Who watches the Watchmen? We do! Case and Jmike, along with Doug Lief do! They’re here to talk about the comic and it’s various adaptations and spin offs.

Find Doug’s show: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nostalgium-arcanum/id1647660534

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Transcription

(AI Generated. Subject to Error)

00:00
Case
And that should help keep it tight, because again, it's just so fucking big. You could do a three hour podcast on each issue. When I was on JD's show for an episode talking about it, the edited version was over 4 hours and the actual call was like six.

00:13
Jmike
Oh, wow.

00:15
Case
And we still felt like we didn't cover everything.

00:16
Doug Lief
I don't have that kind of time. No, it's five minutes to midnight.

00:22
Case
I was not a father at the time. That was not a thing that I could do at this point in my life. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the men of Steel podcast. I'm case Aiken, and as always, I'm joined by my co host, J. Mike falsen.

00:41
Jmike
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show.

00:43
Case
We are touching on a subject that we, very early on in the show's run, tipped our toes into a little bit, but were scared of getting into the big one. But today we are talking about the.

00:56
Speaker 4
1980 maxi series Watchmen.

01:00
Case
And for that conversation, we are joined by Doug Leaf.

01:03
Doug Lief
Hello.

01:04
Speaker 4
Hey, Doug.

01:05
Case
Welcome to the show.

01:06
Speaker 4
Hey, man.

01:06
Doug Lief
Really, really excited to be here. I'm looking forward into digging into this.

01:10
Case
One for people who aren't familiar with you. Quick explanation of your show, nostalgia Markanum.

01:15
Doug Lief
As the name suggests, it's a nostalgia based podcast, so we just sort of interview a guest about something that, from their youth, that means a whole lot to them and why that thing resonates with them and why it still resonates today.

01:28
Speaker 4
Yeah, and I almost feel like we're.

01:30
Case
Doing an episode of your show here because talking about Watchmen, I don't think I've made any secret of it to anyone out there. Watchmen is like one of my favorite works of all time. What it set up my love of comics on a level that I honestly was not prepared for when I first encountered it and has continued to shape my approach to comic books in general.

01:52
Speaker 4
And my love of the creative team.

01:54
Case
It's exciting to talk about it here. I'm going to note that I have spent a lot of time talking about this comic on various things, and so if people want that, like, giant four hour conversation about Watchmen, you should go check out the episode of JD Martin's show Comics quest that I was on where went really deep into that one. Today, we're going to try to keep it a little bit more focused to the men of Steel of it all and have it be somewhat more focused on, like, how are they playing with the Superman archetype? What does this do for comics in general and how that impacts Superman, things like that, as opposed to deep dives into the comedian Aurora shack or any of the things that are kind of.

02:31
Speaker 4
Getting real far out there. So Watchmen, for me was the third.

02:37
Case
Trade paperback I ever had. The first one was this little digest sized version of Batman, the Untold Tales, I think it was called, which was like an origin story slash mystery clip show of Batman stuff. And then the death and return of Superman. And then my uncle got Watchmen for me for Christmas and I was way too young for it. This was like the first printing of the trade.

02:58
Speaker 4
And like, they were like, oh, yeah.

02:59
Case
This is a great comic. And I think I was like ten. Like, I did not understand. I enjoyed some of it, but I did not appreciate a lot of it. But it became this work that I had that I would come back to time and time again and find something new, find something fun, find something creative, and then eventually really get into the larger storytelling stuff that was going on with it all.

03:21
Speaker 4
So it's been a huge part of my life.

03:24
Case
Doug, you wanted to bring this comic to the show.

03:27
Speaker 4
What's your experience with it?

03:29
Doug Lief
I was aware of it because of its reputation, just because, again, one of the biggest comics of all time. I'm not a huge comic book reader. I've kind of read a handful of trade paperbacks, kind of the major ones, like, I don't know, the long Halloween. Right. I think I first became aware of it because of the v for vendetta movie that kind of brought Alan Moore into my orbit. And then the trailer for the Zack Snyder movie was attached to the Dark Knight. And so I saw that and I was like, all right, well, I know this thing is a big deal. I know there's a movie coming. I should go read the thing before I see the movie. And I was floored by it. I thought it was just so smart and there was so much going on with it.

04:09
Doug Lief
It was so genre defining, but also subverting all of the tropes of the genre in so many different ways. And it just had a lot to say. I remember being aware it was on, like, times list of the hundred greatest works of literature of the 20th century or something like that. And, yeah, it just, it stuck with me ever since. I really like the Zack Snyder movie, as a matter of fact, actually, I know it's a little bit divisive, but I personally really like it. And we'll talk about it because it makes one major change to the story, which I think improves it a thousand percent. Which is the ending. Yeah, there's just so much to dig into, especially for your podcast, specifically focusing on Superman and kind of the relationship of these characters, Manhattan in particular, to that archetype.

04:54
Speaker 4
Yeah. J Mike, it's been a while since.

04:57
Jmike
We talked about watchmen.

04:58
Case
We talked about it when the show came out. What's your association with the comic? When did you first hear about it? When did you first read it?

05:03
Jmike
So I think right around the time the movie came out. Cause everyone was like, oh, my God, this movie's so amazing. And I was like, cool, whatever. Don't really care when I actually, like, sat down. Cause I think it was, I've never finished the entire movie. Always catch it in, like, parts here or there. I think the first time I actually tried to, like, get through a significant portion of the comics is what were talking about the first time. I was like, okay, this is pretty good. And then I tried to go back and watch the movie again, and I have beef with Zack Snyder, just in case. Doug, you didn't know.

05:41
Doug Lief
No, you're correct to have a beef with Zack Snyder. He's done a lot of terrible stuff. This is a, to me, this is like, the exception that proves the rule.

05:49
Jmike
Like, this movie isn't what I thought it would be, mainly because his name's on it, and I'm like, boo, this guy sucks. But then I watched, I was like, all right, cool. It's not that bad. Like, the parts I've seen, I'm like, oh, okay. He changed some things here or there. He changed the personalities from what I've seen, but I'm like, oh, all right, it's not that bad.

06:07
Speaker 4
Yeah.

06:08
Case
So I think that's a fairly common experience for the two of you. I had a lot of friends when.

06:12
Speaker 4
The movie came out who for a.

06:14
Case
Long time, and still to a degree.

06:16
Speaker 4
But the Internet is more available to.

06:18
Case
People, and there's more just cultural knowledge of, like, what's going on with comics and where to look. But at the time, I had a lot of friends who wanted as much of an explainer in a short time.

06:28
Speaker 4
That I could give about it and.

06:30
Case
Thoughts about should they read the comic or not. And I remember showing a lot of people, like, where they could pick it up. Time I was living in New York, and I remember going to midtown comics, I think on three separate occasions with different friends and being like, yes, it's going to be in the trade paperback section here if you want to pick it up to read it. And at that point, they had switched the printing to the yellow button zoomed.

06:48
Speaker 4
In for the COVID versus the one.

06:49
Case
That was, like the broken glass, which is the original printing that I had. So I know a lot of people who became familiar with the material because of the movie. And that's why you make the movie, right?

06:59
Speaker 4
So it can get to a broader.

07:00
Case
Audience and have people be aware of a work of fiction and go back.

07:04
Speaker 4
To the original source material if they.

07:06
Case
Like it and sort of experience all of those aspects.

07:10
Speaker 4
I think it's important when looking at.

07:11
Case
Watchmen to look at the larger impact but also look at the context for when it came out.

07:16
Speaker 4
So when watchmen came out, I mean.

07:19
Case
Here'S the sort of, like, rundown, like, nitty gritty of, like, the. Of what it was, which was that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons had been collaborating on various projects over the years.

07:29
Speaker 4
Alan Moore was an up and coming.

07:30
Case
Like, huge writer who had major successes. So, like you mentioned, V for Vendetta, Dave, Miracle man was another huge one, which we spent a lot of time talking about. Swamp Thing was his big breakthrough in american comics at this point.

07:43
Speaker 4
And he had.

07:43
Case
Dave Gibbons had collaborated on some stuff, including they did the annual for Superman, what to get for the man who has everything, or for the man who has everything, which we've talked about on this show. So you can see that they're starting to, like, come together as these two creatives. Dave Gibbons has this very intricate art style. He has very realistic proportions to his work. And it's very well thought out shot composition and so forth, which works really well with Alan Moore's scripts, which, if you've ever seen an Alan Moore script is the most detailed breakdown of every single angle, every single light, every single, like, background detail that you could imagine. Like, they are dense works of art unto themselves.

08:18
Case
And so coming in this period, which is right around when DC was trying to figure out how to restructure itself to compete with the rise in Marvel. Like, Marvel had started to eat its lunch during the sixties, seventies and into the eighties.

08:31
Speaker 4
Now they were having a hard time.

08:33
Case
Really bringing in new people because it had become this byzantine structure of continuity and new properties had been brought on.

08:41
Speaker 4
And one of those new properties was the Charleston comics.

08:43
Case
So they bought this other line that was funny to go back and, like, look at a fairly conservative take on things. A lot of it was Steve Ditko's babies. And Steve Ditko is a big, like, Ayn Rand, just, like, objectivist kind of thinker. And so a lot of these characters were kind of designed that way. And Moore was like, well, I want.

09:02
Speaker 4
To do, like, an Alan Moore take.

09:03
Case
Of a thing, which is take an existing work and then completely recontextualize everything.

09:07
Speaker 4
And do something weird with it.

09:09
Case
And DC was like, well, no, we just bought. We just bought these guys. We can't break them just yet. Like, I know what you did to swamp thing. I know what you did to miracle man, but we can't do it just yet. So they were like, well, make a new concept. And so they're like, all right, well, we're gonna file off the serial numbers. And they took the basic ideas of the characters, and they're not all perfectly one to one, but they do match up roughly two characters that existed in the Charleston line and then sort of built this world that is a conversation on comic book or really on superhero storytelling, but then with the added consequences.

09:45
Speaker 4
Of, first of all, the ripple effect of their actions and the impact of.

09:49
Case
Just what the real world is like to characters who had existed in the comics code. And so those two big elements combined within this decision to do way more with each issue and with the larger structure as a whole, from a planning.

10:02
Speaker 4
And I guess the best way to say it is to take a lot of what had become sort of like.

10:06
Case
Film theory and apply it to comics the same way that Eisner had taken film theory of the day and applied it to the spirit to do things like, we're going to have all these, like, repeated shots. We're going to have angles matter, we're going to have lighting matter. We're going to do all the things that, like, people can write essays about in any sort of, like, college thesis or whatever, and apply that to a comic book, and which had typically been perceived as being sort of four kids in a rushed, out effort. And this is going to be, here's this twelve issue maxi series with just so much attention to detail put into it, just ripping apart what had become.

10:39
Speaker 4
The standard of the time. And then it was a hit. It was such a hit that DC.

10:44
Case
Was like, well, we don't want to pay the royalties. That part of the contract included, which was if it was ever out of publication, the rights would revert back to the creators and we would lose out on any sort of money on this one. So they just kept on reprinting the trade paperbacks.

10:58
Speaker 4
And so watchmen, in one way, is.

11:00
Case
The reason why the trade paperback boom of the nineties happened, which is a crazy part. And then it also influenced a lot of creators going into the nineties and beyond in terms of, like, what they could do. With comics, it's a big part for what's considered, like, the image boom. It's a big part of the eventual dissolution of the comics code authority. And it is hugely influential in terms of even just the interpretation of the characters. Like, despite the fact that they didn't want to use the Charleston characters, those Charleston characters are influenced by the popularity of their watchmen analogs. Rorschach has influenced the question, and Doctor Manhattan has influenced Captain Atom, and Peacemaker has been influenced by the comedian. So there's a lot of this, like.

