Watchmen Chapter X: Two Riders Were Approaching

X.Cover Another instance of the reflective globe or hemisphere (the radar screen); compare Laurie's snow-globe. This one is also a smiley-face. The cover painting also contains some more ominous tricks concerning apocalypse: "A1 A2 Incoming 256 SAC Confirm." This looks like a Russian attack, but is in fact a radar track of Airforce 1 and 2 approaching NORAD headquarters. Apocalypse... Not Yet.

X.2.6 Gerald Ford's slip on the airstairs (thanks to Chevy Chase, he became legendary for this). Kissinger, Liddy, and Nixon have their fingers on the nuclear trigger. Welcome to my nightmare.

X.5.6 Rorschach calls himself the edge-man, the ultimate survivor. But the joke's on him.

X.6.6-7 Rorschach spares the children of Mrs. Shairp, his landlady. A moment of recognition and even sympathy.

X.7.6 Adrian Veidt's TV-viewing habits: random channel-change every 100 seconds. Adrian the Watch-Man. See also XI.1.

X.8.1 Adrian reads the signs: Rambo + Care Bears = War. "Buy accordingly."

X.8.5 "Just me and the world."

X.9.6-7 "Asking questions in the underworld." Nite Owl as man of the information age vs. Rorschach the brutal enforcer.

X.13.1,3,5 Back of "Black Freighter" comic -- The Veidt Method: "I will give you bodies beyond your wildest imagining."

X.13.7,9 "Two riders were approaching" -- the strange intercutting of the two evangelists on bicycles, preaching the End. Probably a red herring, not part of Veidt's grand conspiracy. Everything is connected, but not all connections are similarly meaningful.

X.16.6 Conflicting theories, more red herrings: was Hollis Mason's murder the work of the Mask Killer? As Pynchon says, once they get you asking the wrong questions...

X.18.2 "Going steerage." Clock hands on timer of bomb on Shea's "black freighter" -- MIDNIGHT.

X.18.7 Flotsam from the freighter blast -- Hira Manish's drawing of the Beast. In case you missed it last time.

X.19.6 Multiple crisis graph lines converge mid-1990s (compare the Comedian's prophecy of nuclear war by 1996).

X.20 Dreiberg "hacks" Ozymandias' computer. A dumb terminal indeed -- it gives clues for guessing the really stupid password. Oh well, maybe 1986 was Before Computing, at least for Alan Moore.

For more enlightening treatment of this moment, see the Contributor's Note by Kennedy.

X.22.4-5 Rorschach mails journal to "only people he can trust" -- creating the written trace.

X.22.6 Tanks in East Berlin, writing on wall. Well, actually it's in the mail...

X.23.9 The news vendor's stand as site of crucial convergences. "Delivered into the hands of a higher judgement" -- Rorschach's journal, the pirate comic. News vendor does indeed represent the axis of convergence (and he sells comics...).

X.24 We watch Rorschach's journal through the entire process of delivery, including the postal sorting.

X.24.7 Rorschach's journal goes on the crank pile to be burned.

X.24 The irascible editor: in the line of Perry White and J. Jonah Jameson.

X.28.4-5 Owl and cat. ("a wild cat did growl"). Two riders...

X.Doc.2 Satire of spin-off marketing: action figures. Recall Adrian's analysis of war fever. Adrian vetoes costumed hero figurines.

X.Doc.3 Analysis of "Nostalgia" as link between sex and infantile regression.

X.Doc.4 Adrian Veidt is a Macintosh user.