Show notes
Rorschach is in prison, but he’s not trapped in here with us, etc., etc. We delve deep into the mind of Watchmen’s most divisive character as the podcast breaks down issue #6 of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ comic book series, “The Abyss Gazes Also.” Additionally, Justin gets scared of a bug.SUBSCRIBE TO WATCHMEN WATCH ON ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER, OR RSS. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON.The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.Plus, here’s a transcript of the episode for you to read through as you listen:Alex: Welcometo Watchmen Watch, a podcast about Watchmen where we smell Watchmen, scent of aWatchman. I’m Alex.Justin: I’mJustin.Pete: I’mPete.Alex: Andon this episode, we’re going to be talking about issue six of the Alan Mooreand Dave Gibbons comic book The Abyss Also Gazes, The Abyss Gazes Also, excuseme. Sorry Friedrich Neitzsche or however …Justin: Howdare you?Alex: Sorryabout that. We do have a little bit of newsJustin: Yes,so obviously you guys all know that Alan Moore’s the fourth host of thispodcast. He did just text me, and obviously he is sitting here in the room, buthe texted me, and he’s very shy today, so he doesn’t want to talk, but he ishere. So just so you know, everyone listening, he’s here. Very shy.Alex: Ido see that he’s doing his hidie beard and for those of you who don’t know,it’s very cute. He takes his beard, and he folds it up over his face so he canhide behind it.Justin: He’sdoing it right now, Alex, because you’re calling them out pretty hard. Let’sjust talk about this comic book that he wrote in front of him for the next 20to 40 minutes.Pete: I’mfeeling like he’s not really committed to our team here.Alex: Don’tsay this in front of him.Justin: Don’tsay it in front of him. Alan, thank you for coming. You’re doing a great job.Excuse me, Mr. Moore.Alex: Ina second, I’m going to slip a little ice cream in your beard because you’resuch a good boy.Justin: That’sreally nice. That’s the best way to treat a person is to slip ice cream intotheir beard.Alex: RightPete? You have a beard. You love that?Justin: Throughthe beard into his mouth, or are you just making a mess?Alex: No,up and over the beard.Justin: Upand over?Pete: Howdo you slip ice cream?Alex: Hehas his beard. We’ve already established this, and we can see exactly what’sgoing on.Justin: Yes,we can all see that his is in front of his face.Alex: He’sfolded up. So I’m going to take it, and I’m going to slip it over the top soit’ll like slide down his face into his mouth.Justin: Andlet me just say, Alex, don’t Dodge Pete’s question of how do you slip icecream? How do you slip an ice cream, on your little fingers, your dirty littlemitts.Alex: Yeah,you just like, you take a pinch. It’s like in recipes where they say a pinch ofice cream.Justin: Yeah,that’s true.Pete: That’swhat they say in recipes.Justin: Youhave a children’s cookbook.Alex: Notso much a cookbook, but it is for children.Justin: Thatopened up a lot of doors.Alex: Here’ssomething that definitely isn’t for children, issue six of Watchman. As wementioned is called the abyss gazes also. Now previously the characterRorschach AKA Walter Kovacs, but don’t call him that.Justin: Doesn’tlike it.Alex: Doesn’tlike it.Justin: Doesn’tlike his name.Alex: Hegot arrested, thrown in prison for all his multitude of vigilante crimes overthe years and this issue almost exclusively continues to focus on Rorschach.Last issue was mostly Rorschach. This is all Rorschach. This is definitely hisissue as he is interrogated in prison. Now, I’ll just throw out the thematicthing that I noticed right up front, and I think this is a pretty obvious one,but I think it’s great. Really great comic book you guys. It’s great how wellMoore hits this over the course of the issue is that it is the Rorschach test.That’s what we’re dealing with. That’s what we start with, that’s what we endwith, and Rorschach clearly sees the entire world in black and white, right?Alex: Hedoesn’t even see the blots. He sees men are all violent beasts who need to beput down and women are all slut whores who he is too uncomfortable to eventouch or look at or think about it in any particular way. That’s how heseparates the world. But on the other hand, you have every other character lookingat him and doing one of two things. We either see characters reading thingsinto him that aren’t there or trying to read things into him that aren’tnecessarily there, or what happens