Cover Image: The cover image is an extreme close-up of a
blood-soaked clock that is mere seconds from ticking midnight. This image brings together a number of
recurring visual motifs from Watchmen – most notably the minutes to midnight image, signifying
how close nuclear Armageddon is, and the evolving back cover image of blood
running down toward a ticking clock.
This image, with the Roman numerals on the clock face and the small
rivers of blood pouring over it, emphasizes the finality of the narrative with this
chapter. And, as with each chapter
previous, this cover image leads directly into
PAGE 1
Panel 1: where we see that the clock is the one just
above the entrance to Madison Square Garden, where the Pale Horse/Krystalnacht
concert was letting out as Adrian Veidt’s faux alien monster teleported in,
self-destructing upon impact and causing the devastation visible here.
Notice
the now-familiar shape of the blood spatter (from the Comedian’s smiley-face
button) on the dislodged door with the concert poster.
It is
worth noting that this is the very first full-page splash utilized by Moore
& Gibbons in this entire story. The
regular 9-panel grid these artists use throughout the initial eleven chapters –
with multiple deviations from that pattern for certain narrative effects – has
been building to this moment. This
large, single image effectively communicates the gravity of the moment –enhanced
by the choice to offer it without captions or dialogue. Coupled with Dave Gibbons’s meticulous
detail, readers are almost forced to pore over the page, the horror of what has
transpired seeping slowly in. It’s a
deft use of the comic page made all the more powerful by that adherence to the
9-panel grid throughout the rest of the narrative.
You forgot to mention the Pale Horse a symbol of death and the apocalypse, also the Krystalnacht and the clock striking 12
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