Watchpanels, Part the Sixth

WATCHPANELS

One compulsive reader’s observations ...

after gazing into Watchmen for the umpteenth time

PART THE SIXTH

All right, I’ve got photons in my teeth and my wrist brace on ...

      6:2 – The chapter title is in quotation marks in the comic, and extends just a smidgen pas the panel borders . . .

      . . . while in the reprints the chapter title is just as wide, without quotation marks.

      At least in 1951, JDs were smoking regular cigarettes, not ball-pipes.  Probably because regular cigs were simpler and cheaper.

      What the heck is that hanging-balls mobile dangling at top of the panels?  It’s also seen in 13:6.

      It doesn’t make sense that Kitty Genovese, a bar manager with some clerical skills, had the money for a special-order dress.

From the chalk outline and the images of neighbors and balconies, it looks like this world’s Kitty Genovese died outside – Kovacs says, “outside her own apartment building.”  On our Earth, the attack commenced outside, but the actual rape-murder took place inside her building, in the rear hallway.

      It’s a necessary story point, but to me it has always seemed unbelievable that, in Sing-Sing prison, home to murderers and all types of lowlife, prisoners are within reach of “hot cooking fat.”

      In the comic, the epigraph bar has quotation marks around Nietzsche’s words – the quotation marks don’t appear in bound editions.

      In Kovacs’s “My Parents” story, he applauds the A-bomb’s use using the same rationale that Ozzy uses: “saved millions of lives” and “more people would of been killed.”  Perhaps the difference to Rorschach, morally, is that Truman’s use of the A-bomb was part of a long, declared conflict, with strongly defined sides.  On the other hand (or tentacle), the Space Squid was deployed at the whim of one man, unelected, who used it as part of a maniacal scheme to make money and secure his own power.

      I noticed that “My Dream” is dated 5/27/63, but it must be a typo – Kovacs was in the Charlton Home in 1953 – in 1963 he was 23 years old.  The drawing is labeled “13 years old.”  Since this has never been changed in bound editions, I suppose that either I’m the first person to notice (ha!) or this was an intentional “typo” intended by the writer.

      Thanks for obsessing with me.  Six chapters remain.