to the interview over the course of them, isthey become him the more that they reflect off of him.Justin: Yeah,and I think that’s a hundred percent accurate. He is the ultimate Rorschachtest. The way that his interviewer here, his psychologist, changes over thecourse of the issue makes you feel like Rorschach is right, which I think is aninteresting turn. We’re meant to at the beginning of this issue, he is theother, he has this fucked up life, and he sees the world in a crazy dark waythat we don’t think is how it’s meant to be seen. As it goes on, our audiencesurrogate character, the psychologist comes around to Rorschach’s understandingof the world, leaving us in a pretty dark place.Alex: Well,to the point that his speech starts to ape Rorschach’s rhythms. We get a lot ofwriting in the psychologist’s journal throughout it. At the beginning, he’s avery chipper, very happy guys. He’s in a loving relationship with his wife, butas he interviews Walter Kovacs over the course of a couple of days, it’s notthat long, and coincidentally, and I think Moore did this on purpose, it’sleading right into my birthday, which is very exciting. My birthday’s inOctober 29 so this takes place right before it.Justin: Greatchoice Alan. Thank you for doing that.Alex: Yes.And this feels like how I feel going into my birthday.Pete: Wow.This is how you feel going into your birthday.Alex: Everyyear. No, but over the course of a couple of days, he very quickly turns,things get darker. He starts to see the amount that his wife needs sex as grossand disgusting. He is abusive towards men. Rorschach starts being honest withhim about things and telling him things that truly happened.Justin: Openingup, bringing him more into his world.Alex: Andby the end, the man is writing in his journal exactly how Rorschach writes inhis journal.Justin: WhatI love about this is the perspective is totally flipped. Like up until thispoint, we’ve been in Rorschach’s head. We’ve been along for the ride with hisaction adventure. We’ve been reading his journal, and now it’s fully flipped.We’re outside of his head for the first time and in the head of thepsychologist analyzing him.Alex: Yeah.Well I’ve got to ask, we’ve talked about this on a couple of podcasts, butPete, you love Rorschach, how’d you feel about him in this issue.Pete: Itwas great. Obviously, I don’t like his negative views towards women or any ofthat stuff, but I do love his conviction. I do love the fact that he tries todo what is right and that he is very messed up but tries to stop evil when hesees it. Also, what’s interesting is DC is like famously almost ant… Like hastherapists and stuff like really effect each other where you have like HarleyQuinn and the Joker. That’s therapist and therapy very much affect each other.So it’s very interesting this whole thing about being in a room trapped withsomebody for a couple hours a day can really affect you.Alex: Doyou think this psychologist is falling in love with Rorschach?Pete: Yeah.Alex: He’shis Harley Quinn.Pete: Yeah,exactly.Justin: Whatdo you think, Mr. R?Alex: Somethinglike that. I will say on the trapped in here with you thing, I mentioned thisto you I think before we even started the podcast, the very first episode ofthis podcast, but I was so surprised when I looked back at this because I thinkif there’s one thing you think of from the movie, it is Jackie Earle Haleysaying “I’m not trapped in here with you. You’re trapped in here withme.” That doesn’t happen in the book.Justin: Hesays it or it’s repeated back.Alex: Butit’s third hand information.Justin: Yeah.It’s such a small moment in here, so it’s definitely something they pulled outbecause it is a great line.Pete: It’salso one of the nice things about the movie is that Rorschach’s in prison stuffis just fantastic. Like he takes out a bunch of people in very creative ways.Justin: Whatdo you think? This has always bothered me in this comic that there’s so muchweight given to like, wow, look at this guy, he’s so ugly, and he’s prettynormal. Yeah. He’s normal looking I think.Alex: Ishe?Justin: Isn’the?Alex: Idon’t think he’s a disgusting guy or anything like that.Justin: Butwhen the cops arrest him, they’re like, Oh God, he’s so ugly, and in this, it’sreferenced again. He’s so ugly and to me it always bumps for me. It pulls meout because he’s not drawn as horrendously ugly.Pete: Yeah.He just looks like Jimmy Olsen on a bad day.Alex: That’sprobably the thing is he has red hair, which instantly makes him much moredisgusting