11:39
Speaker 4
Sort of ripple effect on this all. Here's a question for the two of you.

11:43
Case
When looking at Watchmen as a comic.

11:45
Speaker 4
Property, specifically, what was the moment where.

11:48
Case
It really hit you? Like, oh, they're doing some very creative stuff with it.

11:55
Doug Lief
I think right away. The opening of it with the death of the comedian, it's extremely evocative in the way it's drawn. It's kind of brutal, and it brings you into the world in a great way of, like, letting you know, like, okay, this is an alternate 1985. We've got this murder happening, and there's so much attention to detail in every individual shot of that it sets you up for this very adult world that it's going to bring you into. And, like you said, a lot of comics were especially of, you know, that time were a lot of, you know, whee for kids. And here it's like, okay, we're going to get into a story where, like, politics matters. Like, global politics matters. There's a rape at, like, the. The center of the story, right?

12:38
Doug Lief
There's all these things that would not be at home with, like, oh, man, Peter Parker lost his pizza delivery job. We're getting into this stuff that is really only for adults and trying to use it not just to tell an adult story in terms of, like, the individual incident, but also the conversation that's happening with the world around it about, like, okay, who deserves power and who watches the Watchmen, right? The central question of it. So right away, all that stuff grabs you, and there's a sense of, like, authorial command from Alan Moore here. It's the kind of thing that's like, Stanley Kubrick has this where it's just like, you start watching a movie, and, like, I don't know what's gonna happen. It might be weird.

13:17
Doug Lief
It might not follow convention, but I know the guy who's behind the wheel knows what he's doing, so I'm gonna be along for this ride, because he's got something planned here. And I wanna see how it unfolds.

13:30
Case
Just the opening investigation from the murder and the way it zooms up the cops interaction. And then Rorschach's silent investigation of the apartment and figuring out details. Like, figuring out that the comedian has all the stuff hidden in the wardrobe but based on noticing that the wardrobe is way too shallow for how big of a unit it is, but there's no words drawn to it. I know people who read that scene and didn't process, like, oh, that's how we figured it out. He measures how wide it is and shows the creativity of the character. But then it's a completely silent investigation sequence that pieces together this whole thing and then lays this out for the audience.

14:12
Doug Lief
And just with his little monologue as he's introducing this where he talks about the people will look up, say, save us. And I'll whisper, no, this is our hero, or one of our heroes we're first introduced to. And already it's like turning superhero stuff on its head where it's like, no, no. You're supposed to want to save the huddled masses. And he's already telling him, I might be your hero, but I'm not going to do that.

14:35
Speaker 4
Yeah.

14:35
Case
I mean, he has the brutal scene where he goes to get information and he starts breaking fingers from the guy in the bar. And it's like, that's not what they did in comic books at this point.

14:45
Speaker 4
Yeah.

14:46
Doug Lief
I mean, even for, like, you know, someone like Batman who, like, you know, knock a bunch of heads together. Together. It's. You know, this is pretty brutal. But it's not just the brutality of his actions. It's the, you know, it's the harshness of his worldview outside of, you know, I don't know, maybe the Punisher and some other characters like that. It's very bleak and dark. And there's not any other characters that have a much sunnier worldview than he does, even amongst our heroes.

15:11
Speaker 4
Yeah.

15:11
Case
And I mean, and then through that first issue, were introduced to all these characters and we see they're all in various states of.

15:18
Speaker 4
There's this element of early Alan Moore.

15:20
Case
Stuff, which is weird to think about because now I'm realizing, like, oh, he actually wasn't quite that old yet. Where it's a lot about, like, the midlife crises of characters. When we looked at Miracle man, it was like, oh, wow. It hits very different when you're pushing 40 versus when you're in your teens. Are you talking about case and, like. Well, and, like, you know, characters like, Dan Dryburg is, like, very much in that situation. And also Hollis Mason being someone who is completely past his prime reflecting on the glory days of being a superhero. Like, there's this nostalgia that they're experiencing and we're sort of witnessing, remembering how it all kind of fell apart.

15:53
Case
And we, the audience, because we don't know all the details we're being filled in on how things used to be good in their eyes but also still kind of broken and all those, like, those little pieces of it. And that lead to this, like, sad, lonely, middle aged Dan Dreiberg living by himself but having a Batcave under his apartment and Ozymandias being this, like, weird, sort of out of touch, like, business guy and then Doctor Manhattan who isn't even human anymore at this point.

16:22
Speaker 4
Like, he's just so far removed from all that. And the first issue also does a great job of setting up the weirder.

16:27
Case
Structure of this book which is that every issue has supplemental material. At the end of it all the first couple chapters have the memoirs of Hollis Mason which gives us a lot of information. And frankly, we'll have to talk a bit about that in a minute because we have to talk about some characters that we mostly know through the supplementals. The later issues also have, like, all this, like, extra layers of detail. Like, they have, like, an advertising pitch for a toy line in there and they have, like, a Playboy interview. And, like, there's so much more going on than just like, here's the comic. And then the comic itself has so much artistry going into it.

16:56
Doug Lief
Within all of that stuff, you also have all of the black freighter, you know, supplementary material. It's a lot.

17:00
Speaker 4
Yeah. J Mike, for you, what was, like a big, like, light bulb moment when.

17:05
Case
You were reading this?

17:06
Jmike
So I was trying to compare what I remember from the movie, the book. I was like, hey, you know, this Rorschach character looks very different from how, like, we see him in the comic book versus how we see him in the movie because, like, in the, in the movie, they kind of, like, glorify a lot of what he did. But in the comics, he's more of, like a, he's more of a crazier, anti hero ish type. Like, this is my version of justice and this is how I'm going to deal with everything type character even though he could be very wrong about it. But it's more of, like, this is how I want my justice to be versus, like, how everyone else feels like it should be.

17:47
Speaker 4
Yeah. Rorschach, even in the first issue before.

17:50
Case
We find out more about him. He's the first character I ever really distinctly remember being dirty in a comic book.

17:56
Speaker 4
Yeah.

17:57
Case
Because, like, his clothes are worn. He's got stains all over them from all the various things, including blood.

18:03
Jmike
Yeah, but, like, you kind of feel from. Because he comes from, like, a very, like, traumatized background. Like, he had a lot of stuff going on when he was growing up. They're like, okay, that can kind of, like, it shapes their version of morality from everything else. But then he kind of, like, takes it a step forward.

18:21
Doug Lief
He does. But then again, like, out of all the characters, his moral compass kind of has the most clarity, which is at odds with sometimes. But, I mean, he's brutal. But he also, I think, has a fairly clear sense of, like, this is right and this is wrong, which is what ultimately leads to his death at the end, which is him saying, like, no, it doesn't matter that if we tell everybody, it will undo this fragile piece because this is wrong. This is a terrible war crime that Ozymandias has committed. And I think that's why he's mostly our point of view character for the movie. And this, like, we kind of, you kind of tend to like him in spite of his brutality.

19:00
Doug Lief
Like, sometimes it's funny, he has a lot of the best comedic lines in the thing but you start going, like, as much as this guy is brutal, he doesn't make as many compromises. And he's, I think, easier to like because of that. You know, you just sort of want to go along for the ride with this gritty detective despite his obvious failings.

19:21
Speaker 4
It kind of reminds me of the.

19:22
Case
Line from Braveheart which is, like, uncompromising men are easy to admire. Obviously, the whole, the white and black mask is, like, supposed to be representative of, like, there's just no blending between his perceptions of right and wrong. And, you know, when you get into it, like, the actual story shows that he is actually more compromised than he thinks he is. But it's in, like, specific moments or like, he has mercy or he has elements of vengeance that go beyond the pale because all of these characters are broken in some way, you know, beyond all of that. But it's so interesting having this character who, again, is like an archetype that you see in this kind of fiction all the time. Like, the question, it feels very much like the shadow.

20:02
Case
You know, it's like that kind of like, pulp kind of detective character in a fedora busting down the doors and getting information. And, like, I remember Superman did that.

20:10
Jmike
In his first book.

20:12
Doug Lief
Right?

20:13
Case
Well, like, that's what I'm saying, which is that, like, that kind of archetype even predates the sort of the super element of it all.

20:19
Doug Lief
And I think he pairs nicely with Doctor Manhattan, who is the more obvious Superman analogue. Rorschach's kind of single minded view of morality is very humanistic. It's very grounded in the trauma he's suffered, the trauma he's witnessed. Right. The story about the girl who gets kidnapped and killed and fed to dogs versus Doctor Manhattan, who is so beyond detached from any of that. Those are your two polar opposites in a way, as, like the comedian points out. He has that scene where comedian's confronted by this vietnamese woman who he's impregnated and he just shoots her. And Doctor Manhattan is like, oh, God, why'd you do that? And he basically says, like, hey, you could have turned the bullets into Steam. You could have done anything you wanted to stop it. You just stood there. Because that's who Doctor Manhattan is.

21:05
Doug Lief
These people are all just collections of carbon and nitrogen and such to him.

21:10
Case
We're being filled in with so much detail about this while at the same time showing all the limitations of these characters. Yeah, we're going to talk more about Doctor Manhattan. Obviously, we're going to spend some time.

21:20
Speaker 4
Talking about him on my end with this series.

21:23
Case
Like I said, I was given it way, way too young and took a long time to even process some of the horrors that happened within it because I just didn't have the lexicon to describe it all. But for me, it sort of created this scenario of, well, I was super familiar with a lot of things from the events. Every issue I knew very well. In a lot of ways, I took things for granted. At some point, I was reading about it and I saw a reference to the issue, fearful symmetry and realizing that, like, oh, my God.

21:54
Case
Every single panel is mirrored from the entire issue from the angles that the shots are from to the lighting situation for each one to, like, where the cops side story appears within that, every single part of that leading to the center point of the issue which, if you're looking at the individual issue and not the trade, you know, saddle stitch is going to be like, that's where the staple is holding the whole thing together. And you get this v center frame with two bodies with reflections happening that.

22:22
Speaker 4
All, like, perfectly mirror it. For me, that was like, my real.

22:25
Case
Like, holy crap, what is this thing? Like, they're doing so much. And it's not just like, oh, there's a mere shot in it, like, at one spot, but, like, even down to, like, where the eyeline for the camera is supposed to be. And I'm saying camera because I don't have a better way of describing it. Like. Like where we are looking at things and how they are lighting things. Like, there's a flashing neon sign outside of Moloch's place that the rhythm of the flash matters to the rhythm of the panels.

22:51
Speaker 4
That was the spot where I was.

22:52
Case
Like, oh, it's not just the character stuff. It's not just the world building stuff. Like things like Doctor Manhattan's ending, the Vietnam war, and the alternate history that we're seeing as a result of it. All those are really cool lore elements that have been put in there, but it's like, oh, they're thinking about every part of every frame of this comic.

23:12
Doug Lief
Yeah. I mean, that level of detail is just something that, you know, again, I associate that with. With more his. I don't know if you call it mental illness, but, like, he's got this, like, you know, insane kind of commitment to his stuff that leads to these levels of ambition that other writers just will not even. They won't even conceive of this stuff, let alone try to pull it off.

23:34
Case
Just incredible stuff that they were working with. And then you get into some of the larger twists of the series, like the fact that the ending kind of bad guy wins. But then also it might be kind of undone because referencing back to Rorschach and his uncompromising nature, he sends the information that he has to an Alex Jones style rag. It's a wild world that we're being presented. Let's move on to actually talking about.

