Certain notes are true for each issue.

This issue's title is from "Santies" by John Cale.

Cover: Blood running down the big clock at Madison Square Garden.

ISSUE MOTIF: Spattered blood, and free-associating scene changes
COVER CLOCK: Midnight

Page 1: Mass death and spattered blood at the Pale Horse concert. The shattered glass is ironic, since "Krystalnacht" refers a night of terror against Jewish-owned businesses in Nazi Germany; the "Krystal" part refers to the broken glass of the windows. Notice the prominence of the knot-top hairstyle. The blood above the sign in the lower left is in the same shape as that on the smiley-face button.

Page 2: Mass death and spattered blood on the street. There's an airship crashed into the building on the upper left. We see the source of the tentacle on page 6. The watch seller's wares lie in the front. Notice the "War?" headline.

Page 3: Mass death and spattered blood at the Utopia. That's the watch seller in the front, and the Gunga Diner's elephant on the right, and "War?" headlines on the street.

Page 4: Mass death and spattered blood at the Gunga Diner. More "War?" headlines. Joe lying against the police car, and, presumably, Steve on the right. Rorschach blots.

Page 5: Mass death and spattered blood at the Promethean. Left to right: Joey, Aline, Steve, Mal and Gloria, the Gordian man, and Milo. Scattered Rorschach blots and "War?" headlines. Hiroshima lovers still on the wall. A bottle of Nostalgia below Mal's foot. Chrysler Building on the far right. Judging from the time clock, time is passing as we slowly pan through the city (it was 12:00 at Madison Square, and 12:02 here). Or the clock is fast.

The positions of the two couples (Joey-Aline, Mal-Gloria), resembling intimate embraces, are, frankly, somewhat sick on Gibbons' part, but it seems to fit somehow.

Page 6: Mass death and spattered blood (and ichor) at the Institute and the newsstand. Bernard is covering Bernie. "War?" headlines, a no longer Mint copy of Tales of the Black Freighter, and the poster torn so "Gay Women Against Rape" reads "WAR" at a distance. (I have a suspicion Moore chose the phrase just for this scene.) The spatter on the plug from the spark hydrant also brings back the smiley-face. Below the Bernards is the Rorschach card from issue #6.

Page 7, panel 2: They left early on the first, and it's very early on the third. Did the tachyons cause the delay? His teleportation seemed to be instantaneous in the past.

Panel 3: Tachyons are theoretical particles that move faster than light, and hence travel backwards in time. They're messing up Jon's time sense. Note that he never made any references to the i future past issue #9, although he made several future references to events before then.

Tandoori is an Indian dish sold at the Gunga Diner. It involves cooking in a clay oven on a spit. My coorespondents highly recommend it; I've never had it myself.

Page 9, panel 1: It's a few minutes before Jon and Laurie left New York (compare clock here to page 8, panel 6).

Page 10, panel 6: Not quite everyone; he missed the courier. Interesting that he'll freely admit to killing half of New York, but not his own servants. Probably the New York killings seem less personal and therefore less severe.

Page 11, panel 3: Another mis-colored word balloon.

Page 13, panel 1: Another radiation symbol.

Panel 4: "Stand Back When I.F. Subtractor is Activated." I.F. stands for Intrinsic Field. Also, a skull-and-crossbones, evoking issue #5 and the Black Freighter story.

Page 14, panel 2: The Subtractor panel has a Veidt logo. Naturally it was built by the company, but this seems a little much somehow.

Page 16, panel 2: Leaving out Dr. Manhattan, the advanced technology, and the psychic, this is about the only totally implausible event in the series.

Page 19, panel 1: "A pregnant woman, convinced her unborn child was eating her..." Reference issue #8, page 11, panel 5: "Illustrating that sequence where the young chew their way out of their mother's womb was quite an *experience.*"

Panel 4: Mr. Healey is probably the British Prime Minister (not Margaret Thatcher, as in our world)...

Panel 5: ...but Gorbachev was still the leader of the Soviet Union.

Page 20, panel 4: Another mis-colored word balloon.

Panel 6: Nixon is on the right, below Dan's word balloon. On the screen below we can see the Chrysler Building.