than the regular person.Justin: That’strue. That’s a very hot take.Pete: Comeon, Alex.Alex: No,I think you’re right. I mean I think like he has his scowl. Part of it might behow people are seeing him. Like they see his ugliness is on the surface, sothat might be part of it as well. But yeah, I don’t know. I never… I justassumed, okay, in this world, we are supposed to assume that he is ugly anddisgusting.Justin: Yes.I think that’s true. It’s just weird to me because the visual, it’s the onething in this book that I’m like, the visual doesn’t back it up and it doesn’tseem purposeful. It feels like a miscommunication between the text and the art.Pete: Letme ask you guys, either of you ever taken a Rorschach test?Alex: No.Have you?Pete: No,I’m scared of them.Alex: Really?Why are you scared of them? Because of Rorschach?Pete: No,I just, I feel like I would fail miserably.Justin: Well,how do you fail?Pete: Idon’t know.Alex: Well,let me ask you this.Justin: Weshould do this.Alex: TheRorschach blot on the cover. What do you see?Pete: Itlooks like a beetle crossed with some kind of a butterfly slash I don’t know.It’s…Alex: OhJesus.Justin: Holyshit. He’s a sociopath.Alex: He’sa sociopath schizophrenic .Justin: Yeah.Wow. I can’t believe we were able to finally diagnose you from that one moment.You were right to not take the test, Pete. Your life’s about to change for theworst.Alex: Ihave a bunch of pills, but we are going to have to euthanize you.Pete: Ohmy God.Justin: Ifyou fail a Rorschach test hard enough, you have to be euthanized.Alex: Dowe want to walk through this book? What do we want to talk about in particular?Justin: Yeah,I guess that’s what we came here for.Alex: Yeah,I guess so. Well, it’s a tough one to do because it is… We get a lot of flashbacksto Rorschach. We get to see his past. We get to see his development, or atleast when we’re told is his development because a lot of it might be lies.Justin: Interesting.You’re saying he’s pulling a Joker, a dark night Joker.Alex: Ithink there’s shades of that potentially. I think you could read it as verystraightforward, and we have the backup material at the end where there arestories, but there are so many things that are like that. We don’t know who hisfather is. His mother was a whore and slept with a bunch of different people.So yes, she’s probably his mother, but we don’t know a lot about his past orwhat happened to him.Justin: Ido think to me, I’ve always read this as you are supposed to believe that thisis his life and this gave him this worldview that he has, and it makes you feelsorry for him in a way that I think you never did. And it really gives groundunderneath why he’s so violent because he’s had a violent life from literallythe jump. So we see him meeting with a psychologist like we talked aboutbefore. The psychologist is super fun.Pete: Ilike how we get to see like what he sees and then what he says. I think that’svery cool.Justin: Yeah,it’s very stark and scary in ways.Alex: Onething we should probably talk about is a recurring visual motif in this bookthat we’ve seen throughout the issues is the Hiroshima lovers, the shadows ofthese ashin people left on walls in Hiroshima, which are being paintedthroughout New York city in the book. We’ve also seen shadow of actual loversthat I believe Rorschach sees in the first issue through a window, but herethey hit it again and again and again with the Rorschach blots.Justin: Andthe flashback to him walking in on his mother having sex with a dude.Alex: Right.And then later on when the psychologist starts to feel like him, when he startsto feel like Rorschach, his wife is seen that way too. So there’s these shadowsthroughout. Even from the very first panel, I believe you see the two of themsitting at the table. They’re shadows are behind them and you can read into itwhat you want. What do you think it is about this motif?Justin: Ifeel like it’s Rorschach. He’s a loner. He can’t create any relationships. Andin this, when he’s a kid and he sees this sex and just horrible scene where hebreaks up his mother sleeping with a man for money, and the mother’s mad at himand is like I should have aborted you. It’s a horrifying experience for a kidto go through. And so sex has always been attached to that horrible emotionthat he feels here. And so I think that makes it something that he can’tunderstand or has no interest in because it’s associated with pain. And I thinkwe see the psychologist start to have that, and he’s like, I don’t feel