Each genre has its own codes and conventions, and readers tend to interpret texts on that basis. In particular, superhero comic books depend on formulaic plots and stereotypical characters, and readers accept such aspects as essential properties of the genre.2Mila Bongco claims that such conventions of superhero comics function as “a way of understanding and constructing a triangular relationship between the producer, the text, and the reader,” and the relationship is crucial enough to “[keep] the genre alive”
(89). The producer is sensitive to the reader’s response to the text, the text is shaped by the reader’s expectations and conventional thoughts on the genre, and committed readers easily identify themselves with heroes of the text.3Bongco argues that although Watchmen is a new text that “tackle[s]
complex moral dilemmas and diverse political shifts where changes and con-tradictions cannot so easily be labeled and appraised,” the text still uses some conventional rules of the genre, and thus the reader’s commitment is based on these conventions (94). Bongco calls such attempts “innovative repeti-tions” (94). However, Watchmen goes beyond these innovative repetitions:
the text does not remain within the genre of traditional superhero comics.
The “moral dilemmas and diverse political shifts” in the text are not meant to reinvent the genre; rather, the unusual thematic concerns of the text are intended to reinvent conventions of reading in general. Fundamentally, read-ing and interpretation are based on reader’s knowledge of social values and history as well as knowledge of literary conventions.4By nullifying readers’
relevant knowledge, however, Watchmen frustrates conventional reading and systematic interpretation.
Reading Watchmen starts from its cover, which depicts red liquid flowing through an oblique black oval against the yellow background.5 Read-ers cannot identify what the cover describes until they see a smiley-face but-ton with a bloodstain after a few pages and guess that the cover is part of the button. In the final panel of page 1, the readers’ gaze is drawn to a high position, where they see a male character look down a street. On the next page, readers discover that the male character is one of the two detectives investigating/interpreting a crime scene in an apartment where Edward Blake — a.k.a. Comedian — was murdered. Finally, readers can confirm the red blot on the cover is blood. The text re-presents what happened to the victim like an instant replay (1:2–3). In showing how the murder happened, the text confuses the readers’ gaze: a few panels are described as if the gaze was in the murderer’s position, and others as if an invisible observer’s. In this way, the text hints that readers will not be allowed to follow a stable gaze that grants them an omnipotent position as the interpreter. In fact, throughout the text, the readers’ gaze roams among characters’ and an unknown observer’s positions. Moreover, when they finish the text, readers come to recognize that they could misinterpret the text from the cover. In the final page of the text, readers see on a character’s shirt red liquid on a yellow smiley face, just like the one on the cover, but the red liquid is ketchup, not blood. Readers can no longer be sure whether the red liquid on the cover is blood or ketchup. As such, the text makes readers aware of how uncertain their interpretation is.
For the uncertainty of readers’ interpretation, Richard Reynolds states that both characters and readers of Watchmen are “consumers of their own
self-serving fiction” (114). Chapter 3 supports this notion: it centers on a sign for a fallout shelter, a news vendor talking about the relationship between information produced by media and world disasters, and a boy reading a comic book about a marooned mariner, Tales of the Black Freighter. The three elements frequently coappear within the same panels, as if they worked together to convey a certain message. The boy is so taken with the trous story of the comic book that he is never concerned about the disas-trous situation of his own surroundings. The news vendor continually remarks on disasters of the world, quoting the newspapers he sells. But because he is not paying attention to the nearby sign for the fallout shelter, he does not realize how near the danger is. Neither character seems to under-stand that the world is falling apart; instead, they are “burying their heads in a story they don’t understand while the world falls around their ears”
(Reynolds 114). In fact, they are in the same position as the marooned mariner of Tales of the Black Freighter— doomed.
Watchmen seems to ask its own readers if they are different from the news vendor and the boy — or even different from the marooned mariner in the comic book. In this sense, Tales of the Black Freighter as the subtext could be equivalent to its main text, Watchmen, and the boy and the news vendor are analogous to the readers of Watchmen. The narrations and graphics of Tales of the Black Freighter and Watchmen are often mixed within the same pages or even the same panels (for example, 3:4, 3:22, 5:12, 5:17, 5:21, 8:3, 8:25–26, and 10:13). Such combinations and overlappings of the two texts signify that Tales of the Black Freighter breaks out of its frame as a subtext and invades the broader text, Watchmen. Likewise, Watchmen can break into readers’ reality. Watchmen and readers are thus in an intertextual relation-ship — one that makes it hard for readers to interpret Watchmen objectively because the critical distance between them is erased.
