Monday, December 24, 2012

Watchmen: Chapter XII - page 28


PAGE 28

Panel 1: and the image of Sally Jupiter with her back to us, her bathrobe mirroring Veidt’s cloak in the previous panel.

And Sally’s dialogue also calls back to the previous page, as she complains about people “begging” on Christmas day, stating “…it never ends…” mirroring Dr. Manhattan’s comment to Veidt on panel 5 of Page 27 that “…nothing ends.”

Panel 2:  The family name of this couple, Hollis, is an obvious allusion to Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl, and is one of the many aliases that Dan Dreiberg (Nite Owl II) set up in case he ever needed to go into hiding.

Panel 3:  The Outer Limits episode running on Sally Jupiter’s television, “The Architects of Fear,” is one that has a similar plot to Watchmen.  Alan Moore has stated that he discovered this similarity while looking through a guide to cult television.  He and Gibbons had their ending already worked out and included this reference to that episode as a way of signifying this coincidence – whether unconscious or unconnected.  It need also be noted that this plot was not unique to this Outer Limits episode, writers such as Theodore Sturgeon and Kurt Vonnegut had used a similar plot in their prose years before “The Architects of Fear” aired on television.

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