sexualhere. It’s associated with this pain because I felt the pain that Rorschach hasgone through. And it points us again, like we’ve talked about more a currenttopical look at this book with like incels or people who like… Sex is theother, and it leads to all these like negative emotions.Alex: Yeah.I mean we could certainly talk about it. Do you think Walter Kovacs is avirgin?Justin: Ithink we’re meant to think that. We never see in any of the other books likehe’s like, I love this girlfriend I have.Alex: Exceptfor this nice time I had with this lady.Justin: Yeah.There’s no cutaway to just a sweet sock hop. So yeah, I do think so. I thinkhe’s always been just absolutely alone. I think we’re meant to think.Alex: Well,and I think you’re right on the incel then like we’re looking at it throughthis modern lens. Yeah. I guess I was just agreeing with you. The only thingthat I did want to expand on though is from the Hiroshima lovers that I thinkit’s even more than sex is uncomfortable, sex is upsetting. The lovers in Hiroshimaare left after a nuclear blast.Justin: Yeah.Sex is death.Alex: Yeah.Sex is death. Sex is this fallout. This is what it leaves behind. This is thething that’s always present, always here, and it can all be traced back to thisone formative experience where he walked in on his mom having sex with a man.They come back to that again in the back matter where he draws it, where he waslike, I had this horrible nightmare and my mommy was naked, and this man wasnaked, and they were joined together by their genitals. Clearly this affectedhim in a very big way, but it expanded outwards. You even see it. We’re lookingat this page now. We’re looking at how the “ah, ah, ah” of thedialogue, the way that they have it in there, the way that Moore writes it isparalleled with the same thing when the mother is holding Rorschach and makinghim feel pain where he goes, “ah, ah, ah”Justin: Andwe see them in shadows.Alex: It’sall two sides of the same thing. Pretty blatantly.Justin: Thisscene also reminded me of Mad Men. This is the same origin that Don Draper has.He grew up in a whorehouse, and his mother was obviously being with men or likethere’s all these… He was with these women and in that show, Don Draper hasthe opposite take where he becomes obsessed with sex, but is still unable toconnect with anybody in his life.Alex: Sodo you think, we talked about this on the last podcast as well, do you thinkWatchman ripped off Mad Men?Justin: Yes.I think that we’re getting that closer and closer. Think, mad men, watch men.Alex: Thereyou go.Pete: Yeah,I know the first time reading this I was very stricken by the fact that likeRorschach fakes the test, but his mask is very much representative. Like it’sinteresting to me that he’s a lie just like the Rorschach test of like you’retelling a therapist what you think they want to hear, and it’s like he’s hidingbehind this mask, and he doesn’t like who he is under this mask.Justin: Onthe other side, you could see he’s also protecting. He’s protecting people fromthe horrible truth of the world by trying to get rid of these villains or savepeople’s lives no matter how… because he’s already in the darkness. He can beas violent as everyone else is, but he is trying to protect people who aren’t yetin his worldview, and in this issue, we see him usher the psychologist in andshows him how dark the world really is.Alex: Well,I’m going to talk about the mask. This is jumping ahead in the issue, but wefind out the origin of the mask, and I think there’s two really fascinatingthings about it. The first one is it is a parra type of, I think they say it’sa viscous fabric or something like that where it’s always shifting, whichobviously is very hard to tell exactly what’s happening when you’re reading astill comic book. Even though we have seen the blots shift around and that wascreated by Dr. Manhattan. So Dr. Manhattan, beyond whatever is going on withJohn Osterman has touched all these different lives in very different ways. Weget to see a lot of intersections here, and here, Dr. Manhattan’s origin isvery directly connected to Rorschach’s origin as well, but the second thing isthat Rorschach’s mask is made from the fabric that he cuts up, that he destroysfrom a woman’s dress, which again is very clearly this line between violenceand women and sex that he can’t differentiate between.Justin: Yeah,and it later is this… Kitty Genovese is the woman who had the dress, andshe’s later killed and that’s his first…Alex: no,no, no. Kitty