see the
curse of the Black Freighter comic a little bit more. I think we talked about
the cops being the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. I almost feel like the
newsstand people have taken over that job in this issue a little bit.
because the cops start to play a more threatening role later on in this issue.
So yeah, these are definitely the people on the street. They’re dealing with
the world at large. These are the people in Spider-Man who are like me. Someone’s
got to catch this Green Goblin guy. And then they get buzzed by the sled line
like that you think Green Goblin rides a sled. I appreciate that.
he rides a little, the air-
a glider. It’s a glider. That’s the word.
then we get a scene with Dan and Laurie where they’re talking about their plan
to break Rorschach out of prison. Two things that I wanted the call out about
this that I thought were so neat. So last issue, the visual motif was all about
reflections and circles. We kept seeing everything reflected in Nite Owl’s
goggles and Dan’s glasses, in Archie’s windows, or whatever you want to call
them, over and over and over again as we come zooming in and out of that. And
for the majority of this comic, for the majority of this issue, Dan’s glasses
and Nite Owl’s lenses are opaque. Except for when he is confronted by the
police officer about half way through where suddenly you can see his eyes.
I thought this was such a neat little thing to show that even now, even when
he’s dressed as Dan Dreiberg in the scene with Laurie towards the beginning,
he’s still Nite Owl. He’s still in costume the entire time. He’s confident. And
Dave Gibbons draws him for the first time really, he’s standing up straight.
His body language is more confident. It’s such a subtle little thing, but it’s
so smart and so clear and so nice.
(affirmative). It’s true. That’s why nobody recognizes me when I’m standing up
straight. I’m usually hunched over like a little old witch.
right. And that’s why I go to work completely nude every day. Because
confidence is the ultimate costume.
man, dress for the job you want. You know what I’m talking about?
I’ll tell you what. I walk into work just wearing a T-shirt. So far nobody’s
hired me as Winnie the Pooh. And it’s a real bummer.
get that job. Though I guess … What office are you walking into that you
think there’s a Winnie the Pooh position?
walk into Duane Reade … Is that where they hire-
pretty good. There’s a lot of honey there.
is. I’m always eating that honey and I’m always getting stuck in their doors.
Then after the Dan and Laurie stuff, we jump right into the prison stuff with
Rorschach. We get to see him very stoically sitting in his prison cell. He’s
just waiting for something to happen. Meanwhile, a bunch of criminals, somebody
that he seemingly first tussled with back when he was a superhero called, Big
Figure, who is a short guy … and that’s the funny part.
man, yes. I did like that. I love these little details that they throw in with
the old-time superheros and supervillains because they feel so consistent with
the comic books of the time.
and goofy, I think is what you … like all these super dark gritty
storytelling about all the heroes they were dealing with in this comic. And all
of their back life. All of their earlier crime-fighting stuff is just like
battling a bunch of goofs.
let’s talk about Rorschach a little bit because he does, like I said, sit there
very still the entire time while he’s interacting with Big Figure. Big Figure
is threatening him. His goons are threatening him. They say, “We have
plenty of time. We’re going to kill you in jail. You’re not going to survive
this.” Do you think Rorschach knows that he is going to be broken out? Or
do you think he knows he has a plan? Or is he just completely disengaged from
everything? What’s going on with him?
think he’s sort of a coiled snake. He’s in full fighting position. He’s just
fully at peace, fully Rorschach. I think there’s a line here where we hear that
his psychologist has left him. And I think that proves that he’s right. That
he’s able to influence that psychologist to fully just give up on society,
basically. And I think that gives him the confidence to know, “Whatever
happens, I’m going to be ready and be able to be at my peak when these people
come to try to kill me,” or whatever. And he is. Throughout this sequence,
these series of little bits here, he dominates these criminals who have him
And to jump back a little bit to the newsstand thing, there’s two things we
find out. One, the guy that he hit with hot oil died. We find that out
throughout this issue. But also, the psychologist does pass by the newsstand.
