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Here are some images from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen (1987), about which we might have some things to say in class.
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Opening panel of the comic, with signature visual pun: "I have seen its true face."
Faces (smiley buttons, human faces, and especially CLOCK FACES) run throughout the work.
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Center spread of Chapter V. The entirety of this episode (comic) forms a visual palindrome, so that
every panel in the 28-page book aligns in mirror symmetry. This is most obvious on the two central pages
(where the staples go). Note the "V" (for Veidt) and "X" (for symmetry, or crossing) evident in the
middle panel. Click for larger view.
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Doctor Manhattan on Mars, musing about his strange life so far. Note how the panels intercut between present and past.
Doctor Manhattan lives outside normal, linear experience, regarding time as a multi-dimensional "jewel."
So does Alan Moore, apparently. Click for larger view.
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Chapter IX: The Face on Mars. Dialogue is being carried on by Doctor Manhattan and his estranged lover, Laurie Juspeczyk. She has just shattered his flying crystal palace, creating the pink blot below the left "eye."
As viewpoint pulls out, we see that the crater is another version of the blood-stained smiley button with
which the entire work begins (see above). Click for larger view.
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NASA Mars Surveyor photograph of Crater Galle -- the truth is indeed out there. Moore knew about this Martian feature from earlier space probe photos. A kind of cosmic (or divine) practical joke, the real Galle crater is a "thermodynamic miracle" -- an extremely unlikely event. So, says Doctor Manhattan, is Laurie Juspeczyk herself. Note that neither character in the scene can see what we see, from a vantage point miles above the surface. Only the reader perceives this moment's "true face."
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