COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Watchmen 3 Signature
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Grade:
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9.8
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Page Quality:
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WHITE
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Certification #:
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4232408001
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Owner:
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The Captain
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
November, 1986
"The Judge of All the Earth"
Alan Moore - Writer
Dave Gibbons - Penciler
Dave Gibbons - Cover Artist
Dave Gibbons - Inkers
John Higgins - Colorist
Dave Gibbons - Letterer
Len Wein & Barbara Kesel - Editors
Dick Giordano - Executive Editor
Synopsis:
Doctor Manhattan is having problems with his relationship with Laurie when he multiplies himself and she finds out that 'one of him' had been working while she was being romantic with another. Laurie walks out on Manhattan, going to meet up with Dan Dreiberg.
Meanwhile, Manhattan's ex-wife Janey Slater is giving an interview with a news editor of the Nova Express. She states that she has cancer that she presumably received through a connection with Manhattan.
Manhattan gets dressed and transports from his home to his television interview where he meets up with a government official named Forbes telling him what to, and what not to say. One of the questions that he cannot say is about his involvement with the Russians in Afghanistan. Then, one of the audience members is Doug Roth of Nova Express who asks Manhattan about his relationships with his colleague Wally Weaver, Slater, and his former nemesis Edgar Jacobi, if he knew that all of them had a fatal form of cancer, among others. Manhattan is left stunned and even more unsettled when Roth accuses him of being responsible for their inflictions. Forbes quickly intervenes and stops the interview, but while he and Manhattan are leaving, Roth and other reporters swarm around Manhattan and bombard him with questions. A very distressed Manhattan yells "I said leave me alone!" and transports everyone outside of the building.
Laurie meets up with Dan who gave her some coffee and they talk about her troublesome relationship and where she will stay that night. She then decides on a hotel and walks with Dan to Hollis Mason's place. But while walking through an alleyway they are almost mugged by a gang of knot-tops. They effortlessly take out the gangsters. Leaving the alleyway, Laurie decides to go find a hotel by herself and leave Dan alone. Once arriving at Hollis' place, Hollis shows Dan the interview of Manhattan's incident on television.
Manhattan arrives back at his home to find out that it is being quarantined. He decides that he is leaving, telling a soldier to leave a message for Laurie and his superiors. He said he is going to Arizona, and then Mars. He goes to the Gila Flats test base in Arizona, where he took a picture of himself and Janey Slater many years ago at a carnival. On Mars, he explores in childish excitement and then finds a rock to sit on.
Laurie goes back to the base to find that everything is being taken away by military personnel in hazmat suits and she is told by Forbes that she is ordered to undergo a cancer scan and is asked about whether she has put Manhattan in emotional stress. Unaware of Manhattan's incident, she is offended by Forbes for considering herself responsible for something until the man, deeply exasperated, snaps to her that she is no longer welcome to the base since his superiors believe that Manhattan is not coming back in which his absence has severe global consequences.
The next day, Dan awakes from his bed to find Rorschach has broken into his home (again), and he shows Dan a newspaper with the front page of Manhattan's departure from Earth. This news also makes Rorschach being more convinced of his mask-killer theory.
That night, the news vendor receives the evening edition and is shocked to read the headlines. Anxiously, he gives the kid a copy of Tales of the Black Freighter for free, and even his cap. The headline he read is "Russians Invade Afghanistan".
Notes:
-Signed by: Dave Gibbons on 06/30/2023
-The title of the issue is taken from Genesis chapter 18, verse 25. The passage appears at the end of the issue: "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"
-On the newsstand is an issue of the New Frontier headline reading "Missing Writer: Castro to Blame?" and a photo of Max Shea, who first appears in issue #8.
-Doctor Manhattan's interview to the ABC program, as Dr. Jonathan Osterman, reveals his real name.
-The repairman that fixes Daniel Dreiberg's door reappears in issues #11 and #12.
-The host Benny Anger reappears in issue #7.
-The Doomsday Clock on the last page of the issue stands now at 11:51.
Trivia:
-The ad on the back of the comic that the boy is reading is for "The Veidt Method," Adrian Veidt's equivalent of the Charles Atlas ads in which were prominently advertised in comic books and boys' magazines from the 1940s.
-Across the street from the newsstand are the offices of the Promethean Cab Company, which employs the cab driver Joey. The company is a reference to the Greek titan Prometheus who defied Zeus' will by giving fire to humanity.
-The repairman's company, Gordian Knot Lock Co, is a reference to the metaphorical legend associated with the Macedonian king Alexander the Great. It can be presumed that the company is owned by Adrian Veidt, who has a personal fascination with Alexander the Great and tells the legend of the Gordian Knot in issue #11. Ironically, Dan's door lock made by Gordian Knot is broken by Rorschach.
-Dan Dreiberg finds only one sugar cube left in his box (3:8:5) as Rorschach has taken the rest in issue #1.
-Dan's line "Here's looking at you, kid." is taken from the movie Casablanca and foreshadows Dan and Laurie's intimacy and relationship later in the story.
-Dan and Laurie walk past a movie poster of This Island Earth, in which aliens come to Earth in order to bring scientists back to their planet Metaluna and attempt to save it from destruction by their enemies (3:11:2). This movie could serve as a metaphor for what Ozymandias is doing behind the scenes in order to achieve a very similar goal in the conclusion of Watchmen.
-The phrase "Who Watches the Watchmen?" appears as graffiti on an alley wall where the Knot Tops are stalking Dan and Laurie.
-The sign for the New Frontiersman reads "In your hearts, you know it's right." to which someone has added "wing" to disparage the newspaper's right-wing tone. This is a reference to 1964's conservative U.S. Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, who used this phrase, minus the addition, as a slogan. Goldwater's slogan was modified by Lyndon B. Johnson supporters to "In Your Heart, You Know He Might."
-The man putting up the radiation trefoil symbol on Dr. Manhattan's door is singing a rendition of "Walking on the Moon" by The Police. This foreshadows Dr. Manhattan's trip to Mars.
-On the fallen Gila Flats sign reads "Per Dolorem Ad Astra." The Latin phrase means "Through Sadness/Pain/Anguish To The Stars." This reflects Dr. Manhattan's reasons for leaving Earth.
-The writing on the bulletin board at Gila Flats reads "At play amidst the strangeness and charm." "Strangeness" and "charm" are properties of quarks.
-On the newsstand is the latest New Frontiersman, which features the headline "Our Country's Protector Smeared by the Kremlin."
-The news vendor's comments: "Superheroes are finished" confirms the fact that superhero comics have never been popular in the world of Watchmen with real superheroes, and instead replaced by pirate comics. He mentions Superman and "Flash-Man" (our world's Flash; either the news vendor has a faulty memory, or the worlds had diverged enough by 1940 to produce a minor change like this). His comment also directly addresses what is happening within the world of Watchmen as masked heroes are being picked off one by one.
Quotes:
"Dan, living with him, you don't know what it's like... The way he looks at things like he doesn't remember what they are and doesn't particularly care... This world, the real world, to him, it's like walking through the mist, and all the people are like shadows... just shadows in the fog." — Laurie Juspeczyk
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