24:00
Speaker 4
The characters and how they sort of.

24:02
Case
Represent the Superman archetype.

24:03
Speaker 4
So Doctor Manhattan, we kind of want.

24:05
Case
To talk about first, because Doctor Manhattan is the most obvious thing. It's a giant, blue, superpowered being the only superpowered being in this world. But it's so different from how you would normally think about that kind of.

24:18
Speaker 4
Element, you know, built on this idea.

24:20
Case
Of a guy leaping into action, saving the day. But here it's this truly divorced from reality, borderline omnipotent being that is, in his own way, trapped by his power into whatever cycle he's living out.

24:35
Jmike
Question, is he, like, straight up immortal from this point forward, or is, like, he gonna die eventually?

24:40
Doug Lief
It's not stated in the book, but it's implied. Yeah, he is eternal now.

24:44
Jmike
Wasn't sure. Just wanted to ask.

24:46
Doug Lief
So many stories about Superman where they're trying to come up. What's a cool angle on Superman? It's always like, well, what if Superman was evil, right? We're afraid he's going to use this power to do wrong, and none of them will ever equal this. Which is, what if Superman was not evil necessarily, but was sort of could not be trusted because his concerns are so far beyond ours, right? His perspective on the world is so different and so distorted now by his immense power. He talks a lot about, he says something like, hey, a dead body structurally is the same as a live one. It's the same collection of atoms and stuff. It's almost lovecraftian, right? Like, the way he views everyone, the way he views time is distorted.

25:36
Doug Lief
He can see his own past and future up to a certain point simultaneously at all times. He's also tied into this notion of relativity, which he said his father was a watchmaker. Then Einstein came along and discovered relativity, and that made his father want to basically throw watchmaking out the window, because it sort of made time not irrelevant, essentially, but that idea of like, yeah, time is a construct, and that's what sends young John Osterman on his journey to become a physicist. All of this stuff is swirling in the mix that basically says, yeah, this guy's outside of time. He's outside of morality.

26:11
Doug Lief
He's outside of the laws of physics and matter and energy and how that shapes his view of like, well, then why should he care about these little collections of carbon and nitrogen walking around and the different horrible things they do to each other? And you watch this guy, I mean, as we shuffle back and forth through the chronology, you watch him devolve towards this detachment that is, by design, terrifying.

26:39
Case
Yeah, we get such a good look into his way of thinking in the fourth issue, which is his whole viewpoint issue, which is told completely out of chronological order, but not just like it's cutting about, but his thought process is cutting about. Everything is being told from the perspective of like, well, in 5 seconds, this is going to happen. But then ten years ago, this happened. Now we're down to 2 seconds, and now moving so rapidly about this whole thing and seeing such a different perspective of it all. It's such a weird way of expanding on what had already been presented as this kind of cold, distant, super powerful being and really sort of getting you in that mindset.

27:15
Speaker 4
A long time ago, I took a.

27:17
Case
Course on heroic literature, and one of the big conversations was how you classify a hero based on their power of action. So you end up in the scenario where you have ironic heroes who have no power of action and the heroic quality to them is the fact that they are resisting even in spite of this all, you have low memetic heroes who have, like, their own personal abilities to do things, which would be like a John McClane type character who's like, he's running around, but he can't. It's the limitations of the person. In this scenario, a high memetic hero is someone who is able to influence people around them. This is a leader. This is like Aragorn in Lord of the Rings.

27:49
Case
You get into romantic heroes where we start delving into the mythological where they either can interact with beings far superior or are outside of the realm of what humans can do some regard. So this is where we would have, like, a Hercules type. And then you get into the divine heroes and usually that's where, like, they can do anything. But the interesting part about this is it's a wheel. And so, like, Doctor Manhattan is in a sense, a divine hero. He's a God like being who can do all this stuff. But by virtue of being so aware of the framework of everything he's aware of how atoms need to be positioned for them to work. And he's aware of how time is supposed to work.

28:24
Case
It kind of makes him trapped all the way back to being like, an ironic character because he sees the flow of time and sees how it's limited. His ability to be heroic towards the end of the series is kind of by his power being reduced by ozymandias interfering with his ability to see through time.

28:41
Speaker 4
And that allows him to sort of.

28:42
Case
At least like, feeling like he has his own impetus, like feeling like he has his own drive as opposed to just following the motions. Like, you know, we talked about the scene in Vietnam where he allows the pregnant woman to get shot. To him, it already happened.

28:55
Doug Lief
He's very deterministic. Yeah, he just sort of sees, like, well, if every. If causality is just this set of electrons bumping into each other, you know, he can see every particle and what it's doing, then, yeah, every outcome is just on this continuum of stuff. And that really messes with the idea of, like, the whole point of being a superman is of course, to affect the outcome for the better. Right? Like, I'm going to stop the mugging from happening. And here it's like, well, whether Doctor Manhattan stops the mugging from happening or not, it's, again, it's already happened. His influence is, on the one hand, it's God like ultimate power. And yet he is, from his perspective, completely on rails.

29:37
Speaker 4
And so we end up with this character who. I mean, he kind of allows people.

29:41
Case
To sort of drive him anyway. Like, he. He never really makes a choice. Even before he becomes a super being. Like, we find out his origins as being, like, a watchmaker's son and then being pushed into being a nuclear physicist. It's because his dad tells him to, you know, like, he never is, like, really doing his, like, what he wants.

29:56
Speaker 4
And then when he becomes a super.

29:58
Case
Being he allows the government just to tell him what to do. Like, even his career, like, fighting crime, is because they're like, oh, yeah, well, you're a super being. So, like, go beat up the bad guys and shit.

30:07
Speaker 4
And he does it, and it's kind.

30:08
Case
Of horrifying when he does. Like, they have a shot of him when he's, like, at Moloch's nightclub or whatever and he just is exploding a person because he's told, like, well, yeah, no, go fight the bad guys. And it's just like, yeah, this God being just destroys everything around him.

30:22
Doug Lief
Utterly terrifying. That feeling of, like, you can't stop him. He is truly unstoppable. And what if he makes a mistake?

30:30
Speaker 4
That's the thing.

30:31
Doug Lief
He's not actually infallible. He even says he's not omniscient. Right. He doesn't know everything. So he could walk into a situation, believe someone to have committed a crime and vaporize the person incorrectly. And that would be. There's no recourse for that. Just like with Rorschach. In a way, it's a sense of, like, well, justice. And right and wrong is whatever they say it is.

30:54
Speaker 4
And what's interesting about it is that.

30:55
Case
He'S not omniscient but he kind of is. But it's, like, in this weird, broken way of how his powers work. So he could be operating under false statements or false information and find out later that they were false and know this in the past because he knows the future. But the way that his, like, the actions are supposed to play out still play out that way, I think.

31:17
Jmike
Are we overthinking this?

31:19
Doug Lief
No. I mean, though, they want you to overthink this. You look at the whole thing with him and silk Spectre on Mars, right? He brings her there so that she can convince him to reconnect with humanity and to care again to help the world avoid nuclear war, which she does. It's very hard to. I think it's still pretty hard to parse exactly what it is. That helps him come to this realization. But bottom line is, he could foresee the entire conversation, it already happened in his mind. So going through the motion of actually doing it's like, does he have to then fulfill this to ensure that the timeline doesn't get broken? It's very interesting, the idea. You have to convince somebody of an idea he already knows he's going to be convinced by. You can't even square that with normal human thought processes.

32:08
Case
I think that there is a larger point being made about the nature of comics as well, or at least storytelling.

32:14
Speaker 4
In this, in how he approaches this all.

32:16
Case
Manhattan describes time as being this multifaceted gym that people only look at one side at a time. But you could also see it from the perspective of people looking at a comic book and knowing, like, when comic books come out, when most stories come out, but especially when a comics code approved comic book comes out, you know the good guys are going to win. Like, you know that's the end point that's going to occur, and that the question is, well, is there value in the telling? Is there a story that has to play out that will make you feel a certain way, even if you know that's how it's supposed to go?

32:46
Case
Like, when you reread a book that you've already read, are you taking in, are you experiencing a thing and having an emotional response, despite the fact that there's novelty to this all? And I think that there's an element going on with that because, like, he's hurt. When she tells him that she's sleeping with Dan Dryberg, that hurts him. He already said, when you tell me.

33:06
Speaker 4
About it, two or three pages before that.

33:08
Case
So it's not that he's not aware of it's just that there's still this emotional response to acting out the scenes that gets into this larger kind of craziness of it all. But, yeah, it hurts your brain to really try to think about, to think, like, well, in the future, this thing's going to happen, and so it's going to make me feel that way when.

33:27
Speaker 4
I get to it.

33:27
Case
When you're actually in that perspective, and it's so much easier to be removed to be a reader looking at it as opposed to the person in it, as opposed to being that meta character who can skip to the end of the story and see how it all plays out.

33:40
Doug Lief
I mean, it's interesting that he does have emotions despite this nonlinearity of time and despite the fact that he generally appears to not have emotions. He is very detached. There's no question that he is. But he still is obviously very upset by being accused of giving everyone cancer, including his ex, to the point where he all of a sudden just shouts at them, leave me alone, and fucks off to Mars. That is uncharacteristic of him. And it shows, like, there is still some of his humanity left, even as it is, I guess, draining away. And again, to contrast that with Superman. Superman is all about this alien who really, though, he comes to earth and he assimilates to be one of us. And here it's that in reverse, right?

34:23
Doug Lief
This is a human being more and more alienated by humanity, and I love that so much. I think without this innovation of this character, if all of the characters in Watchmen were just, you know, non superpowered vigilantes, I think you would lose something. You need a character like this to kind of complete the metaphor that. That Alan Moore is going for.

34:47
Speaker 4
Yeah, it kind of feels like a.

34:49
Case
Stone dropped into a pond that causes ripples. And seeing how that changes much of it, like, the way the world plays.

34:55
Speaker 4
Out is so weird.

34:56
Case
But a lot of the ways that.

34:57
Speaker 4
Gets really weird is because he's there.

34:59
Case
Obviously, there's the political ramifications and, like, there's the whole doomsday clock thing going on here. Like, this is, obviously, this was written during the cold War as opposed to after the cold War, but this is a world where the tensions have been ramped up so dramatically that everything feels like it's just about to end like that. You know, there's this huge nihilistic vibe that just permeates every scene. And it only gets to that point.

35:25
Speaker 4
Because Manhattan is there.

35:26
Case
That's one part of it. The technologies that allow for some of.

35:29
Speaker 4
The stories to happen because they.

35:31
Case
Are studying the crazy shit that John is able to do. Like, he's. He has all these things that they can at the very least, like, look at and kind of approximate. Like, they figure out teleportation. It doesn't work very well, but they, you know, they have something to reference. Electric vehicles are everywhere because they have. Yeah, like, there's all this work that he's able to sort of advance.

35:51
Doug Lief
Like, even Rorschach's mask.

35:53
Speaker 4
Is that.

35:54
Case
Is that explicitly a thing that allows.

35:56
Doug Lief
Yeah, it was one of my favorite details in there is that the fabric, this, like, sort of magical fabric that is his face, that fabric was made possible because of technology develop out of Doctor Manhattan's powers. I think that might be one of the supplementary things. It's buried in there. But I remember noticing it when I read it. Like, oh, that's really clever.