Page 22, panel 7: The silhouette calls to mind the Hiroshima lovers graffiti.

Page 24, panel 5: More spattered blood.

Page 25, panel 6: Jon's walking on water here marks a shift for him; he's becoming more God-like in his symbolism.

Page 26, panel 5: I'm not sure if those are meant to be real constellations, but they don't resemble any I'm familiar with. They could be Southern Hemisphere, I suppose.

Page 27, panel 4: Jon's comment about creating human life fits his godly transformation.

Panel 5: Jon's speech is one of the more profound statements made here, and speaks heavily of Adrian's short-sightedness.

Page 28, panel 1: A jump ahead to Christmas '85. The Christmas cards speak heavily of peace.

Panel 3: This is an actual episode of "The Outer Limits," involving aliens.

Panel 5: And this is the actual opening to "The Outer Limits."

Panel 7: These are presumably some of the emergency identities Dan had set up. (Odds are Laurie and Dan were presumed dead in the mass destruction, and able to disappear without trouble.)

Page 29, panel 1: Veidt's business has continued successfully, and Millennium has just come out.

Page 30: Laurie's suggestions here mimic the pattern her father's career took; he switched from a flimsy yellow costume to a leather one with facial protection, and began carrying a gun. No wonder Sally's upset.

Panels 4-5, 7: Sally still has the Nostalgia bottle. Symbolism?

Page 31: This page shows many of the changes Veidt's brave, new world has brought to the established themes. The world has changed greatly in just a few months.

Panel 1: The Gunga Diner has been replaced by Burgers 'N' Borscht, reflecting new friendliness with the Soviets. The sign on the door reads, "Happy New Year To All Our Customers." (Seymour is just leaving it.) A workman is scrubbing off the Hiroshima lovers, and another is removing the fallout shelter sign. Pyramid Construction is rebuilding at the Institute for Extraspatial Studies site. (The poster says "New Deal," possibly referring to this new friendliness; the graffiti below it reads, "One in eight [eight crossed out] 3 go mad" and an anarchy symbol.) The New Utopia's playbill reads, "Tarkovsky Season This Week: The Sacrifice and Nostalgia." (The Sacrifice is a Swedish film, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, about an upcoming holocaust and peoples' reactions to it. I can't find Nostalgia in my video guide.) The new spark hydrant is a different shape.

Panel 2: At the site of the newsstand, there's a redesigned spark hydrant and a Gazette box; the headline reads, "RR To Run in 88?" The fallout shelter sign is gone from the Promethean building. The "RR" referred to here is Robert Redford, an actor.

Panel 3: The workman is putting up a sign reading, "One World: One Accord" with crossed Soviet and American flags over the Earth. The redesigned Promethean sign reads, "Promethean Cabs + Limo: Bringing Light to the World," with an "Under New Management" sticker.

Panel 4: A Millennium sign has replaced Nostalgia. The graffiti read, "Quantum Jump" and "New Deal."

Panel 5: Seymour is wearing Veidt sneakers. The graffiti on the left reads, "Watch the Skies" (a reference to the phrase "Keep watching the skies," used in '50s SF movies). The headline reads, "NY Survivors Reveal Nightmare Under Hypnosis;" the newspaper shows Gorbachev shaking hands with Nixon. Next to it is a copy of Tales From The Morgue, a horror comic (which may be increasing in popularity now) in the EC vein.

Notice the similarity between the double-P Pioneer logo and the Rumrunner logo. (The box by Seymour's right foot also has something akin to the Rumrunner logo.)

Panel 6: The graffiti has been painted over. Across the street at Woolworth's, a "Sunbursts" sign has replaced "Mmeltdowns" (a more peaceful image). Notice the clock.

Page 32, panel 4: A sly nod, of course, to ex-cowboy actor Ronald Reagan, who became President in 1980 in our world.

Panels 6-7: As Seymour reaches for Rorschach's journal, the spatter of ketchup across his T-shirt brings us back to the beginning.

Watchmen is a trademark of DC Comics Inc., © 1999. These annotations © 1995 by Doug Atkinson. They may be freely copied and distributed, provided the text is not altered.
The annotations are maintained at this location by R.J. White.