Low tech post edition

I am at a conference on Monday, so I am operating from an iPad pretending to be my laptop. I may be able to add pictures soon enough, but here is the meat of my post!

Here are some things to think about as you read Watchmen:

1. Check out the distorted time sequence of Dr. Manhattan's story (and how stories weren't told like this in the mid-1980s). See the start of this on page 17 and ending on page 28. Gibbons flashes from close-ups to panoramas, how scenes blur together, crossing one another, and finally telling a story of how Dr. M finds himself sulking on Mars. 

If you check out page 74 in Understanding Comics, you'll see that this way of telling a story doesn't really fit into any of McCloud's possibilities. It seems, at best, like a combination of #4 and #5, but out of sequence. I couldn't really call it non-sequitur. Watchmen was breaking many molds in terms of telling stories that cross many formats--art, literature, music, etc. 

Also, take a look at that quote by Albert Einstein on page 28. Einstein was also the son of a watchmaker. Yet, he too realized that atom power changes everything but our thinking. Superheroes change everything but our thinking. The solution lies in the heart of mankind, and we see the characters with heart not having much power and those who have power not having much heart.  

2. Let's take a look at some of the visuals in Watchmen as well as some expert transitions. Start at the bottom of page 12. We see our Black Freighter man looking at himself for the first time in a long time. he is not who he thinks he is anymore. Shift to Adrian Veidt. (On purpose! You look like Charles Manson, Alan Moore, but you can tell a damned good story!) He is not quite looking at his brown-haired assistant. She represents the sort of mindless babble we may have learned to turn our noses from. Veidt says that death "wasn't morbid to the ancient Egyptians. They saw it as launching on a spiritual discovery." Then, he metes out death himself, starting with a superhero-like move (blocks the bullet!) and then beating the crap out of the man with the gun. How do we he killed him? This plot twist is shown in the man's expression on page 16, to the far right. This does not look like a man ready to bite down on his poison capsule. It looks like a man who is getting a poison capsule crushed in his mouth, a man on the verge of a "spiritual discovery""?  Text alone does not convey this, and expression is a clear way to see how little Veidt is who he seems from the outside.  

3. Now, take a look at page 9. Here's another place where we see the text within the text telling us a lot about the characters in the "real" text. On the bottom of that page, Mr. Freighter grabs a bird from the sky and bites into its raw meat. Turn the page. We see Dreiberg eating a bird. He is Owl Man, who only has potency when he is wearing his suit, acting as a superhero. He does not really live well as a man. As Laurie is kicked out, she is dismissed with "chew on that."  So, Dan, what will you take and chew on? Are you up for this? This is Gibbons as well, creating the transitions that tie these characters and their messed up destinies together. This is subtle and multi-layered, something folks hadn't really been expecting from a comic before.