36:16
Case
Again, there's all these crazy background details for it and little ways where characters interact and overlap with each other and impact things. And then there's shit like how Manhattan's presence sort of makes that first wave of wannabe heroes kind of fall apart. Hollis Mason decides to retire. And then in retiring, he's talking to Osterman, and Ostrovn's like, yep, everything's going to shift over to electric cars soon. And, like, this guy who's going to just become a mechanic is just like, oh, my entire. My career is fucked, damn it. Like, it goes off into, like, this, like, depressive spiral. You know, we see the weirdness that impacts, like, Captain Metropolis and, like, ozymandias and all these characters who are influenced to think about the world in a different way because Doctor Manhattan is there.

37:00
Doug Lief
I mean, he represents what's possible, right? He is the guy that you look to and go like, okay, you know, all of these physics breakthroughs and stuff, right? Like, we never would have, in theory, got there or would have gotten there much later without him providing these shortcuts. Like, you inject all of this, like, advanced technology before the populace is ready for it. And this is where you get to a lot of the bad stuff that Ozymandias is up to.

37:26
Jmike
So was the technology only limited to America, or was it, like, far spreading to everywhere else around the world?

37:31
Case
I imagine that it spreads beyond just american soil just because the way.

37:36
Jmike
The point of view. Yeah, the point of view is, like, mainly american.

37:40
Case
Yeah. Like, we're not really, like, elements. Like him being able to mass produce, like, the batteries. I imagine those got exported for profit because why wouldn't they?

37:48
Speaker 4
I imagine that there are certain, like.

37:49
Case
Divides where, like, some things move more freely than others.

37:53
Doug Lief
There's still very obviously, the cold war is in full swing, so there's got to be some east west divide. But I don't know that the book goes into that much detail about how wide ranging the technological changes are. But it's implied that America would be ahead of the technology race because of Doctor Manhattan.

38:11
Case
We know that the world is different just in general. We know that because of the way Vietnam played out, because of the ways other events play out. Even things like the fast food restaurants are different because of which cultures made footholds into America versus other locations. The idea is that once we start creating these John bar points where the timeline is diverging, it spirals out way beyond. While there are plenty of elements that are the same. There are new stories that happen later. There's Kitty Genovese, which, man, that's a story that this comic is operating under. A perception of how things went that we know is very different now of the actual, like, logistics, such as people actually did.

38:51
Speaker 4
Coley cops, for example.

38:53
Case
So much kind of, like, spirals out in a way that, like, comics normally.

38:56
Speaker 4
Aren'T allowed to do. And so, like, that's where it's really.

38:58
Case
Interesting and, like, why having just Doctor Manhattan is important also, because if you had more characters like that, I think the world would be impossible to predict.

39:08
Doug Lief
I mean, that's the one question that I had with it, which is, like, there's not one other person who would say, I want to go through that machine. You know, this is a machine that makes gods. I think we have to just assume there's something kind of one in a million about this. But that is a question that they don't delve into, is what if there were two Doctor Manhattans? You know, how would that play out? But I think it would diminish the story. It's a fun mental exercise, but, like, the idea of there being one of these beings with this kind of power helps kind of focus everything.

39:38
Case
I imagine that the presentation of, like, how Doctor Manhattan thinks about things is the reason why he was able to go through that process and then reassemble himself. Like, the watchmaker component, I think, is very important to it all. Like, him being able to see, like, okay, it's not just that he understands the world. It's that he understands, like, how everything fits together to run. I couldn't do that. Like, I have a basic idea of, like, what our skeleton looks like and, like, what all the veins and our muscles look like. But, like, I couldn't tell you from scratch. Like, atom by atom, build yourself together. Like, that requires a level of precision that only a character who's established to have just this complete, meticulous control of that could allow. And I think that sort of speaks more to his power is ultimately mental.

40:24
Case
Everything he does after he becomes Doctor Manhattan is based on moving electrons around, is based on changing the number of protons. He's changing the atomic structure of things, and it requires a mind to do it. His teleportation abilities require his mind because when we're able to approximate the technology, it still kills everyone. Like, it doesn't work because it needs, like, that perfect, ordered brain to put it all together. So, like, John Osterman's a weird fucking dude. Before he becomes Doctor Manhattan. But he's also probably the only weird fucking dude who could become Doctor Manhattan.

40:55
Jmike
Yeah, you're definitely right because all the other heroes would either go batshit crazy. Could you imagine, like, a Rorschach doctor Manhattan?

41:01
Case
Well, like, yeah, all right.

41:04
Jmike
Ozymandias, Doctor Manhattan.

41:05
Case
And actually, that's the one I was going to say which. So, like, Ozymandias, for example, is very smart but he does not see how things piece together the same way. And I think that's also an element of what allows Doctor Manhattan to function which is that he doesn't have agency the same way. Characters who have bigger plans for things who would try to push agendas of things probably are losing sight of certain details in the process.

41:27
Speaker 4
I think this is a good time.

41:28
Case
For us to move on to Ozymandias because this is talking about a character who is sort of presented as being a superman in the framework of being a human taken to the extreme and who ultimately has big plans for rearranging the world. But he's missing details like the end. While he kind of wins he also.

41:46
Speaker 4
Kind of probably loses in the long run.

41:49
Case
The last shot of the series is that he wasn't really paying attention to Rorschach enough and that Rorschach had collected a lot of information about the plan and had shipped it off to some crazy fucking right wing rag which was probably going to fuck up a lot of those plans.

42:05
Doug Lief
Well, obviously he's, you, know, I mean, it's in his name that he's going to fail. I mean, yeah, it's. It's right there in the poem. But to me, Ozymandias as a superman figure, right? He wants to be. He literally catches a bullet at one point because it's reputed that he can do that. And we see him do it at the end and he wants to reorder the world to make it a better place. But he looks at everything in this utilitarian way, right? I'm killing millions to save billions and he's not totally wrong. But the worldview of Alan Moore and this world is kind of extremely cynical about human nature to where it's like even if he succeeds even without Rorschach potentially screwing it up it's like, yeah, okay, we've achieved peace through this belief in a, you know, a common antagonist.

42:54
Doug Lief
But for how long? How long can this really hold? It's that arrogance, I think that is his undoing both in the short term and in the long term of this idea. This plan is you are not going to fundamentally change human nature. And again, the most powerful being, Doctor Manhattan, says, I can't do that. I can change air into gold or whatever, but I can't make people behave differently than what they are.

43:18
Speaker 4
We said that earlier during the crime.

43:19
Case
Busters failed meeting where he's like, well, with the right intelligence, I think superheroes could actually go out there and shape society into a better future. And like, the comedian's just like, that's a fucking joke, man. That's not going to happen. I mean, he's way harsher about it all.

43:35
Speaker 4
But, like, you can't just have this.

43:36
Case
Arrogant, distant perspective of like, I'm going to move all the pieces around.

43:40
Speaker 4
It doesn't work.

43:41
Case
We see throughout the whole series that, like, Ozymandias, despite the fact that he.

43:45
Speaker 4
Is very capable, there's a lot of.

43:47
Case
Reason for him to have this level of hype. But he's still limited to being a person. When he confronts Manhattan at the end.

43:53
Speaker 4
Like, yeah, no, Manhattan.

43:55
Case
He doesn't have a means of stopping him. The only thing he has is a means of explaining himself sufficiently there.

44:01
Speaker 4
But it's only a short term win as far as we can tell.

44:06
Case
Like you said, how long could peace even last? Those hostilities are going to flare up again.

44:11
Speaker 4
We'll talk a little bit about some.

44:12
Case
Of the spin offs that have happened and how they've tried to address it, but I don't think anyone would be surprised to hear that. A couple years later, it's all back to square one.

44:20
Speaker 4
Maybe it was a de escalation, but.

44:22
Case
You'Re doing some really fucked up stuff and there's going to be a knock on effect that you don't see.

44:27
Doug Lief
Consequences are kind of what this thing is about in a large way.

44:31
Jmike
Right?

44:31
Doug Lief
Again, all of this watchmaker stuff, this stuff about time and every electron bouncing off every other electron makes causality kind of this inescapable, linear thing. And so you combine that with the idea of, like, well, humans are inherently flawed in this way. And, like, yeah, and that's exactly what Doctor Manhattan sees. It's like, inevitably, you get back to this point and therefore, that's not how you make the world better in this giant macro way or with these enormous world paradigm shifting events. The way that you make the world better is the one he sees, which is in, oh, well, silk Specter and Nite Owl can get together and have a nice life. It's these small scale victories that you can achieve that make the world a better place collectively. You're not just gonna do it in one master stroke.

45:25
Speaker 4
Why don't we talk about the plan.

45:27
Case
Of Ozymandias and some of the weirder pieces that are involved in it all?

45:32
Speaker 4
We probably should have put it like.

45:33
Case
We'Re just gonna assume that you've read this book.

45:36
Speaker 4
So the squid plan, I don't know.

45:39
Case
How well it makes sense to people if you haven't been reading the supplementary material because there's a lot of, like, weird shit that happens in the back chapters. For example, we know that they have this whole collection of artists and writers that they bring to this island. Sort of, like, shape out this, like, crazy monster that they're working on. The writer is the writer of the.

45:58
Speaker 4
Black freighter stories that we read all.

46:00
Case
These, like, interviews about. This, like, kind of apricot kind of.

46:03
Speaker 4
Feels like Alan Moore to a certain.

46:05
Case
Degree, with, like, his overly, like, precise, like, explanations of every single panel.

46:10
Speaker 4
We get elements of that.

46:11
Case
We get, you know, talk about some of the advancements in technology that leads to the teleportation. We get the bioengineers creating, like, all this crazy stuff, you know, and we see, like, a much cuter example with Bubastis, but then we also see this, like, fucking monster that they're, like, hinting at throughout. Meanwhile, we've got stuff like the assassin that he, like, hires to attack himself so that he is not under suspicion. We've got stuff like the lock company that is constantly fixing Dan Dryberg's lock is the Gordian knot lock company. And so it's owned by Ozymandias. Like, he's keeping tabs on all the people around him very covertly in this whole process. It's a weird, long, drawn out plan of, like, oh, yeah. Well, I gave away all my wealth.

46:51
Speaker 4
That my parents gave me so that.

46:53
Case
I could build myself up from scratch, minus the fact that he has all the connections and all the training and all this stuff. And he rebuilds himself into being a billionaire and then secretly starts laying the foundation to create the greatest hoax ever.

47:08
Speaker 4
And then misses some minor details to.

47:11
Case
Him that will ultimately cause it to.

47:14
Speaker 4
All kind of fall apart.

47:15
Doug Lief
There's obviously merit to this idea of, like, oh, well, I'll get the world to rally around a common enemy, so I'll just invent the common enemy by creating what appears to be an alien invasion, and then everyone will be, you know, working on, together on the plan to defeat these aliens, you know, whenever the next one plans on showing up. Right. I think the movie's innovation of making the common enemy doctor Manhattan just squares that circle so much better. It's so much cleaner. He's already an alien in their midst that everyone's afraid of. It fits with his motivation to leave Earth at the end. And it doesn't feel like a. It comes out of fucking nowhere the way it does in the book where it's like, surprise, giant alien brain squid.

47:58
Doug Lief
But the fundamental of the plan is ultimately the same in either version of the story. And, like, we sort of already been talking about, it's such a flawed plan because it's so temporary even without Rorschach's mucking it up. But, like, the length that he's willing to go to for just on this one utilitarian concept, right? I'll kill a bunch of people and then everyone will be afraid and they.

48:19
Speaker 4
Won'T have wars anymore of.

48:21
Doug Lief
It's like the ultimate expression of this book's view of what power is and who gets to. Right. He decides. He makes that decision for everybody else on the planet. No one else gets to be involved. And he kills all of the people. I believe ultimately that helped with it, right, to cover his ship, right? Yeah.

