Watchmen Chapter III: The Judge of All the Earth

III.1.3 Nova Express on news vendor's stand: cover on Max Shea, the missing writer.

III.1.4 The boy hanging around the news stand (his name is Bernie) reads "Tales of the Black Freighter," an example of pirate comics. Is there a pun at work here? Note the fact that the original conception for Watchmen was to revive and re-imagine an entire line of old superheroes, along the lines of what Alan Moore had already done with Marvelman/Miracleman.

III.2.1 Glimpsed in the background of the news vendor's stand: Institute for Extraspatial Studies -- no location in Watchmen is more crucial. This is Ground Zero.

III.2.2 Bernie the comics reader reclines against an electric "hydrant" -- a technology made possible by Dr. Manhattan and developed by Adrian Veidt (the source of his current fortune). Everything indeed connects, as the news vendor says in the next panel.

III.2.4 News vendor: "See, everything's connected. A news vendor understands that. He don't retreat from reality." The preceding sentiment is intercut with this text from Tales of the Black Freighter: "For my part, I begged that they should take my eyes, thus sparing me further horrors."

III.2.5-6 Another comic-within-comic (the first was Sally Jupiter's "Tijuana Bible").

"He's a survivor" -- this is the News vendor talking of himself ("he"=the generic news vendor), but the image it connects with shows the man from Davidstown in the Black Freighter story. Note the way the dialogue balloon is set in this panel.

III.3.9 - III.4.1: Another match cut, this time the Davidstown survivor caressing the face of the figurehead from his wrecked ship, from which we cut to Dr. Manhattan's hands caressing Laurie J's face... and there is a surprise in store, for Laurie will find two Jons in bed with her; so the analogy here is not so strict. Another breaking of symmetry.

III.7.2 Advertisement for Veidt's "Nostalgia" perfume: "Where is that essence that was so divine?" -- the most immediate reference here is to Dr. Manhattan, but there may be other possible readings as well.

III.8.1 Gordian Knot Lock Company -- Alexander, Ozymandias; and note that this "knot" represents the textual mystery on which the narrative hinges. Is this story an untying, or a breaking?

III.8.8 Dan to Laurie -- "It's not the end of the world, right?" Some people think it is. Or is it? This question has come up before.

III.9.5 Dan Dreiberg's teapot is from Veidt (letters IDT visible lower left) -- the ultimate fine detail. And yes, you do need to look this closely.

III.9.9 "Here's looking at you, kid." -- Veidt teapot, Conrad Veidt, Casablanca. But Conrad Veidt was also in the classic German Expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, where he played a notably scarier part. See Contributor's Note from Arthur Knight.

III.11.2 What's playing at the Utopia Cinema -- This Island Earth. A film about space invaders. And who's our favorite utopian? Nuff said.

III.11.4 ff. A CIA handler advises Dr. Manhattan to "try not to get into any tight corners," just as Dan and Laurie walk into one, literally, and have a little fun fighting off knot-top attackers.

III.13.4 Death of Dr. Manhattan's buddy, Wally Weaver, from cancer: "Quite sudden and quite painful." More continuity of discourse between panels throughout this section.

III.17.2 New Frontiersman -- "In Your Heart You Know It's Right/Wing" (graffito added to billboard). If you don't remember the American sixties, Barry Goldwater's campaign slogan in 1964 was, "In Your Heart You Know He's Right." Or as the satirists put it: "In Your Guts You Know He's Nuts." "New Frontier" was one of the slogans applied to John Kennedy's administration. Right is left and left is right. Confusion of opposites.

III.18.3 The news vendor's wife has sexual fantasies about Dr. Manhattan. Compare Laurie's experience.

III.18.7 - II.19.1 A striking match cut featuring the radiation hazard symbol: first a fallout shelter marking, then the warning sign steniclled on Dr. Manhattan's former quarters.

III.20.1 "Per dolorem ad astra" (legend on sign at Gila Flats, site of Jon Osterman's transformation into Dr. Manhattan). The line means, "Through suffering, to the stars." It is a deliberate inversion of an actual Latin tag, per aspera ad astra (through hope, to the stars).

III.20.5 "At play amidst the strangeness and charm." Lots of strangeness and (sexual) charm in the old Gila Flats days; also "charm" in the sense of magic. But strictly speaking, "strange" and "charm" are kinds or "flavors" of quarks. A quark is an elemental particle studied by high-energy physicists seeking to understand the ultimate nature of matter.

III.21.4 Dr. Manhattan takes off for Mars: the afterglow of his departure looks distinctly like an H-bomb detonation.

III.22.3-4 News vendor: "The world didn't end yesterday." Signboard Man: "Are you sure?"

III.25.1 "Superheroes are finished. These days, it's all pirates."

III.25.8 Headline: Russian invasion of Afghanistan. For those with limited memories, this actually happened in 1980, not 1985.

III.26.2 Quotation from Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film, Dr. Strangelove, Or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

III.26.6 The ultimate nightmare: Richard Nixon deciding the fate of the East Coast while Henry Kissinger whispers in his ear -- but the Kissinger connection is appropriate. Playing Dr. Strangelove, Peter Sellers sounds uncannily like Kissinger.

III.28.3 Dr. Manhattan as "the Judge of all the earth" (Genesis 18:25 -- "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?")

III.Doc.3 (More from Under the Hood): The fifties: an ominous feeling -- end of the Golden Age; the sixties: Dr. Manhattan and "the dawn of the Super-Hero." Dr. Manhattan was unveiled in March, 1960.

III.Doc.4 Ozymandias arrives in 1958, so he is also of Dr. Manhattan's generation: clear parallelism between him and Dr. Manhattan, with the Comedian and Rorschach as an older pair. Mason mentions the second Nite Owl and praises him for his use of technology.