This was my first time reading Watchmen so Elizabeth Rosen’s reading was extremely helpful. I noticed how intricate the graphic novel was while I was reading and the Rosen reading helped me pick out all the details that I missed. Many of what Rosen points out are details I questioned, but they never really made sense to me overall.

I tried to think about the different themes that Rosen brought up in the introduction: deities, time, and judgment while I read Watchmen. To me, it was quite obvious that Doctor Manhattan was the deity in Watchmen. He was seen as this god-like figure because of his abilities. Rosen mentioned in the introduction that most of the time in postmodern apocalyptic interpretations, the deity is split up into different characters. After reading Chapter 1, I definitely see how Ozymandias and Rorschach act like deities. I really enjoyed how Rosen points out the clues that Moore and Gibbons laid out for readers throughout the graphic novel. I can’t believe that I failed to see the underlying messages in some of her examples.

Time is an important element in apocalyptic stories and plays an important theme in Watchmen. I noticed the authors’ use of the clock at the beginning of each chapter, but it never occurred to me what it meant. I also like Rosen’s interpretation about how the genre of the graphic novel allowed the authors to play with time from panel to panel. I think that this theme was less obvious in Watchmen and it might have been something I would have picked up on if I read the graphic novel a second or third time.

I think that Watchmen is one of those books that definitely needs a second read. There are so many different ways that an author can bury underlying meanings in a graphic novel. Graphic novels are not something I read a lot so I am only starting to get used to how to looking at them critically. In addition to just the text, one must pay attention to the font of the text and all the different elements of the art.