Notes on this page
Chapter 2, Page 19
Summary
At Edward Blake’s rain-soaked funeral, Dan Dreiberg, Adrian Veidt, and Dr. Manhattan pay their respects while the bloodstained smiley badge is dropped into the grave. As the mourners disperse, an unmasked Rorschach notices Moloch leaving and follows him, turning ceremony into investigation.
Panels
The strict nine-panel grid slows the funeral into measured ritual. The first three panels isolate the badge; the middle row moves through mourning and formal handshakes; the final row tracks Moloch’s departure and reveals Kovacs watching him. That orderly descent—from symbol, to ceremony, to pursuit—makes the page turn especially sharp: the following page continues the surveillance before exploding into Rorschach’s attack.
Environment
The cemetery’s iron gates, stone angels, umbrellas, and crowded grave markers make heroism look small within the machinery of death. Unlike the riot imagery on the preceding page, this public space is solemn and socially ordered, yet the persistent rain and Rorschach’s covert surveillance prevent the funeral from offering genuine closure.
Color
John Higgins builds the page from rain-cooled gray-violets, dull greens, and black, then uses the badge’s saturated yellow as an unmistakable visual anchor. Dr. Manhattan’s blue hand creates a second, stranger accent in panel 6; both bright colors appear detached from ordinary flesh, making the costumed identities seem unnervingly durable amid mourning bodies and wet stone.
Symbols
The smiley badge dominates the top row: first held like a relic, then released into the grave, its cheerful face absurdly intact despite the bloodstain. Against the funeral liturgy, it becomes an emblem of Watchmen’s moral world—public optimism marked by violence—while its downward fall converts the chapter’s recurring image into a miniature burial of the Comedian’s persona.
Themes
The Lord’s Prayer runs across the page while suspicion, concealed identities, and future violence unfold beneath it. Phrases about forgiveness, temptation, and deliverance from evil acquire bitter dramatic irony: these characters do not agree on what evil is, and Rorschach’s response to moral uncertainty is not mercy but pursuit and coercive judgment.
Graphic Novel Technique
The page’s central achievement is the counterpoint between one continuous prayer and nine discontinuous images. Comics lets the reader hold sacred language, the falling badge, polite social gestures, and Rorschach’s surveillance together on the same visible field; the captions unify time while the panels quietly fracture motive and perspective, a particularly sophisticated use of montage within mainstream superhero storytelling of the period.