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Panel 1: Recurring visual symbols of the coming end of days can be seen in the concert poster for Pale Horse as well as the graffiti for the opening act Krystalnacht, which signifies the “night of broken glass” when Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) militia mounted a concerted attack on Jews, their synagogues, homes, and shops – the shattered windows of these shops and homes being the broken glass.
We also see the “Who Watches the Watchmen?” graffiti – still unfinished, or at least not completely seen.
Panel 2: The nude woman pulling the curtains that Rorschach sees, and his subsequent contempt for her and so many people like her, is representative of his own depraved childhood.
Panel 4: the silhouette of the man and woman embracing in the window will be repeated with graffiti spray painted about the city in subsequent issues, which is symbolic of the silhouettes of people left in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the United States dropped the nuclear bombs on these two Japanese cities.
Panel 5: In the trashcan in the foreground, an issue of the “Tales of the Black Freighter” is sticking out of the top.
Rorschach’s comment in his journal: “Millions will burn,” heavily foreshadows the ending of Watchmen.
Panel 6: Rorschach’s journal: “Even in the face of Armageddon I shall not compromise in this (the fact that evil must be punished),” foreshadows how Rorschach lives his life and will approach the impending conflict in this book.
Panel 7: Another campaign poster for Richard Nixon, stating “Four More Years,” which also juxtaposes ironically with Rorschach’s journal entry, “. . . and there is so little time.”
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