Genovese is a real person.Justin: Oh.Alex: Yeah.This was a real thing that happened in New York.Justin: Oh,right, right, right.Alex: Yeah.A different woman who had the dress. Kitty Genovese is a real person in reallife who I believe was raped and assaulted, and everybody just looked out thewindow at her and didn’t know what to say. There’s been numerous psychologicalstudies about what went on that night. Just this tacit agreement we all make tonot rock the boat, to not say anything about anything and because nobody else’syelling, “Hey, stop that.” Nobody else yells, “Hey, stopthat.”Justin: So,in the book, Rorschach says woman who ordered the special dress, KittyGenovese, I’m sure that was the woman’s name, so he believes it’s the woman,but it’s him finding the story and giving into his desire to like startcommitting these revenge acts. It’s on page 10, the right middle panel where hesees this news story, and it’s starting to… The Rorschach personalitystarting to come forward as he’s giving himself an excuse to go out and get hisrevenge.Alex: Well,we’ve talked about that quite a bit with his character as well, that he makesthese logical leaps that may be correct sometimes. Like when it comes to theEddie Blake murder, he is actually tracking it down, but sometimes he just doesnot. Sometimes, he is just making these crazy conspiracy theory connectionswhere they don’t exist.Justin: Youcould read this either way. It could be that it was actually this woman whodropped this dress off, and then years later she’s killed. Or it could be thathe is just drawing the connection. The story doesn’t really point you in thatdirection.Alex: Let’stalk about the dead dog thing a little bit. You want to talk about that?Justin: Yeah,so just to button up everything else, we have this scene where he describes,he’s getting hassled by these kids and he has this horrible violence. He likeputs a cigarette out in their eye as a kid, and then that’s mirrored by thescene in the prison where he is being attacked by other prisoners because theyknow he’s Rorschach, and he like destroys this guy with hot oil and man, evenwhen I was young, like this is just so violent and so destructive.Alex: Wellthat’s the thing about it, which is why I understand why you like it Pete, butit’s surprising to me is in my mind Rorschach always goes over the top thatit’s like you poke him and then he’s like, great, now I’m going to slice yourfucking head off. That’s the sort of… He escalates far too quickly abouteverything because he doesn’t understand moderation. Again, getting to thatblack and white, everything is super clear to him. He even talks about that alittle bit when he was still Walter Kovacs when he teamed up with Nite Owl,when he thought, okay, I’m a vigilante hero, and I’m going to tie people upbefore he really understood the world. He didn’t escalate in the same way, andnow he does. Now he goes from somebody insulting him to burning them with hotoil, which is crazy.Pete: Inmy defense, I feel like violence in comic books is a nice, safe outlet for mewhere I like to like, “Oh, okay. I can be like this is fun in here. Butyou know…”Justin: Well,we’re not saying you are like Rorschach.Pete: Theway he worded that a little bit was like, Pete, one of the things thatsurprised me is how much you enjoy this. So I was just trying to defend.Alex: No,no, no, no. I think it’s just particularly in this case that like it is so overthe top, and it is so clearly the way that Dave Higgins, Dave Gibbons, excuse me,I mixed up Dave Gibbons and John Higgins, Dave Gibbons draws it is he lays allthe violence out so suddenly where it’s just Rorschach standing there, and thensuddenly he’s splashing enormous amounts of hot oil on the person where it’sjust over the top violence, but I get what you’re saying.Pete: It’salso in a prison scenario where if like you get pushed around in prison, you’regoing to keep… so you got to really just kind of let people know you can’tmess with me.Alex: Dude.I know. You go into a prison first day, you punched the biggest guard there.Justin: It’sthe same with the podcast. You got to go in and you’ve got to take out that bigfish, which is why I took out Alan earlier.Alex: Oh,he started to pull down his beard a little bit, but then he put it right backup.Justin: Alex,slip him some more ice cream into his beard, which is something that you saidis a normal thing.Alex: Now,the other thing that visually happens throughout this issue that I thought wasneat, we have that great panel from