Intimacy and Human Connection in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ “Watchmen”: Part II

Over the past few posts, I have been looking at various themes in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen. Today, I want to continue the examination of how Watchmen interrogates our relationships with another, calling upon us to build bridges and to connect with others intimately so that we don’t remain alone and can face the trials and tribulations of the world, whether personal, national, or global, together, providing solace and comfort amongst the turmoil. Last post, I looked at the ways that Dr. Malcolm Long and his wife Gloria serve as a grounding for examining our need for intimacy and connection and how fragile that connection truly is, especially when we fail to nurture it. In Watchmen, this failure led to Gloria leaving Malcolm because he became obsessed with Rorschach’s case and the cases of others, bringing his work home to Gloria.

Chapter XI brings all of the relational subplots together on the street in New York next to Bernhard’s newsstand, the Institute for Extraspatial Studies, and the Promethean Cab Company. The chapter moves back and forth from this setting in New York to Adrian Veidt in his Antarctic base unleashing his false-flag, alien invasion to bring about world peace. What makes this chapter important is the ways that numerous plot points intersect, including Bernie who sits at the…