They remark on it a little bit, but they don’t know who he is. And, initially,
I thought that the psychologist was going into the Department of Extraspatial
Studies. Looking back on it, I don’t think he’s actually doing that. But one of
the big things that happened this issue that really does make it feel either
like the beginning of the final act or the end of the second act is everything
started to come together. Everything is passing by each other. And these
coincidences are really snowballing, so to speak.
it feels like this issue, especially the section we’re about to get to is sort
of like putting everything on the table, letting everyone have a look at it
while still the action is plummeting forward. As we get back to the essential
mystery that we’ve sort of not really been paying attention to too much …
it’s been a lot character stuff … and now we’re about to start hitting that
full slope down toward the climax.
I think part of that is just plot-wise, Dan, the realization that he comes to
the last issue, that there might be more to what Rorschach is saying than just
ravings of a crazy person. He starts to trust that, “Okay, I worked with
this guy back in the day. Maybe he’s actually on to something. Maybe somebody
is actually taking on masks. Maybe there is some bigger plan that I can’t quite
see here.” And we do get to see him Batman out a little bit, putting
together all the clues, which I thought was very fun.
So let’s just skip to that. We have this scene where the cops confront him at
home. Dan’s pretty panicked in that actual scene with the cop and it feels like
he’s busted. But as soon as the cop leaves, he flips back into Batman Nite Owl
mode where he’s like, “We’ve got to do this now. They’re getting
close.” And then we get this great progression of scenes that are tipping
the hat to all these other things while we’re also seeing Nite Owl and Silk
Spectre just get ready for their super heroic moment. Which I think is just a
… What a great montage just-
brings together all the threads.
so good. If you’re not looking at the comic right now, if your just listening
to this, there’s a series of pages. They all have six panels at the top and one
silent panel at the bottom. And the ones at the bottom are playing off of
what’s happening at the top, of course, because it’s very consistent with
what’s been going in the comic. I believe it’s called-
believe it’s called, juxtaposition, Alex.
I was trying to avoid using that word again, but-
I felt you feel it, felt you say in your heart, so wanted to say it out loud.
you. I appreciate that. We get to see them getting everything ready. And this
almost plays to me like an overture in a certain way where we get to see the
New Frontiersman. For the first time, we get to see what’s happening on this
island that’s been teased before. We get to see the missing nuts, superhero
writer, the missing pirate, comic writer who has been working on, he thinks a
Hollywood movie. We see the squid monster for the first time being drawn by
we truly have no idea what that means.
definitely remember very vividly, and I had completely forgotten about that page
until I got back to it, but I remember the first time reading that, I was like,
“What is going on here? What is this page?”
this a panel from another comic that’s somehow in here? Yeah, totally out of
nowhere. What do you think going back one section to the New Frontiersman?
Obviously, this guy’s such a dick. And his assistant, though, is wearing a
shirt with a smiley face on it.
that meant to be some sort of a reference to pre-Comedian type person? Is this
a person who just has no vision of the world as in just a smiley face that’s
mean, that might be part of it. Certainly, he seems like a very naïve simple
to use modern parlance. But at the same time, I think Comedian
wore that pin, right?
he is probably a superhero fanboy. So it might just be a Comedian sweatshirt
that he picked up somewhere potentially.
yeah. I don’t know. And then we get see to Hollis Mason putting together the
jack-o’-lantern basically bringing around his own horror, his own doom. Once
again, we get dripping pumpkin juice over an eye. It looks exactly like the
Comedian’s button with the blood on it. We get that recurring visual motif. And
we get to see … they are called, I don’t know if they’re called, Pale
Horsemen, but they’re from the gang, Pale Horse … bothering the newsstand
person and being very upset about everything that’s going on. They find out
that there is a riot in the jail. They’re pretty pissed off about that. It’s,
in a certain way, Rorschach being arrested really is the spark that sets this
all off almost more than Russia invading Afghanistan, I think.
though I do think there’s an existential dread for everyone there like,
“We’re all going to die.” The newsstand guy is constantly talking
about how he thinks everyone’s going to die, playing out that anxiety. And even
the way these panels are laid out, it’s such a stressful build, an anxious build
of … it’s empty. It’s a pretty empty panel with just the comic book. Then all
of a sudden there’s smoke everywhere. There’s all these people. There’s a dude
named, Derf. Everyone’s crowding into the panel.