48:36
Case
He bombs the ship and then the scientists later at his last base that he poisons them all. Everyone who's attached, he kills. In some way.

48:43
Doug Lief
It's about as dastardly a comic book villain plan as there's ever been.

48:47
Speaker 4
But in the name of peace. Well, that's good.

48:51
Doug Lief
I mean, you need your villain to believe he's a good guy.

48:53
Jmike
Right.

48:53
Doug Lief
It works much better. I mean, to the point that, like, all of the other crime busters are like. Except for Rorschach, are like, yeah, I guess now that it's happened, I guess we don't want to make the sacrifice for nothing.

49:04
Jmike
Right.

49:05
Doug Lief
So we'll go along with it again.

49:07
Case
He does have a foundation of competency.

49:11
Speaker 4
And accuracy to a degree. Like, he is kind of right at.

49:14
Case
The beginning at least, that it does cause a ceasefire of sorts or like a de escalation of everything that's going on. Yeah, it's a weird spot for them.

49:25
Speaker 4
Like, do you sacrifice the things that have already happened in order to bring.

49:30
Case
One person to justice if it's not going to bring those lives back? It's a weird moral conundrum.

49:37
Speaker 4
What would you do in that circumstance?

49:39
Doug Lief
It's like trying to solve the trolley problem after it's happened.

49:42
Case
Right?

49:43
Speaker 4
Yeah.

49:44
Jmike
I've never thought about that. Solving the problem.

49:45
Speaker 4
Yeah.

49:45
Case
It's like. It's a second switch that causes the trolley to go backwards over the track that it didn't take.

49:54
Doug Lief
So you kill everybody on both tracks.

49:56
Case
Yes, kind of. Ozymandias as a character, he's arrogant and flawed in those ways, but he's so physically capable. He is so smart. He is so charming. It is that conversation of, like, well, what can a person who is so charismatic and powerful within the realm of what a human can do, how much damage can they cause? It's a world leader who guides a nation to war. And even if it's under the auspice of peace or of prosperity for his people or something like that, ultimately, there is an element of just, like, you're.

50:31
Speaker 4
Still just a person. You're not a God.

50:33
Case
You can't shape the world into a.

50:34
Speaker 4
Better place without bringing other people in on it.

50:38
Case
You're limited by the fact that you.

50:40
Speaker 4
Don'T have all the answers.

50:41
Doug Lief
Interesting contrast to Manhattan, right? Which is basically, who literally does have ultimate power or nearly ultimate power, and says, yeah, I can't fundamentally change the world. I can't do that. And here you have mortal flesh and blood person Ozymandias saying, fuck you.

50:57
Speaker 4
Yes, I can, for a little bit.

50:58
Doug Lief
And he goes farther than everyone, right? Because he's looking at all the other crime busters. Minutemen is like, yeah, okay, these guys stop bank robberies. That's such small potatoes. Like, none of them are taking aim at something bigger.

51:13
Case
It's interesting when you look at Ozymandias.

51:15
Speaker 4
So as we mentioned, they're all kind.

51:16
Case
Of analogous to Charleston comics characters. So he's directly based on this character called Peterkin and Thunderbolt, who himself was Charleston had issues using a character, the golden age daredevil is who he's based on. Basically took the same costume, removed the mask on the character, and made this new character to sort of, like, function in that space. And so it's, like, already this kind of, like, twisted notion of a hero that's been repurposed into one thing and then to another. And in this case, it's, you know, it's Ozymandias, you know, which is the great game for ramses and, like, where we're going into, like, kings and all this, like, weird stuff going on with.

51:50
Speaker 4
With a character who's supposed to be.

51:52
Case
This regal figure, who's supposed to be.

51:54
Speaker 4
All this stuff, but ultimately, he's still.

51:55
Case
Just another acrobatic superhero. Like, an acrobatic, like, guy in a suit is his schtick.

52:01
Doug Lief
They all are, right? Everybody except Manhattan is just well conditioned human with spandex, ultimately with greater or lesser access to gadgets.

52:12
Speaker 4
Why don't we move on to some.

52:14
Case
Of the other weird characters I wanted to talk about in terms of the Superman archetype. Ozymandis is about as far as a human can go. Doctor Manhattan's actually a super being, but I want to just talk about two characters who we know mostly through the supplemental material, mostly through Hollis Mason's book, although we do have some flashbacks with both of them, more so the first than the second. Let's talk about hooded justice for a moment. So hooded justice is introduced to us as the first of these, like, vigilantes in this world, and that he is.

52:42
Speaker 4
Set up to be this big, strong.

52:44
Case
Guy who just wore a mask and beat up criminals. He functions in the world of the series as being, like, their Superman equivalent in terms of the inspiration for it all. Haas Mason in his book, actually compares him to Superman from the comics because in the world of Watchmen, the comic Superman exists. It's just not popular because all these people are running around in suits just like Superman in the real world, and we're, you know, creepy dudes.

53:08
Jmike
I think, like, the pirate comics are the most popular.

53:10
Doug Lief
Right?

53:10
Speaker 4
Yeah.

53:10
Case
Pirates become more popular during this era as a result and continue to be the sort of the main thing, which is, like, a weird thing to think about, just like, the world that you're in. Like, oh, yeah, we're going to the comic shop. Like, oh, you're a big pirate fan.

53:25
Speaker 4
But, yeah.

53:26
Case
So hood justice. Like, he's got the same kind of color scheme. He's got, like, a navy blue kind of outfit with red pants and a cape. He's big and he's strong. And the one big scene we have with him in the comic itself and not in the prose sections is him beating up the comedian. And he's clearly this mighty figure, but we don't know much about him.

53:46
Doug Lief
Yeah, we never even learn his real name. There's, like, hints of who he might be, but they don't actually tell you.

53:51
Case
Yeah, there's a strong theory that they present in the supplemental material, and then other stuff that has come out has, like, tried to present their own theories after the fact, but he's always going to be under a degree of mystery to him.

54:05
Doug Lief
The one thing we really see him do is, like I said, he's not just confronting the comedian. He's preventing the comedian from assaulting silk Specter one.

54:12
Case
Right.

54:12
Doug Lief
And it's like, okay, he's still pretty brutal. So it's not like this idealized version of a hero, but he is doing heroic things. We don't understand him to be quite as messed up in the head as some of his colleagues are.

54:28
Case
So there's an implication pretty heavily set up because we see letters between some of the characters that he and Captain.

54:34
Speaker 4
Metropolis are homosexual lovers and that's.

54:37
Case
Part of what's going on. Like, with all the golden age characters. There's this vibe that there's a lot of, like, there's element of kink and this element of, like, they're doing this as a way of being out in the open while at the same time having what was seen as sort of, like, deviant lifestyle.

54:51
Speaker 4
Yes.

54:51
Case
That's the word I'm looking for.

54:53
Doug Lief
From their perspective, of course. Not mine.

54:55
Case
Yeah. Which is weird, because then the main character we're seeing it all through is Hollis Mason, who doesn't seem to have any of those. At least as far as we can tell. It's never addressed in his memoirs, and we never really see anything like that. I guess it's possible he might have something going on that we just don't really see. Like, he seems to be a bachelor his entire life, but there's nothing else for him aside from he was a cop, which I guess is like his own kind of deviant lifestyle.

55:15
Speaker 4
But, yeah, hood of justice is, like.

55:17
Case
Clearly people know more about him and we're not seeing it, but we don't see it. But he's so important that he kind of just stands out in a weird way. You know, unlike, say, the silhouette or Mothman. Like, those are, like, we know stuff about them, but they existed, but they're not super important to the story at large. But weirdly, hooded justice is very important because he's the reason why so many of these people get their start by the time that we get to the point in the eighties. But again, he's just, like, this mystery.

55:44
Speaker 4
Yeah.

55:44
Doug Lief
I mean, there's something very idyllically simplistic about hooded justice. Right. She's like, I don't know, I'm gonna put on a mask and stop some criminals from criming. That's as simple as it gets.

55:54
Jmike
Right.

55:54
Doug Lief
And it evolves into this, like, well, what if I, you know, what if I could reshape the world stuff and how far outside the law do I want to operate? It's a perfect point of origin for this world of hooded vigilantes.

56:09
Speaker 4
Yeah, it's fun.

56:10
Case
There's an implication that he might be.

56:12
Speaker 4
Killed by the comedian after the fact. Yeah.

56:14
Jmike
Did he ever confirm that?

56:15
Case
No, nothing's ever confirmed, which allows it to be open for later. Theories and spin off material.

56:22
Jmike
I was really curious about that because I was like, all right, cool. It's kind of, like, halfway maybe implied that it could have happened, possibly.

56:29
Speaker 4
Yeah.

56:30
Case
What's fun about watchmen in general is that there's a lot of stuff that they like to hint at without actually confirming.

56:36
Speaker 4
Yeah. But, yeah.

56:37
Case
So aside from him having this big, looming presence as a result of just his role, he's such a mystery that we don't really have more to say about him, at least in the context.

56:46
Speaker 4
Of the comic itself.

56:47
Case
So let's move on to the last one. I wanted to bring up just in terms of characters who I feel like kind of have Superman stuff going on with them. And this one's mostly aesthetic. But I wanted to mention dollar Bill, who's also from the forties era team. This is the character who, in the comic, establishes the whole, like, don't wear fucking capes rule. Like the edna from the incredibles. Like, no capes situation. So costume wise, he looks like a fucking superman character. He's in a blue spandex suit with a red cape and red underwear, and he's got a giant fucking s on his chest. And he's like a jock from Kansas who was hired by a bank to be like, yeah, I'm the hero who works for the bank.

57:26
Speaker 4
Yeah.

57:27
Case
And then when he tried to actually stop a robbery, his cape got caught in the spinning door and they shot him. And that's it. Apparently, he was a nice guy.

57:38
Doug Lief
I like that he's a corporate sponsored hero.

57:40
Case
Right, right.

57:41
Doug Lief
That kind of is a nice flavor, you know, a different type of character to add to this. Like, well, of course, like, if it was a popular trend, then some business would want to get in on it and have their, like, mascot be an actual hero. But you're also putting this dude in harm's way. Like, this is not a guy who got into this because he was, you know, driven by the murder of his parents or whatever. Like, this is, hey, this is a guy who probably just took a gig.

58:06
Case
Right? Exactly. And that's, I find, kind of a fun element there.

58:10
Speaker 4
It's.

58:10
Case
This is the. The version where it's the most sanitized aspect of it all, where it's like.

58:17
Speaker 4
If you think of the arc of.

58:19
Case
Comic superheroes, of being like, well, I've got dark reasons for doing it to the point of just, like, well, I just felt like being a superhero, which is like, what a lot of, like, the later golden age characters were. Or when you get into, like, some.

58:29
Speaker 4
Of the silver age material where it.

58:30
Case
Just isn't as well thought out, where, like, it's surface level. Like, well, we needed to have a superhero because we needed to sell a comic book. And that kind of feels like what dollar bill is. You know, he's a nice guy from Kansas who is in good shape, and there was money to be made, so he took this gig and got shot.

58:47
Speaker 4
In the face as a result.

58:48
Doug Lief
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of all you get of him, but that's all you need. Like, he's just there. He's basically there to be a punchline and kind of move on. But, like, it informs this, like, sense of, like, yeah, it sounds really fun to, like, put on a costume and go do this, but actually, in reality, like, yeah, it's ugly, and, like, you're just gonna get shot, most likely.

59:10
Speaker 4
Yeah.

59:10
Doug Lief
Like, it's all gonna. You're all just gonna get down in the dirt and that'll be it.

59:14
Speaker 4
Yeah.

