Watchmen: Chapter VII - page 5

PAGE 5

Panel 4:  Note the dominatrix-style costume of the Twilight Lady, accentuating Moore’s thesis, or one of his theses, that to be a costumed hero in the real world would require some type of deviance on the part of the adventurer. 

Also, the fact that Dan has this picture from one of his “enemies” plays into the reality that Dan has “a thing” for the costumes – in the costume he feels more a man, and, as we will discover at the end of this chapter, it excites him sexually in a way that “typical” sexual encounters may not.

Panel 5:  Dan’s comment that the Twilight Lady was a “very sick woman,” coupled with his admonition that he kept “meaning to throw that picture away,” but never did, is an admission of his own “sickness,” a classic writing technique of having the characters saying one thing while meaning something else.