That’s a weird name. And everyone starts shouting. It’s building up, this is a
formation of a riot. And they’re trying to get those Katies.
(affirmative). Got to get them Katies.
What’s your favorite thing about Katie.
like the way they just make you crazy, make you want to cut off the sleeves off
your jean jackets. And just run amok in the streets.
I know it was kind of the look at time, but I immediately thought about Leader
from Dark Knight Returns, just because they have the same sort of like,
“We’re very extreme. We’re wearing those very angular sunglasses at
That’s true. That was the most menacing fashion choice you could make back in
Wear 3-D glasses, terrifying. And then we go back to the prison. We see
Rorschach in a sequence that I’m 100% sure Pete absolutely loved where a dude
goes after Rorschach. Rorschach turns around, twists his fingers around, ties
his pinkies together through the bars of the jail cell, and then Big Figure is
forced to cut his throat. Rorschach is splashed with the blood. Now, nothing is
wasted in this comic, right?
is unimportant. What do you take away from the way Rorschach is splashed with
the blood? Because it’s not the same design as The Comedian’s button. It’s not
a Rorschach test because it’s only on one side of him. What do you think
Gibbons and John Higgins who did the coloring, what do you they’re trying to do
me, its position makes me think of a toy soldier or just a doll who’s playing
out his part and he’s taking all this blood on him. He’s getting splattered.
He’s getting tarnished by this shitty situation that he’s in.
might also be, just to throw something out, but it might also be that he’s only
half the man right now. He still is Rorschach because as clearly explained a
couple of issues back, Walter Kovacs doesn’t exist. He thinks it was just
Rorschach. But he’s missing his skin right now. He’s missing the thing that
truly makes him, him. So maybe that’s why he only has this Rorschach blot on
the left side of his body.
then we get a switch of everything that’s going on. Now that Nite Owl and … I
keep wanting to say, Sally Spectre … Silk Spectre, thank you … are in the
prison, we switch it and we get this great panel of them flying over the walls
as the guards are shooting. So good. And the entire time, to get back to the
Dan of it all, Nite Owl is completely in charge. He’s so confident the entire
time. And it’s kind of amazing to see.
And even though he’s dressed like a giant owl in a prison full of people who
want to kill him, he’s totally chill about it. Wearing a cape that doesn’t make
is … I know we’ve lumped on the movie a lot on this podcast, and I’m sure at
some point we’ll delve back into the movie and do a full episode about it. But,
man, reading over the comic, I think … I read the comic again, watched the
movie, and I haven’t read the comic since I watched the movie, so that was
stuck in my head … So I was real surprised that they didn’t kick anybody’s
asses at any point here. They basically just walk into the prison and the whole
riot and everything is going on around them. And they don’t do much.
I like that. I think it adds to the tension. It sort of has the haunted house
aspect to it where they’re just trying to find Rorschach. And then when they
confront him, you can’t tell if he’s bad or he’s a menace. He’s all in red.
Seems like he may have officially lost it. And you just see him go and kill Big
Figure, the one guy who was trying to kill him off panel in the bathroom and
then walk out with the heroes.
mean, ever since I read this, I pretty much assume anytime somebody says,
“I have to go to the men’s room,” that they’re killing somebody in
sadly true for me half the time.
Two things I want to point out visually that go on. One, when Rorschach walks
out of his cell, he walks through a puddle of blood and leaves footprints of
blood exactly like he did back in the very first issue of the comic, although
this time, now, we know that Walter Kovacs is in fact Rorschach. And then the
other thing that happens that I think is so great with the coloring that John
Higgins puts in the book is after Rorschach kills Big Figure, he walks out of
the room and like you mentioned, everything is in red. He’s cut out the
electricity from the jail, so there’s no lights on there. Only the emergency
lights. And we see this puddle coming out. And you would potentially assume out
of a bathroom given that the puddle is just all red and reflective, it could be
piss. It could be water. But we know, even without seeing it, that it’s Big
Figure’s blood that’s coming out there. And it’s such a great choice.