59:15
Case
But I wanted to bring him up here because he looks the part. I mean, all of these characters are ones that I've done videos on for the Superman analog series, like Dollar Bill. He looks like goddamn Superman. And so there's this element there of.

59:25
Speaker 4
Like, that's gotta be an intentional thing.

59:28
Case
There's no real compromise aside from it being, like, money signs instead of anything else, which I know Alan Moore's a big fan of super duper man, and, like, Captain Marvel's had, like, stuff going on like that in his, but it's a mad magazine parody of Superman stuff. So I have to imagine that, like, there's stuff going on with all that where it's like, well, yeah, we're just gonna, like, have a character that, like, looks the part and, like, you know, talks the talk and just point out that, like, that's not really gonna do anything here, and that's not what the story is for. And, like, this world doesn't have a place for someone like that.

59:57
Doug Lief
Not a world this dark and cynical. No, it's.

01:00:00
Case
It's a dark and cynical world that is trying to look at what comics had been and what comics had taken for granted and sort of deconstruct them all and present a new way of.

01:00:10
Speaker 4
Approaching this kind of material.

01:00:12
Doug Lief
That is what is genre defining and genre busting about this thing. Right. It doesn't have the traditional happy ending that you're looking for.

01:00:21
Jmike
Right.

01:00:22
Doug Lief
It's more about this rumination that Alan Moore wants us to go on about power and how it's used or misused.

01:00:31
Speaker 4
Yeah.

01:00:31
Case
And then it doesn't necessarily have a happy ending. It just is a rumination on these things.

01:00:38
Doug Lief
Well, like you said, bad guy wins. But not only does bad guy win, he does the wonderful thing. He does this huge villain monologue, then lets you know, by the way, do you think I'd really be doing this monologue if there was any chance you could affect the. The outcome? I actually already triggered the thing 30 minutes ago. Great moments.

01:01:00
Case
Right. Wonderful use of all the different clocks in that sequence to sort of remind you that, like, no, you have to pay attention to a lot of details.

01:01:08
Jmike
So love that sprawl of him saying, I did it. His hands in the air, like, yes, I'm amazing.

01:01:16
Speaker 4
I did it.

01:01:18
Jmike
I was like, well, it's very like, if Lex Luthor would have been in this universe, that would have probably been his moment right there.

01:01:26
Speaker 4
Yeah.

01:01:27
Case
I mean, there's certainly that kind of a vibe with some of these characters that. Where they could have been the villains in any other story. But I guess they're the heroes here.

01:01:37
Doug Lief
Yeah, they're not heroes in much of the normal sense of what a hero is. Right. They are just exercising power the way they see fit in what they think is the correct morality. Right. We are subject to whatever decisions they make. Again, who watches the watchmen? Right. They make all of these decisions about how the world should be and who's right, who's wrong, who should be brought to, quote, unquote, justice and who not. The story doesn't do much to look at the lives of the people they affect other than, you know, the mass slaughter at the end.

01:02:10
Case
A thing that happens because they weren't being checked sufficiently outside.

01:02:14
Speaker 4
Yeah.

01:02:15
Case
I mean, you bring up the phrase quis custodiad ipsos custodium. That is the driving concept for. It's called watchmen.

01:02:22
Speaker 4
That is, I think, an important element.

01:02:25
Case
That we should spend a little bit of time talking about, which is that this is a book that is about asking where the Czechs are in all of this power. Like, when you have characters like Doctor Manhattan or like Ozymandias who have vast political and financial power or superpowers. Why have we always, in comics, taken.

01:02:46
Speaker 4
For granted that they're right with Spider.

01:02:48
Case
Man, for example, having J. Jonah Jamison, he's made to be a bad guy in the press. But that's kind of anomaly. That's a thing for Spider man. But it's not. Prior to the series coming out, most superheroes were kind of just the superheroes. They're the main character of their respective books, they're probably doing what's right, or at least they're doing as good as they think is right. And it, well, all mostly works out in the end. And this is a series being like, well, what if they, they are not doing as good as a job as that they could be doing? And what if maybe if someone had been, like, looking over their shoulders and.

01:03:21
Speaker 4
Like, you know, correcting their work, they.

01:03:22
Case
Could have been better or more effective or anything. What if they're just not that helpful to society?

01:03:29
Doug Lief
Yeah, there's not a whole lot they make better, at least, you know, long term. I mean, in the short term, they might stop a crime here or there, but, yeah, largely they are making the fabric of the world worse. And you talk about, like, what about a check on them? And it's like, what limited stuff we get about the cops and, like, actual government, not much better. You know, this is, like I said, such a cynical work that it's like, well, anybody with any modicum of power is shown to be either flat out abusing it or at least misusing it, squandering it, not using their power correctly for the betterment of everyone.

01:04:05
Speaker 4
Yeah.

01:04:06
Case
And, I mean, this is a world.

01:04:07
Speaker 4
That tries to put checks on it, doctor. Manhattan is mostly overseen by the government.

01:04:12
Case
Vigilantism is outlawed, and so most of the people retire. Those are all things that are put.

01:04:17
Speaker 4
Into the system to pretend that there's.

01:04:20
Case
Some kind of restrictions.

01:04:21
Speaker 4
But ultimately, these characters operating in a.

01:04:24
Case
Space in an unchecked degree creates just a worse world for them all. It's interesting because I don't think there are that many comics prior to this point that had ever been like, well, is this actually good? And this is making a very strong statement of probably not.

01:04:40
Speaker 4
And it's not Alan Moore's, like, overall.

01:04:42
Case
Thesis of what, you know, is going on with comic characters. Like, he has written plenty of things that show, like, the value of it, but this is one where it's like, well, if you take a normal person who has all of these flaws, like, all this stuff, and you put them in this world and try to have.

01:04:57
Speaker 4
Like, superhero kind of stuff, they're probably.

01:04:58
Case
Not going to just, like, take to it very well. Like, I would fuck up pretty badly if I tried to be a superhero.

01:05:03
Speaker 4
Like, I'm not trying to be mean, but, like, Doug J Mike, like, I.

01:05:07
Case
Don'T think you'd be very good superheroes because, like, being a superhero is, like, not really a thing that, like, you might be right, but don't say it out loud, like. Cause we're all just flawed humans. That's the thing where, like, the world is not full of these, like, mythically good people. And these characters, even the ones who are godlike in their powers, are still limited. Potentially getting angry, potentially turning into hydrogen bombs with a penis.

01:05:39
Speaker 4
They're characters who can be manipulated and.

01:05:42
Case
Can be directed into ways that are not helpful. Like, just a normal person, given any kind of power, is going to have to really regulate themselves to not misuse it.

01:05:53
Doug Lief
And also that the people who voluntarily choose to get into this line of work, you have to wonder about the psyche of a person who says, I want to put on this outfit and go punch people in the face. You're not starting from usually a paragon of justice.

01:06:08
Case
Yeah, I mean, like, look at the comedian, right?

01:06:11
Doug Lief
He's a sadist.

01:06:12
Case
He's there to hurt people because he enjoys it. Like the textbook definition of a sadist.

01:06:16
Doug Lief
It gives him license to hurt people. I can, you know, I can say I'm doing this for the greater good because the people I'm hurting are bad guys. But he ultimately doesn't care about that. He's happy to go to Vietnam to just kill indiscriminately, right? He's happy to just put down a riot by just beating up whoever. And to him, of course, it's all a joke because we live in a society, yada, yada. But that is who he is. I mean, he is as much. He's analog to the Charlton characters. Pretty obvious analogy to the Joker here.

01:06:46
Case
And it's interesting because now the comedian has now reshaped how Peacemaker has been perceived. We wouldn't get the James Gunn tv show if it wasn't for the comedian because that sort of allowed the character to get taken to that galvanized state of being.

01:07:03
Speaker 4
Why don't we move on to adaptations?

01:07:05
Case
Again, this is a comic where we could spend full podcast episodes talking about each and every issue.

01:07:12
Speaker 4
There's the movie, which we've talked about a little bit.

01:07:14
Case
I have mixed feelings about it in.

01:07:16
Speaker 4
General, but I think that it's a valiant effort.

01:07:21
Case
So talking about the ending for the.

01:07:24
Speaker 4
Movie, for the movie itself, I agree.

01:07:26
Case
That it makes sense to have it just be Doctor Manhattan. If you're going to try to do.

01:07:30
Speaker 4
One three to five hour length movie.

01:07:33
Case
Because there's different cuts of the movie. There's the one that includes all the black freighter animated sequences to have that, like, yeah, like, don't. Don't introduce the fucking squid thing because I think that's way too complicated to throw in, like, that massive thing. I think it works a little bit better in the comic to have the squid, because one, it's twelve issues, and for another, it's comics. And so, like, that kind of stuff is, like, a little bit more a thing you can just, like, observe. But I completely agree that, like, in terms of, like, economy of storytelling, having it be Doctor Manhattan makes perfect sense.

01:08:03
Case
The counterpoint on that one is I think that having it be an outside thing that isn't, like, an american superhuman is sort of why it's like, oh, we have to put our guns down because there's, like, a bigger threat coming from outside. So I see both sides as being viable reasons for using one or the other one there. I don't think it ruins the movie. I don't think it's a problem with the movie, even though people like to.

01:08:23
Speaker 4
Bring it up a lot, because, again.

01:08:25
Case
Like, you only have so much space when you're, when you're doing a movie versus a twelve issue comic book series. Like, you can't.

01:08:32
Speaker 4
You can't cover every detail the same way.

01:08:34
Case
The areas where I have trouble with the movie, because, like, I like, I overall like the designs for the characters. I think that Ozymandias is telegraphed as being a bad guy too much.

01:08:44
Doug Lief
Yeah, I agree with that.

01:08:45
Case
And I think the action sequences are too snydery, which is like, it's just like, which, like, it's what he was doing, but, like, it's just that, like, they, like, they're doing, like, look at how cool we can make these, like, superhero action sequences, whereas the comics is more like, well, here's these very mundane people having these kind of slow, brutal fights. And it's kind of a bummer that we're doing the ramp up, speed up, slowdown kind of stuff in there. They're doing these big physical motions, but then there's so many parts of it that are almost perfect. The Doctor Manhattan on Mars stuff is pitch perfect.

01:09:19
Doug Lief
His origin, where they dramatize that, jumping back and forth through time with that Philip Glass music behind it, is Chef's kiss. I think they absolutely nailed that part. And it's the most compelling part of the movie for me. Like, just watching that sequence is just, it's incredible.

01:09:33
Speaker 4
Yeah.

01:09:34
Case
The times, they are a changing montage is so fucking good. Like, getting the history of this world.

01:09:39
Doug Lief
I mean, something that takes, like, you know, just dozens upon dozens of pages and, like, Hollis Mason's, you know, biography to, like, get all this information across, they do it just with a montage. It's like, it's up there with, like, the beginning of up as, like, can you make a little short film within your film that accomplishes so much? Like, it is masterful, that piece.

01:09:59
Speaker 4
Yeah.

01:10:00
Case
So great stuff going on there. I think that generally the casting is really solid. Jackie Harrell Haley as Rorschach is a fantastic choice right there. I mean, yeah, I think Rorschach is led to be, like, a little bit more heroic, but it's also kind of just movie language.

01:10:15
Speaker 4
And we kind of just, a lot.

01:10:16
Case
Of people like Rorschach from the comics also.

01:10:18
Speaker 4
And it's like, you know, you're not.

01:10:19
Case
Spending enough time, like, really, like, dwelling on that. Billy Crudup as Osterman, I think, is perfect. Malan Ackerman, I think, is too young for silk Spectre in that she's supposed to be, like, in her forties or, like, late thirties. She's like, late twenties, early thirties. Like, a little too ange new at this point.

