Watchmen, Issue 1

This feature will be a lot cooler when I have my scanner hooked up again. Should have a review of Dash Shaw's Bottomless Bellybutton up by tomorrow.

I've forgotten a lot of the minor plot points of this comic, although the major ones are impossible to forget. The cover of my paperback edition is an extreme closeup of the comedian's smiley-face button, smeared with 'bean juice'. In this case, readers have not yet seen the smiley and might treat the cover as some kind of abstract art. There's just a black oval on a yellow background--not really enough to make out what it is. The blood really does look like bean juice here, or some kind of waxy or plastic substance--certainly looks lighter than blood--a disturbingly articifial touch. The cover of the first issue is much more contextual.

Did Watchtower ever come with its name as a band around the pamphlet? For some reason, I feel like the WATCHMEN band evokes it beyond name. It would fit with the 'end is near' vibe.

This first issue sidesteps a potential narrative problem by making use of Rorschach's journal--it roots the story in time, promises access to Rorschach's thoughts, but not the unfettered access we might receive from a narration box. R is still at a distance from us. Lots of discrepancy between the words and the images here--R's journal speaks of looking down on waste and decay, just as we are looking down from the building to the street. But R is not up there, not yet. Moore pulls these moves off so often that they begin to grate.

We begin to receive 'world-building' in subtle and less subtle ways. Stilted references to government officals, newspaper clippings.

Rorsschach proves himself a much more thorough inspector than the detectives--I almost said 'able', even though at this point, the motive for the comedian's death is still unsustained speculation. While the detectives chatted throughout their search, Rorschach pulls his off in silence. It certainly gives him a mysterious aura.

One could easily be forgiven for thinking that Rorschach himself is behind the killing at this point. His name evokes psychiatric disorder, which his behavior and journals back up. And how does he know to investigate this death in the first place? Is it simply tied to coming upon the scene of the crime, or is it because he recognizes the smiley he finds on the ground as the Comedian's? Sally tells us that R is disturbed as well, and we learn he is wanted for the deaths of several men, and doesn't seem to be able to meter out justice in proportion to the crime, as Dan's anecdote suggest.

We're also introduced to the other main characters, with Moore's typical irony. Dan, the Nite Owl, can't even bother to stay out past midnight--a sign of his larger failures of definition. Ozymandias has a few choice turns of language as well. He tells Rorschach to "have a nice day," the phrase most often associated with the smiley face in the 1970s. Rorschach also calls him " a better class of person" which is definitely true in the financial sense, but is probably not true in regards to his actions, or even in R's perception.

Hollis Mason's autobiographical excerpt from Under the Hood rounds out the beginning. I really detest Moore's prose unchained, and for the life of me cannot recall why this information is narratively important. It may prove conceptually important--what with it being a story of a man in costume who breaks down emotionally to overwrought music.

More to come!