Watchmen Chapter XII: A Stronger Loving World
XII.Cover Midnight on the Madison Square Garden clock. Mass death at the Pale Horse concert. More blood. Too much blood, as the Stones always say.XII.6 The face of the Creature. "I will give you bodies beyond your wildest imagining." Heaps and stacks of bodies, actually.
XII.7.2 Dr. Manhattan taken by surprise -- ending up later than he expected. Seems that everybody comes too late.
XII.8.3 There was more than one tachyon source.
XII.10.2 Psychic assault: more explanation of the details of Adrian's masterstroke.
XII.10.3-5 A burst of horrible information -- creating an eruption of nightmares. Information as weapon: a holocaust of bad dreams.
XII.10.6 "...a lethal pyramid."
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XII.11.3 - XII.12.3: Because of those darned tachyon emissions, Dr. Manhattan walks through two frames at the same "time." Yet another stunning piece of comics art.
XII.13.4 Dr. Manhattan walks into Veidt's inertial field subtractor array. Does he fail to foresee this?
XII.14.4: Jon Osterman's second dissolution. Note his "third eye."
XII.15 Ozymandias takes a bullet from Laurie's gun.
XII.16.6 "Do grow up." Superheroes and aggression are now extinct.
XII.17.1 "My new world demands less obvious heroism, making your schoolboy heroics redundant. What have they achieved? Failing to prevent the Earth's salvation is your only triumph..."
XII.17.4-5 And yet, after this pronouncement, Veidt is surprised by the return of the superhero (Dr. Manhattan gives him a really big hand).
XII.18.4-5 "What's that in your hand, Veidt? Another ultimate weapon?"
Well, yes, matter of fact -- it's a TV remote control! The "weapon" with which Adrian finally vanquishes Dr. M. is persuasion, logic. Information is the ultimate weapon. Strategy is rhetoric.
XII.19.1 Psychic invasion -- predatory embryo from Shea scenario showing up in bad dreams.
XII.20.7-9 Rorschach: "...never compromise."
James Harvey points out an important
visual correspondence between Rorschach's mask here and in
I.24.6.
The patterns are indeed identical; though notice that the first pattern can only be seen clearly when the image is lightened.
XII.21.1,2 Rorschach: "...blotting out reality"; "without stain" ; nasty, nasty puns.
XII.22.5-6 "What's that you smell of?" "Nostalgia."
XII.22.7: Echo of Hiroshima silhouette lovers: a sign of life (and also symmetry, and Rorschach) -- they're echoed on his mask in the next panel, (XII.23.1).
XII.24.4 Jon kills Rorschach. The end is not neat.
XII.25.2 "like Hiroshima with buildings."
XII.25.4 Dr. M. approaches sleeping Dan, Laurie curled up like spoons.
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XII.25.5: Dr. Manhattan's half-smile. Compare I.23.8 -- and of course the Smiley button, and the "thermodynamic miracle" on Mars. |
XII.25.6 Jon walks on water: casual miracle.
XII.26 Jon's passage to Ozymandias' inner sanctum: walking up, through the walls.
XII.27.4 Dr. Manhattan: human life is amazing. "Perhaps I'll create some."
XII.27.5 "Nothing ever ends." See next note.
XII.28.1 Verbal match cut: Sally Juspeczyk: "It never ends."
XII.28.4 TV voice-over -- return to The Outer Limits; Veidt's plot was not original -- he cribbed it from television.
XII.28.5 "Architects of Fear."
XII.29.1 New Veidt fragrance: Millennium.
XII.29.8 Dan Dreiberg owned copy of Silk Spectre comic as a child.
XII.30.4-7 Sally Juspeczyk's posthumous reconciliation with the Comedian: lipstick traces.
XII.31.1 Glasnost and perestroika in the alternative universe. Burgers'n'Borscht; Tarkovsky film at the Utopia
XII.31.2 "RR to run in '88?" (see next page)
XII.31.4 New Graffiti: "New Deal"; "Quantum Jump"
XII.31.5 Veidt sneakers; new comic: "Tales from the Morgue"
XII.32.3-4 "RR" was Robert Redford, not you-know-who. Note that two "R"s also make up Rorschach's signature.
XII.32.4 "Seymour, we do not dignify absurdities with coverage. This is still America, god damn it! Who wants a cowboy actor in the White House?"
XII.32.7: Seymour's smiley-face T-shirt acquires a ketchup stain with a familiar geometry.
XII.32.8 "I leave it entirely in your hands." The hand reaches out and at any moment it may find the Book that will destroy Ozymandias' world.
XII.32.9 John Cale gets the last word: "It would be a stronger world, a stronger loving world, to die in."