01:10:34
Speaker 4
And like I said, I think that.

01:10:35
Case
Ozymandias is just, like, a little too telegraphed as being like, yeah, no, he's the bad guy. But aside from that, telegraph is the bad guy.

01:10:42
Doug Lief
I mean, it's supposed to be a twist that Ozymandias is actually, you know, the villain. But you're right. I mean, his presentation, the way he's so cold and, like, there's no one else to be the villain that they give you. They don't give you any red herrings or anything like that. And it's just like, yep. The most evil looking guy is, in fact, the evil guy.

01:11:00
Case
Yeah, the guy with, like, the slightly german accent and his superhero outfit is, like, all black in the movie instead of being, like, mostly gold with purple highlights. It's just a weird element there.

01:11:11
Doug Lief
I like that they put the Joel Schumacher Bat nipple on it. I thought that was really funny.

01:11:16
Case
I actually like a lot of those parts there because I think that makes sense in terms of, like, we're gonna do, like, we're gonna do superhero movie stuff instead of superhero comic stuff. Likewise with, like, Nite Owl's outfit looks like, you know, like, any of the Tim Burton Batman stuff.

01:11:31
Doug Lief
Well, which is obviously his closest analog, for sure, I think. Yeah, Jeffrey Dean Morgan is perfect. I like Carla Gugino or Jugin, what have you forsake her name as the elder Silk Spectre? I think she's a good choice for that.

01:11:44
Case
Honestly. She should have been silk specter, too. She's the perfect age and she's just such a strong actress. She would have been fantastic for the part.

01:11:51
Doug Lief
Yeah. I didn't have a problem with Malin Ackerman. I think she does a lot because I think her version of that character is a little more three dimensional than she is in the book. I think she's a little more. Not the first people to know that Alan Moore has problems writing women. So, you know, she needs to be. She is the heart of the story. She has to because she's the one who brings Jon literally back to earth. It's her and Dan's story that, again, is like the happy note to go out on, if there is one. So I like her bringing that to the role. But Billy crudup is like, I love how, like, kind of counterintuitive he is as a choice for this because, like, his voice is so kind of soft.

01:12:28
Doug Lief
Like you when you read Doctor Manhattan, you picture this booming, powerful figure and he doesn't sound like that. He's actually very soft spoken, which I think makes it an even more interesting thing to watch.

01:12:40
Speaker 4
Yeah.

01:12:41
Case
So one other thing that I do have issues with the movie is the fact that they tease that it's comedian's actually silk Spector's dad earlier in the movie when there's the touch and sort of memory flash thing that was like, that's also supposed to be a twist later on. A lot of the twists are telegraphed a little on the early side for my tastes in that movie. But aside from that, like, it's a monumental project in terms of getting as much in there. And they have so many things that are either nearly shot for shot or, like, play out pretty much exactly as it happened in the comics. It's an impressive work just from the standpoint that it had long been considered unfilmable.

01:13:17
Doug Lief
Yeah. As an adaptation of something that's very hard to adapt. Fairly impressive. I also wanted to shout out the musical cues. We kind of talked about it a little bit, but some of them are taken straight out of the comic. So good on them for going, like, okay, we gotta get all along the watchtower because here's where it's actually in the comic. Like, some of those things. So obviously they work because they worked for Alan Moore. But like, this very classic rock sort of sound that they use for it. All of those needle drops are just dead on perfect. With the exception of Maybe Hallelujah is a little much. Yeah.

01:13:50
Case
Which is just a. That's a staple of Zack Snyder works.

01:13:57
Jmike
You choose another song like I don't.

01:13:58
Case
I don't want to hate too much on, because, like, I actually really liked it when it came out. I still like it overall as an adaptation. I think that it was just, it's such a huge work and that it's hard to, like, fully hit. And it was. It was going to be impossible for it to be the right movie for everyone. It was a big challenge. I think it was a really, like I said, a really valiant effort that nails a lot of the stuff that I wanted to see really well. But it's also just a huge ass movie that has, like I said, multiple edits, including one that has the animated sequences, all that stuff. So. And it brought a lot of people into watchmen as a thing and into reading the comic and made a lot more popularity out there.

01:14:36
Case
It also had a spin off video game, which I've never played. I've wanted to. And it's, like, set during, like, the seventies riots where that, like, led to the outlawing of vigilantes. Doug, you said you played a demo of it.

01:14:50
Doug Lief
There was a demo that was released.

01:14:51
Speaker 4
Yeah.

01:14:51
Doug Lief
I mean, contemporaneously. This was not something I played recently. And it's basically a beat em up. I remember feeling kind of boring. And also, it's like, it's one of those things where, like, I mean, we will touch on the tv show, which I've not seen in a minute, the HBO show, but it's like they've now put out a lot of comics that are now spin off trying to, like, add to this world. And I kind, I don't say I'm a against all of it, but there's a sense of, like, when you read this thing or when you watch the movie, like, this is a singular story. Like, it has a nice beginning, a middle, and an end, because this whole thing is essentially a philosophical rumination. Like, it's a complete thought. So it doesn't lend itself to being.

01:15:30
Doug Lief
Having stuff grafted onto it this way. It tends to muddy the waters a lot. So, yeah, certainly the little, like, mediocre story of the game didn't really add anything in terms of fleshing out the world from the part that I saw. And so, yeah, I was very skeptical of the HBO show, which I never saw, and I haven't read any of that supplementary material.

01:15:51
Case
I generally have the same viewpoint, which is that this was a complete work. I don't really need to see sequel material with the same characters or anything like that. And I didn't really like that they did the before Watchmen comics around when the movie came out. I've looked at little bits of it, but I haven't really read too much of it. I've heard, like, the Darwin cook stuff was like, fine. You know, like, there's like some stuff that's, like, well done in that group. But overall it was like, is this really additive? Not really. Like, it kind of like, it doesn't make your experience that much better.

01:16:19
Speaker 4
I have heard that the Tom King.

01:16:22
Case
Series that has come out more recently, the Rorschach comics that has come out is a pretty interesting one.

01:16:26
Speaker 4
Likewise.

01:16:27
Case
It's just like, I have a hard time, like, looking at that material. Like, it just doesn't feel like it.

01:16:30
Speaker 4
Could possibly be that interesting or really.

01:16:33
Case
Like, make the experience better considering, like, I think that the comic is like such a perfect standalone like thing. And I will say the show, like we talked about it when it first.

01:16:44
Speaker 4
Came out blew me away in terms.

01:16:46
Case
Of being actually interesting. It also doesn't really have anything to do with the original comic. It's like a completely separate story just set in the same universe and set 30 years later.

01:16:56
Speaker 4
For me, it works a lot.

01:16:58
Case
Better as a result. There are some shared characters, but it's 30 years later. So, like, minor spoiler.

01:17:03
Speaker 4
Silk Spectre two shows up and she's.

01:17:05
Case
Played by Gene smart and, you know, she's a much older woman as a result of it all. So, like, the way that things play.

01:17:12
Speaker 4
Out for those characters are, it's been a long time.

01:17:14
Case
Many of them are either dead or old or we don't see and, like, the world is just very different. The majority of the players are new.

01:17:21
Speaker 4
Ones, and that's fine.

01:17:22
Case
Like, I was really impressed with it. I thought they did a lot of really good stuff with it and had new conversations about it that worked for the medium in question. It worked really well as a tv show. I don't think it would have worked well as a comic book that I.

01:17:34
Speaker 4
Thought was really interesting and was different.

01:17:36
Case
Enough that I was like, okay, this is a valiant effort that might kind of recontextualize some of the stuff from the comic, but is its own sort of standalone thing and works fine. And I think it's worth checking out. If you like watchmen, I think it's very much worth watching, but it doesn't make the comic better or worse.

01:17:51
Speaker 4
It's just its own separate thing.

01:17:53
Doug Lief
And since it's HBO, is there a greater quantity of Doctor Manhattan penis.

01:17:59
Speaker 4
Thank you.

01:18:01
Case
Less than the movie. So Manhattan does show up in it, but he's not a big player for the majority of it. It's more the lasting impact of Manhattan on the world is how it plays out. And I don't want to give too many spoilers away because it's more recent and it's worth checking out. It does not revel in nudity, I will say that.

01:18:20
Doug Lief
So not the same producers as, like, say, Game of Thrones. It's HBO. We can put all the penis we want. All right.

01:18:26
Case
No, no, there's no sex position in that.

01:18:29
Jmike
All right.

01:18:29
Case
Again, I think it's an interesting piece that is actually building on this world of, like, oh, yeah, well, vigilantes have been around and so, like, how they. How that works with, like, law and order and stuff is kind of cool.

01:18:40
Speaker 4
It's this world where, like, the tease.

01:18:42
Case
At the end of the book where Robert Redford is going to become president becomes an aspect of how, when you're looking at american politics, how things have changed by virtue of, well, instead of Ronald Reagan and this big right wing movements, it's this left wing movement that happens and different things that sort of play out as a result. So it's a cool alternate universe kind of story that I think at least was having a similar spirit in terms of we're going to really think out the ramifications and how we're going to do all this. This stuff. And for me, it's a worthwhile follow up that, like I said, doesn't really do much to my appreciation of the comic either way. There have been spin off materials that have made me, like, less enthusiastic about a source material.

01:19:22
Case
You know, how many movies have been out there where, like, having bad sequels have kind of made the original harder to, like, really love? The same way, like, there's, like, the jaws or the, like, your Highlanders, where, like, somehow having terrible sequels. You still love the originals, but then you look at the Planet of the Apes movies and the first one's great, but for a while, that original five block had become kind of a joke because it got so weird by the end of it all. So this at least is like, it's pretty different. It's clearly different people, and it's worth checking out.

01:19:54
Doug Lief
I will file that away as something to check out when I get around to it. I've been reluctant to, but I'm willing to give it a shot.

01:20:01
Speaker 4
But, yeah.

01:20:01
Case
So I think that kind of wraps up, like, the discussion we wanted to have on Watchmen. Like I said, there's so much we could talk about. I've got the annotated version open right now. And it's just page after page of notes on every panel that's in this comic.

01:20:15
Speaker 4
There's so much cool stuff in it.

01:20:17
Case
I mentioned Dave Gibbons at the beginning, but Dave Gibbons is such a detailed artist. The way that John Osterman and Janie's hands touch each other when they give the beer is this symbol that they keep bringing back in Osterman's mind of this one perfect moment of this human connection with this woman that he at the time, loved. And eventually he'd, like, cheat on her and she'd leave and all this stuff. But have that one moment with this cold beer where you can see the bubbles and the way it fizzes. That's so much fucking detail there. We haven't talked about the nine panel grid. There's just so much fucking stuff to talk about.

01:20:48
Jmike
Yeah, there's a lot. It's very dense series.

01:20:52
Case
It's a huge work that had a lot of thought put into it and had a lot of mastery of craft in terms of what you can do with a comic at the time. And obviously, technology has changed. The software that people use for drawing has changed in a lot of ways. Your ability to have additional material and supplemental material, your ability to color, to do all the creative elements of putting this together is a different world than it was when this came out. But in terms of the technological and artistic levels that comic books had ascended to by the time we get got.

01:21:28
Speaker 4
To 1985, this is the mastery of that.

01:21:32
Case
This is like, it's perfect. Not in the sense that it's necessarily the most fun comic. It's not my favorite Alan Moore comic from the standpoint of, is it the most energetic or the one that gives me the most feels? But in terms of clearly seeing the mastery of craft, I don't think you can get much better than this.

