Notes on this page
Chapter 10, Page 20
Summary
In Adrian Veidt’s office, Rorschach and Nite Owl test possible motives for the conspiracy while using Veidt’s computer to search Pyramid Deliveries. Their suspicion remains diffuse until Rorschach guesses “Rameses II,” unlocking files that address Adrian by name and turning speculation into a direct lead.
Panels
Gibbons returns to a strict nine-panel grid, but makes it feel almost claustrophobically repetitive: the characters remain largely fixed while the monitor, speech balloons, and small changes of posture carry the action. This visual stasis expands the suspense of entering a password; panels 4–9 turn several keystrokes into a miniature procedural drama, ending on the sharply timed “Oh shit.” The following page immediately pays off that comic beat by enlarging the consequences: the files connect Pyramid Deliveries to Veidt, and the investigation suddenly accelerates toward Karnak.
Environment
The office’s Egyptian décor is not merely luxurious background: statues, pharaonic images, and the desk’s purple pyramid make Veidt’s public fascination with antiquity materially useful to the investigation. His carefully manufactured corporate identity supplies the password that compromises his secrecy, suggesting an ego so pervasive that it becomes an evidentiary trail.
Color
A restricted scheme of mauve, black, gray-violet, ochre, and sickly monitor green unifies the room while separating its two systems of knowledge. The warm Egyptian relics monumentalize the past, whereas the luminous green screen makes hidden modern information visually dominant; Nite Owl’s green-lit hands and face suggest that the computer’s revelation is changing what he can see and believe.
Symbols
Pyramids dominate the page as objects, company branding, and interfaces with hidden power; they evoke hierarchy, monumental authority, and Veidt’s desire to stand above ordinary humanity. Masks provide a quieter irony: the costumed intruders struggle to identify an unseen enemy while surrounded by images of dead rulers, until they recognize that Veidt’s historical self-fashioning is itself a kind of mask—and a clue.
Themes
The page turns Veidt’s obsession with superior intelligence against him. Rorschach reasons through apocalyptic motives while Nite Owl applies practical technological skill, and together they penetrate a scheme built by the man celebrated as “the smartest man on Earth.” The irony is exact: Veidt conceals his power through corporations and aliases, yet chooses a password drawn from the grandiose identity he cannot stop advertising. His private conspiracy and public image prove inseparable.
Graphic Novel Technique
The page makes data entry suspenseful through repetition with variation, a particularly controlled use of the nine-panel grid. Because all nine moments remain visible at once, the reader can compare the failed and successful passwords, linger over the accumulating Egyptian clues, and anticipate the breakthrough before the characters fully explain it. The computer screen also functions as an embedded document: its blocky text delivers evidence directly, while the final dialogue balloon supplies the emotional punctuation that a prose narrator would otherwise have to describe.