Certain notes are true for each issue.

This issue's title is from Hallowe'en by Eleanor Farjeon

Cover: The "In Gratitude" statue of Nite Owl.

ISSUE MOTIF: Statuette of Nite Owl; more generally, there is a theme of reminisces of the past.
COVER CLOCK: 4 min. to midnight

Page 1, panel 1: Hollis' apartment. Recognizable here are a can of Miller lite, the Nite Owl statuette, the Minutemen photo, and the "Hero Retires" front page. In panel 5 we see it's from the New York News.

Panel 2: Sally's retirement home. Note the Nostalgia bottle.

Panel 3: Today is the 26th, assuming that "last night" actually means "early this morning." The calendar in panel 8 has it as the 27th, though. (The fire would have made the news the same day, most likely.)

Panels 3-4: It's interesting to compare Hollis and Sally's viewing material; Hollis is watching the news, Sally is watching a soap. It's probably the six o'clock news Hollis is watching (using the same Afghanistan graphic as last night), making it about 3:00 in California and accounting for the differences in lighting.

Panel 6: Recognizable here are the "Silk Spectre" Tijuana Bible, the group photo of the Minutemen, and a magazine with a "Nostalgia" ad.

Page 2, panel 3: At the bottom of the panel is the Dr. Manhattan issue of Nova Express. Surprisingly, the "MultiVite" does not appear to be a Veidt product.

Panels 2, 6: The statuette is visible in the background. Mirror image (Hollis' face) in 6.

Page 3, panel 1: Lovers graffiti on the wall. This spread confirms the assumed layout of the corner.

Panel 2: The Pyramid Deliveries truck again. "Spirit of '77" refers back to the era of the Keene act. (The phrase refers to "Spirit of '76," used to refer to the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, signed in 1776.)

Panel 3: The Utopia is now showing The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Panel 4: Bernard confirms the date as the 27th. There's a day missing here somewhere: issue #6 has the date of Mal's first session as the 25th, which would make the news broadcast Dan and Laurie watch in issue #7 the same day. The action of issue #7 only covers mid-afternoon on one day to early morning the next, so the tenement rescue would have been the 26th. The only plausible explanation is that the media waited an extra day to report the fire, or that Hollis waited a while to call Sally. (We can assume that page 3 is the day after pages 1-2, but that doesn't account for Sally's calendar.

Panel 7: The radiation sign is visible in the background, as is a Nova Express and New Frontiersman. This panel is an echo of issue #6, 16:5.

Panel 9: Obviously, this is Mal Long.

Page 4, panel 6: "Reds Cross Pakistan Border" (something that never occurred in the real world).

Page 5, panel 5: Notice the various images in the screens. Archie has a variety of cameras, apparently.

Page 6, panel 3: The speaker is Big Figure, somebody Dan and Walter put away in the '60's.

Page 7, panel 3: Figure's comment about "tomorrow, Thursday, Friday" places this scene on Tuesday the 29th.

Panel 6: The "valley of the shadow" refers to the 23d Psalm: "Though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death."

Pages 8-9: Obviously Fine knows who Dan really is. The date is the 31st.

Page 8, panel 1: The Gordian Knot man is back.

Panel 5: The Nova Express cover has pictures of Dr. Manhattan, Rorschach, and Ozymandias, and the headline reads, "Superheroes in the News: Spirit of '77." The Gazette headlines read, "Tanks Mass In Eastern Europe: "Purely Defensive" Say Reds," and "California: Governor Reagan Urges Hard Line." (In the real world Reagan was President in '85, though he was California governor in the '70s.)

Panel 6: Dan must be worried about something; he has no specific need to fix the locks, since Rorschach hasn't broken them for a couple of weeks. (Unless Gordian is just so overworked by Rorschach's breaking and entering spree that it took them that long to get out there.)

Panel 8: In reference to the "Sweet Chariot" cubes found in Rorschach's pocket.

Page 9, panel 1: Fine has spotted Laurie's ball-pipe.

Page 10: This is Hector Godfrey, editor of the New Frontiersman, in the Frontiersman offices. The issue being pasted up is the backup for this issue. Notice the style of the clock in the background.

Panel 5: This is the same picture on the earlier cover, and seen on the news in the last issue.

Page 11: The speakers are Max Shea (alive and well) and Hira Manish. Hira is left-handed. Comparing it to the people in the background, the thing under the tarpaulin must be enormous.

Panel 4: Max is referring, of course, to "Marooned."

Page 12, panel 4: Is Nova Express funded by Pyramid Deliveries? Things are beginning to tie together in minor ways.

Panel 6: The juice over the eyes calls to mind the blood-spattered smiley-face button.

Page 13, panel 2: This is Derf, who we saw in issue #1. "Katies" refers to KT-28.

Panel 3: Joey again. Aline is her ex-girlfriend.

Page 15, panel 4: The splash of blood brings to mind the blood on his coat from the kidnapper's dog in issue #6. Interestingly, though, this seems to mark the beginning of a transition back to humanity for him: notice his attempts at friendliness and politeness in later issues.

Page 18, panels 4 and 6: His tracking the blood refers back to the first issue, page 1.

Page 21, panel 1: Notice that Rorschach, for all his personality flaws, is at least polite.

Page 22, panel 3: Rorschach is taking more sugar cubes, which reappear later.

Page 25, panel 2: The shape of the can on the lower right is interesting; it looks Japanese, or at any rate not American. The "Black Freighter" page has a half-page ad (which had mostly phased out of our comics by that time). One of the comics advertised is "X-Ships."

Page 27, panels 5, 7, 9: I am not sure if these are genuine flashbacks or just symbolic. Hollis could not have had the same dog with him when he was active as a hero (it would be at least 23), and he was never pictured with a masked dog anywhere else.

Incidentally, the man in the skull mask is Screaming Skull, and the Nazi with the monocle is Captain Axis. He may be based on Captain Nazi, an enemy of Fawcett Comic's Marvel Family. Moloch is visible in panels 5, 7 and 9.

Page 28, panel 1: The hair across the eye leads back to the smiley-face.

Pages 29-32: The 10/31/85 edition of the New Frontiersman.

Page 1: Surely the "Issue IVII" is wrong. "IV" is 4, and "II" is 2; even if this were the correct nomenclature, this isn't the sixth issue by any means (it's been published since at least the fifties). (In our world it would say "volume," not "issue.") If it's meant as "42," which is more plausible (since Hector's father founded it), it should be "XLII." Maybe Hector just doesn't know much about Roman numerals.

Page 3: This cartoon, signed "F," is by Feinberg, who may be the same Walt Feinberg who drew "Tales of the Black Freighter."

Page 4: Surprisingly, Godfrey is actually onto something here. This is important information. (There is evidence later that Deschaines actually was psychic, making him the only super-powered character in the series besides Dr. Manhattan.)

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.