Generally, visual texts place readers in the observer’s position, and it makes readers feel that they are outside the story so they can objectively interpret the text. However, Watchmen shows the potential of visual texts to reverse the position — that is, being observed by the text. In Watchmen, read-ers catch strange gazes, which make them feel like they are being observed.
For instance, in chapter 7, Dan (Nite Owl) and Laurie (Silk Spectra) are preparing to resume their careers as the masked vigilantes. The first panel of page 21 shows Dan wearing the costume of Nite Owl. The text does not show the scene directly but instead through a reflection on the eye-shaped window of Nite Owl’s airship (7:21). The windows of the airship, which look
like eyes, serve as an observer’s gaze, one who is within the scene. Similarly, on page 28, Nite Owl’s goggles perform as an observer, watching Laurie and Dan (the fourth panel), and another gaze observes the whole scene, includ-ing the characters and the goggles (the fifth and sixth panels). The last gaze is far from Laurie, Dan, and the gaze watching them, showing readers Nite Owl’s airship flying away. The gaze grasps the entire figure of the airship, emphasizing its eyelike windows — windows that face the readers, giving the impression that they are watching the readers. In the last three panels of chapter 7, the text appears to see the readers, rather than being seen. In this way, the text attempts to reverse the positions of the text and readers to see/read readers.
Such a reversed position between the text and readers is shown more obviously in chapter 6, “The Abyss Gazes Also.” To reveal the source of his violence, Dr. Malcom, a psychologist, examines a superhero, Rorschach (Walter Joseph Kovacs), who wears a mask with inkblot shapes. Rorschach suffers from sexual depression caused by his mother’s sex business and vio-lence, and Dr. Malcom is supposed to reveal the relationship between Rorschach’s violence and his childhood trauma. After hearing Rorschach’s answers to the Rorschach inkblot test, Dr. Malcom believes that “no prob-lem is beyond the grasp of a good psychoanalyst” (6:1). In this belief, Rorschach is a text and Dr. Malcom is a reader/interpreter. However, Ror-schach does not allow Dr. Malcom to interpret him; RorRor-schach lies about the inkblots, and Dr. Malcom, as a confident interpreter, does not notice his lies until his patient confesses. In the last interview, Rorschach tells the doctor, “You don’t want to make me well. Just want to know what makes me sick. You’ll find out. You’ll find out” (6:11). Later, Dr. Malcom finally finds out that Rorschach made him realize his own psychological problems:
his sexual depression and immanent violence, which have been concealed under his successful career as an interpreter. Reading the text (interviewing Rorschach) is no longer the process of interpretation of the text; rather, it becomes a chance to see the reader’s insecure position as the interpreter. In the final panels of chapter 6, Dr. Malcom is looking at an inkblot sheet in his bedroom. In that moment, he becomes a patient or an object that should be interpreted; his status is now that of text, not interpreter.
The relationship between Rorschach and Dr. Malcom illustrates the relationship between Watchmen and readers. Readers often see inkblots through either Rorschach’s mask or Dr. Malcom’s inkblot test sheets as if they themselves were tested in front of a psychoanalyst (for example, 5:11,
5:18, 6:1, 6:21, 6:28, and 12:23). The text provides readers with chances to see their own reality while reading the text. After reading the entire text, readers may be able to sympathize with Dr. Malcom’s realization: “Why do we argue? Life’s so fragile.... The horror is this: in the end, it is simply a pic-ture of empty meaningless blackness. We are alone. There is nothing else”
(6:28). When readers realize that their position as interpreter is insecure and fragile, they also come to understand the impossibility of traditional inter-pretation — and, further, the possibility of absence of meaning. At the end of chapter 6, the text, following Dr. Malcom’s gaze onto an inkblot test sheet, shows a black blank, a space in which nothing exists and thus no meaning can be absolute. The text thus emphasizes its attempt to once more frustrate readers’ interpretation. Watchmen shows that the empty, meaning-less space is concealed by meaningmeaning-less patchworks of fact and fiction.