I like the idea that you look at this and your first thought is, “Hey,
at the Duane Reade, where I’m trying to get my Winnie the Pooh job, lot of piss
So call Duane Reade … So, especially, this is something they should have done
in the movie is Rorschach doesn’t go in and kill that dude. He just goes in
there and sprays pee all over the place. He’s been holding it in the entire
time he’s been in jail. And finally, he’s like, “Oh, yes!” That’s why
he goes in the men’s room.
why he’s sitting so straight up. Because he’s full of piss. Piss and vinegar, I
You got to say that. Yeah.
other thing that he probably does, frankly, like knowing Rorschach, knowing
what’s going on here. He probably goes in, puts all the seats up. And just
you’re like, “Put them down. Come on, man.”
Come on. People don’t want to touch that right when they’re in there and got to
you think Rorschach washes his hands when he leaves the bathroom?
I bet he reads articles about how the dirtiest part of the bathroom is the knob
he’s, “I’m not touching that.”
Speaking of dirty things, we get an interesting interaction when he shows up
and sees Silk Spectre and Nite Owl there where he tells Nite Owl, “Good to
see you back in the costume, Dan. Laurie, I never liked your costume. It’s
gross.” Which, whatever you want to get into with the misogyny inside
nature of Rorschach, it’s still a very funny and very clearly Rorschach
exchange that he has there.
That’s an insulting thing to say to your superhero friend. It’s like,
“Hey, work on the costume a little bit.”
it’s gross, but for some reason, it works for me here just because Rorschach is
being such a weirdo and we’ve been away from him for so long and learned that
he’s such a bad, gross guy. That seeing him compared to Nite Owl and Silk
Spectre, it diffuses it a little bit.
also I think it matches the idea of Nite Owl’s his buddy. And he has his new
girlfriend out with him. He’s like, “Oh, I thought it was just going to be
you and I hanging out, and she’s going to be here?” Like, “I thought
we were going out to play darts. What’s she doing here? We’re friends. I love
go see some [Ron.com 00:38:17] or something. Come on, man.”
on. It was our night. We were going to go up to the water tower and write our
then they head out in Archie, in the Owlship, another great shot of Rorschach
hanging out at the top of the Owlship as they fly away from the prison. Then
they get back and there’s kind of a big twist where Laurie, who’s been touching
on talking about Doctor Manhattan the entire issue accidentally mentioning his
name because she’s just off the relationship with him, and keeps apologizing
about it, talks about, “I wish somebody would just take care of this for
us.” And Doctor Manhattan, totally dude, just holding a magazine, reading
about himself, mind you, shows up in her bedroom to be like, “Oh, we’re
actually having a conversation right now on Mars that hasn’t happened yet for
you, but is happening simultaneously for me. Just thought I’d come done here to
let you know we’re going to Mars now.”
do you think Doctor Manhattan wants out of this conversation?
don’t think he wants anything. I think he really is just fulfilling the gears
of the clock that he says he is.
what about, on the other end of the spectrum, what about Laurie? And this is
something we touched on in a couple of episodes, those podcasts, but particularly
we dealt into it a bit in the last episode, what Laurie wants. And here, do you
think there is anything to her constantly dropping Doctor Manhattan’s name to
her totally being fine to just say, “Oh, I’m going to Mars. See you later,
Dan. Bye,” at the end. Is she still not as into the relationship with Dan
as Dan is with Laurie? What’s your take on it?