the last issue where when Rorschach isfinally unasked, where he’s screaming, people are holding him back. He’sbleeding from the nose. That’s paralleled multiple times with the issue. Iwould argue, first of all, with the dead dog, which is also in itself aRorschach test, but that’s framed the same way. The blood is very similar andthen later on, I believe it’s the kids who are holding him back in the storythat he’s telling where the blood is streaming down his nose, where you get tosee it the same way. It’s just these neat little parallels, these things thatgive it a rhythm that Gibbons throws throughout that I think are just soimpressive.Justin: Yeah,and so what we were talking about before where we get to the last scene wherewe hear how he went from being Walter Kovacs to becoming Rorschach. He sitsdown with the psychologist again, and the psychologist, now that he entered thedarkness, I think you see Rorschach make the choice, I’m going to tell him thetruth now because he wants it, and I think that’s a big flip here. And I thinkalso we the reader are going through the same thing where it’s like, we’ve readthis comic for six issues. Give us the end. Give us the dark side of thisstory. Tell us what it is. We’re entering the darkness. We’ve gotten in thischaracter’s head. Now let’s move forward and see how this plays out.Alex: Doyou think there’s part of it though that Rorschach is punishing this guybecause he thinks he’s just a fame seeker, which he might as well be.Justin: Youcould say that, but the guys still make… That’s an insult he hits the guywith, but I do think he’s ready to deal with him as this monster. He’s becomethis monster that he is talking about.Alex: Sorry.Sorry everybody. Justin got distracted. There was a bug on the floor.Justin: Likea weird bug.Alex: Aweird bug.Justin: Yeah,a bug that’s like, what if that’s a bad… it could be a bedbug.Alex: Ohmy God. We’re going to have to finish up this podcast real quick because we’recovered in bed bugs right now. Pete, are you okay?Justin: Yeah.Alex: Imean some people see it as a bed bug and some people see it as a weird spider.Justin: Idon’t think bed bugs are that big.Alex: Ithink it’s a weird spider. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.Justin: Okay,cool. Yeah, nothing to worry about. Just a weird spider, but let’s keep talkingabout this. So we see Rorschach goes in.Alex: Oh,it just went in Alan’s beard. It’s fine.Justin: Okay,good. That’s fine. I guess that’s where it probably came from. He finds thatthis child has been killed and the action slips out of any sort of narrative ordialogue into just silently watching Rorschach.Pete: Whydo you think that is? Why do you think we get completely silent panels at thispoint?Justin: It’sbeen a wordy issue so far, and I think this lets us turn off the analyticalpart of our brain and the visuals just sneak underneath, and we get to watchthe horror unfold directly. He set the trap of this whole thing and made usfeel like, Oh God, who’s the hero? What’s right here? And then he lets theseimages go right through.Pete: Plus,I mean the artwork is so amazing in this book. It’s nice to just turn off thewords for a little bit and let the art tell the story and just the paneling andthe layouts really take it from here.Alex: Italso builds the tension, right? Because it’s suddenly everything that you’vehad to suck in, anything that you have there is completely sucked away. Youdon’t have the words to rely on like you were saying, Justin, and instead, youget this tension of Oh God, what’s going to happen? What’s going to happen? Andultimately the most horrible thing that can happen happens, which is that theyburned a little kid and fed her to the dogs. Terrifying.Pete: Andwhen we get the dog crushing through… The bloody dog crashing through thewindow type of situation.Alex: Classicsituation.Pete: Classicsituation. Part of me wonders if like the reason the shading and the stuff isthe way it is, if it was like originally turned in too gruesome and then theeditors of the comic were like, Hey, we’ve got to kill bill this a little bitand do different shadings so it’s not as grotesque and as…Alex: No,I think that’s all because that’s John Higgins being like, no, this is blood.Justin: Youmean Gibbons?Alex: JohnHiggins.Justin: GetDave Gibbons.Alex: Yeah.John Higgins is the colorist.Justin: OhI see. I see.Alex: JohnHiggins coloring it, and I got it right.Justin: No,good. You win this round.Alex: Isred is blood is death is murder. That’s what we’ve seen