Chapter II

Chapter Summary

At the beginning of the chapter, Laurie visits her mother and former member of the Minutemen- Sally Jupiter in California while Jon attends Blake’s funeral. When Sally finds out who’s funeral Jon is attending to, she remembers the time when Blake attempted to rape her at a Minutemen photoshoot. 

Then, at the funeral, Adrian Veidt remembers the first meeting of the masked adventurers- the Crimebusters. He also recalls how Blake was less than enthusiastic and resistant. At the end of the meeting, Blake says “it don’t matter squat because inside thirty years the nukes are going to be flyin’ like maybugs” as he lights a display board on fire. 

Next, Dr. Manhattan remembers spending the last day of the Vietnamese war with Blake. At this time, Blake shoots a pregnant Vietnamese woman carrying his baby after they get into an argument. Dr. Manhattan decided not to use his abilities to prevent the incident, and Blake almost blames him for not stopping him.

Then, Dan Dreiberg remembers holding back a protest with Blake and him saying that nobody trusts the government, the police, and even them. They also witness a protester spray painting “Who Watches The Watchmen?” on a wall.

Back at the funeral, Rorschach follows former villain- Moloch- home and interrogates him on Blake’s death. According to Moloch, Blake broke into his house, drunk and crying and talking about an island that Moloch and Dr. Manhattan were on that was full of writers, scientists, and artists. 

Character Involvement

The main characters that we see in this chapter Edward Blake, Rorschach, and Moloch.

From the flashbacks from some of the minor characters in the chapter, we learn about Blake’s odd beliefs about society, relationships, war, and enforcement.

Rorschach spends the chapter investigating on Blake’s death. He seems determined to find out who killed him and bring justice to him.

Moloch is also a key character in this chapter. He is able to provide Rorschach with some information about Blake which helps move the plot along.

Foreshadowing

The first example is on pg. 2 panel 4. This panel shows a picture of a man holding a sign that says “The End is Nigh”. This is significant, especially paired with Blake’s quote about a nuclear war. This hints at the possibility of an apocalypse occurring later in the book. 

Another example of foreshadowing that we see is on pg. 10, panels 2 and 3. In this panel, Blake is holding a newspaper and the front cover says “Dr. Manhattan an imperialistic weapon”, meaning that Dr. Manhattan’s powers give America have an unfair advantage over other countries. This, along with Blake’s hints about Dr. Manhattan being on an island with their enemy-Moloch-tells us that Dr. Manhattan may not be using his powers for good purposes.

Character Analysis: The Comedian

      Chapter two focuses around the comedian and a lot is revealed about him and his personality during this chapter. The comedian, also known as Edward Morgan Blake was born in 1924 and died on October 11 1985.He was one of the original minutemen but was also the youngest.
        In this chapter we learned more about his personality. We learn that he is very abrupt and uses humor to cover his emotion. He is also very controlling with women and often shows them little to no respect. We learned more about this trait when Edward Blake tried to rape Sally Jupiter, this leaves her daughter Laurie, hating Edward Blake, but Sally Jupiter her mother says that she has forgiven him. On page 7, box 2, he says  ``Sure, NO. Spelled Y,E,,,`` This shows that he manipulates words and turns the humorous to get what he wants.
Another example of this is when he was fighting in the Vietnam war and he got a young woman there pregnant. When she confronts him about the baby, he gets agitated and tells her how it has to be. ``Listen we have nothing` to talk about. I`m leavin! Saigon Number ten, New York number one, okay?”  - Page 14 box 2.

So far in the book we have only seen that the comedian is very strong, but he does not appear to have any supernatural powers that the reader has been made aware of yet.
In this chapter the reader also learned that he fought in Vietnam for the Americans to keep communism out of Vietnam. In this way we thought he resembled a bad captain America because captain America fought in American wars like Vietnam as well, and there are costume similarities. Like the stripes on captain America and the red, blue, and white colours with a prominent star. Except we thought the comedian is a more realistic portrayal of a soldier.

We think that the comedian uses humor as his way with dealing with issues in life. He describes life as a joke that he just goes along with. I think that he just kind of uses this as an excuse to do what he wants. An example of this is when on page 11 box 2 The comedian says “You people are a joke, you hear Molochs back in town you think “Oh boy! Lets gang up and bust him!”. When he visits Moloch, we see the more vulnerable side of him.

Page Analysis

For our page analysis, we chose page 27. We thought the page had great visual impact, ties up loose ends from the chapter, and tells us a little more about The Comedian. The page shows various panels of Blake being punched, put, crying in Moloch’s house, and finally, being thrown out of the window. During these panels, Rorschach talks about Blake’s life and how we treated everything like a joke because he knew it wasn’t worth the effort. Rorschach ends the page explaining the “joke” he heard.

Key themes and symbols
One of the most recurring symbols in the book and the chapter is the five minutes ‘till midnight.  This can be seen on clocks, and even the famous smiley face button that belonged to the comedian makes the time ‘five to twelve ‘ if you look at it like a clock. This ‘five to twelve  them refers to the doomsday time. It’s almost like saying we are five minutes away from doomsday.

Here are just some random interesting observations we made while reading the book  that may make more sense later on or are just interesting.

-Laurie’s earrings are the Doctor Manhattan symbol when she is talking with her mother in California.

-Page 11 and 26 both have a burning map, the same drawing of a burning map.
And Sally Jupiter is reading a book called Nostalgia when Laurie visits

A common theme in this chapter was that the weather matched the story. While the funeral for Edward Blake was happening in New York, the weather was depressing and dark, however the weather in California was sunny which reflects Sally reminiscing about old times and a mother visiting in California.

Finally, death has been a common theme throughout the book, the first scene in chapter one was the death of Eddie Blake or ‘the comedian’. In this chapter, the first scene was his funeral. In the first two chapters death has been recurring. Death is also recurring when Rorschach visits Moloch, Moloch is dying of cancer. Which is a ‘normal’ death for someone who used to be a ‘super’ villain.

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