I think they’re opposites. I think when she was with John and finally their
relationship falls apart because he’s being too much for her, she sort of falls
for Dan because he’s the most human, the most like every man of anyone that she
hangs out with, yet still has the touches of the superhero side. So she can get
a little bit of everything with him. But then when she sort of conjures him out
of nowhere and it’s like, “This is my guy. He’s all-powerful. He doesn’t
have issues with confidence. He just is what he is.” She gets swept back
up into him. I think she’s just in the middle of a tough spot. But I think at
the end of it, she loves the Doctor Manhattan that she first met so many years
ago. And Nite Owl just isn’t enough to fill that gap.
also a possibility that she’s lazy, frankly. That’s something that, not to take
her down a notch, but that’s something that Sally mentions right at the
beginning of the issue where she tells Hollis Mason on the phone, “Oh,
it’s so funny that Laurie is going out and doing this stuff. She never really
wanted to put in some work to be a superhero. She was always kind of annoyed
and bored by it.” Certainly, that’s Sally’s take and she has her own take.
But it could be a relief in a certain way to Laurie to say, “Oh, thank
God, okay, we don’t have to figure out a mystery. We don’t have to break
anybody else out of prison. Great. John is here. He’s going to solve
I think there’s a little truth to that. But also, I think she’s someone who’s
really never made her own decisions in her life. She just became a superhero
because her mom sort of made her. She was with John because it was convenient,
though I do think she actually loves him. She was with Dan because he was
chasing after her. And then she doesn’t even have to really make a decision
here because Doctor Manhattan is like, “No, you are talking to me in one
hour.” And so she’s like, “Okay.” And off she goes.
we get to see Rorschach and Nite Owl escaping from the police in a parallel to
the scene of Nite Owl and Laurie leaving by the tunnel the last issue. And then
we get to the saddest scene in the issue, which we talked about earlier. But
Hollis Mason, getting killed by this gang, it’s intercut with scenes of him in
his prime beating up villains and having a great time doing it. And even though
we haven’t spent a lot of time with Hollis Mason, it’s gutting, I think, the
because I think, at our core, if you read comic books and you find Watchmen,
Hollis represents sort of regular comics. And so to see him die, even though we
don’t know too much about him as an individual, it feels like Batman, the comic
characters you sort of grew up and have a nostalgia for are just being murdered
Well, in a certain way, then, would you say the Leader of the Pale Horse is
Alan Moore, and he’s like, “Yep. That’s it. Watchmen killed superhero
I do. Especially, I think in the last panel of the issue when these kids walk
in and see his dead body, I think that’s sort of the comic industry being like,
“Oh, shit. Things just got fucked up in here.” Because after this
comic, it was like there’s a whole new game out there.
one of the last things I wanted to mention is who did Justice, this is a
character that we haven’t spent a lot of time with, but will become an
important type of lead, if I remember correctly pretty soon, the ghost
character who shows up the trick-or-treater who’s dressed like a ghost, who
shows up towards the end, looks a lot like Hooded Justice, at least in terms of
the profile. Then immediately following that, we got the New Frontiersman
article that’s, “Honor Is Like The Hawk: Sometimes It Must Go
Hooded.” And there’s also a lower case reference to hooded justice in the
text of one of those articles as well. So what I think is most interesting
about that, I don’t think we’re going to get to it immediately, but it’s more,
essentially, saying, “Hey, don’t forget about this Hooded Justice
character. I know we’re saying we killed off the past, but we’re not quite done
Because it does inform … everything is meaningful. It’s just, this issue
especially, puts a real flag in just what a dystopian world is happening around
all of this action right now.
just to get back to the HBO show of it all, I think it’s going to be kind of
fascinating to see a focus on Hooded Justice just because Sister Night, who is
Regina King’s character in the show, seems clearly inspired in the text of the
show by Hooded Justice. So I think there’s going to be a lot of rifts on that
relatively underserved character when we watch the TV show, but we’ll have to
almost feels like the TV series, the more we see of it is like, “Oh, it’s
all happening again from the beginning.” So it’s not, it’s using all of
the Watchmen stuff that we know and setting it after that. But the cycle is
Hooded Justice and Rorschach is there, but in different thing. Everything is
remixed. But it is from the very same beginning.
Anything else you want to say about this issue before we wrap up here?
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just texted me. He said, “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Pete is bad at
karaoke. I’ll definitely be there next week.”
The post Watchmen Watch: Issue #8, “Old Ghosts” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
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