01:21:50
Doug Lief
The reason people keep coming back to this thing is like, well, what's the greatest comic ever created? Right? Like, this will always be near the. At or near the top of the list is because it is, you know, kind of sinking three pointers on all of these things. Like, it's. It is the technical mastery of the images themselves and the way they're all, they're composed and put together. It's the ambition of the, you know, the. The level of what they want to tell a story about and how it is not just an interesting story about power and control and all of those themes. Right? The theme of time and clockwork and watches and police authority. All of that stuff is then also folded back into this commentary on comic books themselves, it's doing so many things and doing all of them well.

01:22:37
Doug Lief
And within that, the characters are interesting as standalone people. It's hard to imagine another book coming along and doing this, especially when you consider that these are all original characters. Right. Not banking on like, well, everybody loves Batman. These are characters that nobody knows. And, like, they're all self contained within this single expression of an idea. And it's just so powerful on all of those different fronts. It's just, it's a Masterwork for a reason.

01:23:06
Speaker 4
Yeah. An incredible piece.

01:23:08
Case
And like I said, there's just, there's so much that we can talk about and, like, we're trying to, like, keep this, like, kind of into a discussion of, like, how this impacted comics and how this worked with, like, the Superman archetype. But, like, there's, again, like, so much.

01:23:21
Speaker 4
More we could say.

01:23:23
Case
Doug, thank you for bringing this.

01:23:25
Doug Lief
Oh, sure. My pleasure.

01:23:27
Case
It's been one that we always knew were going to talk about at some point, but it was one that were like, I don't, I wasn't, like, chomping at the bit to, like, try to keep this condensed to a single episode.

01:23:39
Doug Lief
It's a spicy meatball. Yeah.

01:23:41
Case
It's daunting. That's what I'm trying to say. And I'm glad that we had a.

01:23:45
Speaker 4
Chance to talk about it, to somehow.

01:23:47
Case
Just somehow get it under 2 hours in an episode. Fuck, yeah.

01:23:51
Doug Lief
We wrestled this thing to the ground somehow.

01:23:53
Speaker 4
Yeah.

01:23:54
Case
So, Doug, again, thank you for bringing this on. Thank you for coming on. I'm really glad that we've connected it, that I've been on your show and that you've been also over on another pass. But for people who want to hear more of you and for your stuff, give your plugs, explain your show again, say, where people can find you.

01:24:13
Speaker 4
Give all of that. Sure.

01:24:14
Doug Lief
So the show is called nostalgia arcanum. I know I made it easy to remember and spell. It is ultimately, it's a repository of pop culture stuff. So there's episodes on all kinds of topics ranging from movies, tv shows, video games, comics, comic strips, toys, really just about anything that you might be into. If you're into comic book stuff, trying to think of episodes we've done that would be kind of in this vein. So we did do, Case was obviously on to talk about Calvin Hobbs, which is awesome. We did one on the movie. I have one recorded on Tim Burton's Batman. There's, there's plenty of others that we've got, like, 50, 60 episodes by the time you hear this. So there's going to be something you like in there that fits your mold.

01:24:56
Doug Lief
If you want to find us on the social, we are at nostalgianpod on the graveyard formerly known as Twitter. We are also at nostalgianpod on Blue sky, and then nostalgia markanum on threads and Instagram. And I do post bonus stuff on Instagram, so if you're gonna follow it, if you have to pick one, and of course you don't because they're all free. But that's where I put all the bonus stuff is on Instagram, so. But that's the show in a nutshell. And if you liked hearing anything I had to say and you need to hear more of my voice, that's where you find it.

01:25:26
Speaker 4
Well, everyone should check that out.

01:25:28
Case
As we mentioned a couple of times, I was on not too long ago. Our former editor Matt Storm was also on more than once now, right?

01:25:34
Doug Lief
Yeah. He came on to talk about Chrono Trigger, and then he was on more recently to do one on the queen.

01:25:40
Speaker 4
Yeah. So obviously go check all that out. We love Matt, even though they abandoned.

01:25:45
Case
Us because they were too busy. But, yeah, it's a great show.

01:25:51
Speaker 4
And, like, you know, definitely you find.

01:25:53
Case
An episode of nostalgia arcanum that's on a topic that you love, and it's just so fun to, like, hear people talk about, like, why it meant something to them, too. Like, that shared love of all these various, like, nerd topics is such a great part about the modern era, like, the Internet allowing people to really share the things that they're passionate about and to find their fellow freaks, you know, that's such a cool thing that, like, we finally got to after living in the shadows for so long as, like, as the nerds.

01:26:23
Doug Lief
That's what the show is ultimately. It's a, you know, it's a safe space for you to come and geek out about whatever that thing is for you. It ended up becoming that, and I'm really kind of gratified because it makes the experience of doing the show really fun to just have someone come on and be like, oh, man, I love this thing so much. That positive energy is always just. It's nice to record, you know, just hang out with somebody and hear them share that.

01:26:43
Speaker 4
It. Yeah.

01:26:44
Case
So everyone should go check all that out. J Mike, where can people find you?

01:26:48
Speaker 4
Follow you.

01:26:49
Case
What have you got going on right.

01:26:50
Jmike
Now on Twitter at jmike 101? I will eventually get the blue sky page up and running occasionally, maybe one day. But yeah, find me at both those places. Reach out talk. I'm always willing to chit chat with everybody.

01:27:04
Case
Yeah, we got to keep on prodding J Mike into being as active a social media person as he can be since especially with the hell site falling apart like the strong gif game of J Mike Folson is yet to find a new place to call home.

01:27:21
Jmike
I do.

01:27:22
Case
Hopefully blue sky adds gifts soon because currently it's like I keep wanting to respond to people that way. On that note, you can find me on bluesky sagan. You can find me on the hell side of Twitter at case aiken. Most places. You can find me at case aiken instagram, etzelcoatl five because I am holding on to that damn Ames screen name for dear life. And you can find the show on Twitter in steel or more. The best place to find it is@certainpov.com where you can find more episodes of this show. Tons of other great shows. We mentioned Matt before, so I'm going to throw out an older callback, which is CPOV autographs.

01:27:59
Case
It's currently on hiatus, but Matt recorded so many wonderful interviews with so many awesome guests that you should check those out because there's so many creatives that, like, were able to really share their stories on there. So check out that series. You can find every episode@certainpov.com dot. You can also find a link to our discord server@certainpov.com, where you can come interact with all of us. We're all on there. It's a great time. Lots of conversations about music, about art, about Baldur's gate three. So much so that we had to create its own separate section because, wow, that game has invaded the zeitgeist. So check all that out and, you know, come back, listen to the next episode. But until then, stay super man.

01:28:43
Jmike
Men of steel is a certain POV production. Our hosts are J. Mike Folson and case Aiken. The show is scored and edited by Jeff Moonan, and our logo and episode art is by case Aiken.

01:28:59
Case
Video games are a unique medium. They can tell stories, immerse us in strange, fantastic worlds, blur the very boundaries of our reality. But at the end of the day, video games are fun, whatever fun is to you. I'm Jeff Moonan. And I am Matt, aka Stormageddon. And on fun and games, we talk about the history, trends, and community of video games. It's a celebration of all the games we play and all the fun we find within them. And there's so many more games out there, so we hope you'll share in that conversation with us. Fun and Games podcast with Matt and Jeff. Find us on certainpov.com or wherever you.

01:29:35
Speaker 4
Get your podcast and happy gaming.

01:29:37
Doug Lief
It's October 29, 2023, and I'm talking about nerd shit again.

AI meeting summary:

●      The discussion at the meeting analyzed the detailed analysis of the 1980 maxi-series Watchmen, centering on **Case Aiken** and **J Mike** along with guest **Doug Leaf**. They explored personal connections to the comic, its storytelling impact, creative influences, and how Watchmen redefined superhero archetypes. Doctor Manhattan's portrayal as a detached, god-like being struggling with humanity's complexities was highlighted, alongside Ozymandias as a superman figure aiming for global change through drastic measures.

●      Delving into character analyses, the complexities of **Doctor Manhattan** and **Ozymandias** were scrutinized, emphasizing Doctor Manhattan's technological influence but limited understanding of human emotions, while Ozymandias' meticulous yet flawed approach for peace through manipulation was dissected. The meeting discussed character flaws shaping events in Watchmen's narrative landscape, focusing on themes of power dynamics, morality dilemmas, and inevitable outcomes. The intricacies of **Ozymandias** highlighted his flawed yet charismatic nature and extreme plan for peace by causing mass devastation.

●      Further discussions laid bare characters' moral dilemmas in **Watchmen** regarding sacrificing lives for the greater good, exploring power misuse, manipulation, and moral ambiguity. Adaptations of Watchmen, including the 2009 film and HBO series, were acknowledged for their attempts at translating Alan Moore's narrative depth to visual mediums. Participants praised Watchmen for its genre-defining storytelling, layered themes on power dynamics and morality, and masterful craftsmanship in writing and artwork, emphasizing its enduring impact on comic book storytelling across various adaptations and mediums.

Notes:

●      🎙️ **Nostalgia Markanum Podcast**

●      **Focus on recontextualizing existing works**

●      **Exploration of ripple effects and impact**

●      **Incorporating complex themes into comic book format**

●      📚 **Character Development**

●      **Supplemental material in each issue**

●      **Dive into character backgrounds and interactions**

●      💡 **High Memetic Hero**

●      **Discussion on hero classification based on influence**

●      **Focus on a leader's ability to impact others**

●      🌍 **Global Politics**

●      **Central to the story**

●      **Examination of the impact on the narrative**

●      📝 **Storytelling Techniques**

●      **Narrative perspective shifts and timeline divergence**

●      **Attention to intricate details and character interactions**

●      🎵 **Musical Cues**

●      **Notable use of music to enhance storytelling**

●      🎮 **Fun and Games Podcast**

●      **Exploration of video game history, trends, and community**

Action items:

●      **Case Aiken**

●      Summarize the conversation about Watchmen for the podcast (00:34)

●      Create a social media plan for the show (47:58)

●      Check out Nostalgia Arcanum podcast and consider potential collaborations (1:23:09)

●      **Doug Leaf**

●      Share his experience with Watchmen and how he first discovered it (03:24)

●      **J Mike Folson**

●      Set up Blue Sky page to engage with audience (1:18:22)

Outline:

●      Chapter 1: Detailed Analysis of Watchmen Comic Structure (00:03 - 16:30)

●      00:03: Discussion on the extensive depth of Watchmen comic, including detailed shot composition and script analysis.

●      09:02: Application of Alan Moore's approach to recontextualize existing works.

●      16:27: Explanation of the structured format of each issue with supplemental material.

●      Chapter 2: Character Study and Narrative Techniques (20:33 - 37:58)

●      20:33: Emphasis on the mirrored panels and meticulous details in character interactions.

●      26:39: In-depth look into Rorschach's thought process and narrative portrayal.

●      37:58: Exploration of the point of view and technological changes within the story.

●      Chapter 3: Unraveling the Plot and Themes (41:18 - 55:54)

●      41:18: Discussion on characters with hidden agendas and missing details in the storyline.

●      46:00: Analysis of the intricate plan and its execution in the narrative.

●      55:49: Delving into the theories and spin-off material related to the comic.

●      Chapter 4: Impact of Watchmen's Adaptation (1:00:54 - 1:24:34)

●      1:00:54: Evaluation of the film adaptation's portrayal and challenges in conveying the comic's depth.

●      1:13:01: Recognition of the monumental effort in translating the comic's richness to other mediums.

●      1:24:04: Closing remarks and plugs for related content and episodes discussing various topics.