Certain notes are true for each issue.

This issue's title is from Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Cover: A bottle of Nostalgia perfume, thrown by Laurie at the end of this issue.

ISSUE MOTIF: The liquid-filled sphere.
COVER CLOCK: 3 min. to midnight

Page 1: A flashback to last issue. Jon is mistakenly given the darker blue skin tone here.

Panel 1: The thrown Nostalgia bottle.

Page 3, panel 1: The Nostalgia bottle.

Page 6, panel 7: Another liquid-filled sphere (see next page).

Panel 8: Is it possible Jon is doing something to help Laurie remember?

The clarity seems unusually good for a childhood memory.

Page 7: The man Sally is arguing with is Laurence Schexnayder, her soon-to-be-ex-husband. They are arguing about a tryst she had with another man. (His identity will become clear later.)

Panel 4: Sally had the same trophies here she has in Nepenthe Gardens. The wedding picture and childhood picture of Laurie (on top of the TV) are notably absent later.

Panels 7-9: The liquid-filled sphere again. (See issue #3 and issue #6.)

Page 8, panels 1-3: The sphere and the bottle.

Panel 4: A good guess, with the information she has, but wrong.

Page 10, panel 3: The bottle is a half-sphere, and the glass is two half-spheres.

Page 11, panel 4: The year is 1962, and the "new boy" in question is probably Nite Owl II. Lewis will be admitted to a clinic soon.

Page 12, panel 3: Byron Lewis is Mothman.

Panel 7: The Nostalgia bottle again.

Page 15, panel 6: The hair is another hint to her parentage. Compare hers to the other characters.

Page 16, panel 8: The Nostalgia bottle.

Page 20, panel 1: Not a sphere, but a circle of fluid...

Panel 2: Ford is Vice-President Gerald Ford. Liddy is G. Gordon Liddy; probably CIA director at this point. Al Haig is/was Secretary of Defense.

Panel 4: In our world, Woodward and Bernstein's discovery led to scandal and Nixon's eventual resignation; they didn't get a chance to pass it on in this world.

Panel 5: Note the button. I find it interesting that he wore it in both identities but his identity doesn't seem to have been public knowledge (Joe and Steve didn't know it back in issue #1, and Rorschach didn't even know it until then). Especially since for a long time he only wore a domino mask, without even covering his hair...This is a government gathering, though, and maybe everyone here already knew.

The reference to JFK: It has been suggested that Blake had something to do with his assassination.

Page 21, panels 2 and 4: The streak of hair over Laurie's right eye, and the splash over the button, bring to mind issue #1's motif.

Panel 5: Once again the Nostalgia bottle.

Panel 6: This scrapbook is the backup to this issue.

Page 23, panel 4: The fluid-filled sphere again.

Page 24, panel 1: The broken sphere again, and notice the splash across her right slipper's right eye?

Panels 2-7: We find out here what this issue's motif actually means.

Page 27, panels 1-2: The coincidental smiley-face (tying in to Jon's thesis) once again calls to mind the motif of issue #1. This is a real crater, by the way, although the "eyes" are formed by cracks in the crater floor, not rocks as shown here. Jon is undergoing a change of attitude here that will become clearer in later issues.

Pages 29-32: Pages from Sally's scrapbook.

Page 29, Daily World article: See the annotations for the Under the Hood section of issue #1 for commentary on the dating of this article.

Paragraph 5: The movie takes years to be made; the review is on page 31.

Page 29, clipping, upper right corner: That's all it is, publicity. See page 31 again. Incidentally, from the perspective of the readers, he does keep the costume on all the time.

Page 31, letter, paragraph 2: This paragraph is extremely important to a lot of the underlying stuff in the story. Nelly is, of course, Captain Metropolis, and H.J. is Hooded Justice. The date of 1948, however, must be regarded as wrong; according to Under the Hood, Dollar Bill died in 1946, and Sally married Laurence in 1947.

Page 32, paragraph 6: "One died recently" confirms page 31 (Rorschach, issue #1: "Captain Metropolis was decapitated in a car crash back in '74").

As mentioned earlier, three known homosexuals (and two unknowns) out of 13 costumed heroes is an unusually high percentage. The costumed heroes can't be considered representative of the population (otherwise one of them should be black, for example). Compare the end of issue #7 , and Captain Carnage from issue #1: is Moore trying to use the "sex thing" as an underlying theme?

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.