Watching the Detectives: An Internet Companion for Readers of Watchmen
  About This Site

This hypertext is meant to help people who want to read and write about Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' formidable graphic novel, Watchmen (DC Comics, 1987). This work is dense and complicated. There are so many significant details that remembering where they occur can be a tremendous feat. "Watching the Detectives" provides, at minimum, a verbal index to the story. Since the companion is a hypertext, it also provides an interesting way to look at some of the patterns and parallelism with which Watchmen is so richly endowed.

Beginning Fall, 2000 you may add contributions directly to the site. Either click on "Add to This Site" in the lefthand frame or go to the Contributors' Notes and click on one of the plus (+) signs. I reserve the right to remove unsuitable or redundant comments.

If you contributed new material between the last update and the present release, please be patient. We'll be adding the (very large) backlog manually as time permits.
  This Is Not a Graphics Archive
You will not find a panel-by-panel reproduction of Watchmen here. If you don't own a copy of the graphic novel, you'll need one. I've reproduced only a few panels to illustrate important points. On average, each chapter file contains three or four small graphics (about 50 kilobytes each). If your Web connection is slow, you might want to disable auto-loading of images.
  Spoiler Warning
If you haven't read Watchmen all the way through, you might want to stay off this site. Very important details of the mystery plot are given away in many otes. This text is meant for second and later readings.
  Acknowledgements
I owe thanks to all the people who've read Watchmen with me over the years. My greatest debt is to Ron Hale-Evans, who convinced me to give it a first look in 1987. Gavin Edwards and the memorable Nadine also helped, as did Tim Fong, Benj Widiss, and other Stilesians from 1989-90. More recently I've been learning from my classes at Georgia Tech and the University of Baltimore. You know who you are. Special thanks to Bin Chen, Dave Clark, Jim Macek.

Kind thanks also to Greg Bole for his ace proofreading and many smart additions to the commentary. Folks like Greg make me wish I worked a lot faster...

Contributors include:

I've had crucial bug reports from Roderick Young, Scott "King Dinosaur," and Joe Gallagher.

Apryl Flynn did additional scans, editing, and production work for the 1997 update.

Jessica Furé did all the heavy lifting for the 1999 update and contributed the Editor's Notes signed "jef."

Special thanks to Jonathan Sachsman for lending me his copy of the Watchmen hardcover.

Nancy Kaplan created the current, add-it-yourself version.
  Help!
If you have feedback or suggestions about this site, please send them to me (samoulthrop@ubmail.ubalt.edu). If you would like to contribute a note, either click on "Add to This Site" in the lefthand frame or go to the Contributors' Notes and click on one of the plus (+) signs.
Stuart Moulthrop
School of Communications Design
University of Baltimore