throughout. Whensomebody realizes something, when their blood gets up throughout this book, notjust this issue, but in total.Pete: Yeah.Comedian we see it.Alex: Itjust turns red, and I think it’s the same thing here. I don’t think it’s atoning down thing. I think it’s an emotional thing is what I took from it.Pete: Wedon’t know what the original pages look like, you know?Alex: Yeah.You think they were bloodier?Pete: Yeah.I think maybe it was way more gross, and they were like, guys, we can’t printthis.Alex: Idon’t think that happened with…Justin: Addingsome drama into the DC office. He ends up killing the guy, putting him throughthe same torture he put the little girl through, and then we move right into thepsychologist at a dinner party where everyone’s like joking around about thiscase, and he again exposes that he is into the blackness of this. He’s in thevoid. The void is the abyss. The abyss is looking back at him.Alex: You’relooking at the final quote now, what is that?Justin: Battlenot with monsters, lest he become a monster. And if you gaze into the abyss,the abyss gazes also into you.Alex: Now,how do you think that connects to this issue? Because it’s really… I’mkidding.Justin: Yeah.I was going to say like, Whoa.Alex: No,it’s very obvious what was happening there. But I did want to ask about thedinner party a little bit, and we touched on this with everything that’s goingon with the psychologist’s wife, do you think that’s actually what’s happening?Because we don’t get their dialogue most of the time. We get his description ofthings that are going on, and it seems very reductive that over the course ofthree days, his wife turns into a sex star jealous shrew who is totally done withhim in every single way.Justin: No,I think that’s his POV. I think he’s being affected by his work, by the abyss,and he is reading that onto his relationship. And I think in this moment at thedinner, I think she’s just like, dude, don’t talk about that. And she’s mad.They’re having, if we were to pull out and not have his point of view, they’rehaving normal disagreements that a couple might have, but he’s reading into itlike it’s a much larger problem because he is so pulled into Rorschach’s head.Alex: Anyfinal thoughts about this issue? We do have all the back matter where we get tosee drawings from Walter Kovacs. We get to see psychological reports. These allflesh out what has been going on, and I think back up a lot of what has beengoing on in the book, which is very nice to see, to get confirmation of thesethings. I really liked, I mentioned earlier the drawing that they have WalterKovacs do and the writing that he had to do as well because that takes us verymuch inside of his head, and I thought that was interesting. Any other finalthoughts?Justin: No.I guess let’s just see if Alan’s ready to have his take.Alex: Oh,he’s crawling in bugs.Justin: Yeah.Alex: He’scovered.Justin: Maybethis isn’t Alan at all. It’s just like a bunch of bugs with a beard.Pete: Justa pile of bugs that you brought in here that pretended to be Alan Moore.Alex: Thefamous pirate bug beard.Justin: While,I was reading this issue, I was reminded of the Black Freighter stuff from thelast issue, like it feels like Rorschach is the closest analog to that in thisseries that we’re getting. Like the Black Freighter is directly related to howhe views the world, and it’s just spinning out from him into everybody else.Alex: Yeah.Raw shark, raw shark. I just got that.Justin: Itmakes total sense.Alex: Ijust got that. If you’d like to support our podcast, patreon.com/comicbookclub.Also, we do a live show every Tuesday night at theater loft in New York. Come on by. We’ll chat with you about Watchman. Pete,you’re a member of the Facebook page.Justin: Ah,Nope.Alex: WatchmanWatch Podcast. You can check us out there. Also, Justin.Justin: Followus on Twitter at Watchman Watch One and at comic book live.Alex: Youcan also check us out on Instagram, Watchman Watch Podcast. You can subscribeto the podcast on iTunes, Android, Stitcher, Spotify, or the app of yourchoice, and remember, we taped this podcast 35 minutes ago.Justin: Alanjust said he’s going to be here next week.Alex: Hewas here this… Oh no, that was the pile of bugs. I’m sorry.Justin: Definitelynext time. No more bugs. He just texted me that.The post Watchmen Watch: Issue #6, “The Abyss Gazes Also” appeared first on Comic Book Club.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclubAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
