holmes. Not that this would have been guaranteed to work, but I think trotting out a harem of sufficiently nubile 16 year old girls fitting Silk’s Spectre’s general, uh, assets and psychological profile might have kept Doc Manhattan around a few more decades. The real question is how come the U.S. government didn’t initiate a massive cover-up immediately to hide Doc’s abdication of Earth? The stupidest thing you want to do in a international crisis is tip off the enemy the lynchpin in your defense system went AWOL.
ascenray. The Comedian totally smoked Hooded Justice, if only because Ozymandias thinks it happened even if he couldn’t prove it. Second theory: Nelson Gardner, Captain Metropolis – as Hooded Justice’s abused gay lover (remember that little bombshell?) – killed HJ in self-defense and somehow buried the bones. Or perhaps he was a Soviet spy who outlived his usefulness.
I’m pretty sure Silhouette’s lover did the deed, and the Comedian didn’t do it.
Um… I think it was a line or two in one of the extra appendixes near the end… I think it was Silk Spectre’s photo album. Going by memory here.
It was definitely stated by Silk Spectre I in that mock Playboy interview that one of the Minutemen was gay, and it was hushed up.
IIRC correctly, in that same section Sally Jupiter’s husband/agent Laurence Shexnayder wrote her a letter bemoaning how Nelson came to him crying about Hooded Justice and how all some kid they picked up needed to do was go to the police with bruises and it would be the “Silhouette fiasco” all over again.
Ah. Got it. WATCHMEN, end of chapter IX, on the third page of the scrapbook clippings for the Hood Justice and Nelson Gardener comments (“H.J. and Nelly”.) The comments by Silk Spectre were in Probe, not PLAYBOY, sorry.
Interestingly, a lot of people seem to think the Comedian killed reporters Woodward and Bernstein. I never understood this conclusion, especially in light of TC’s dismissive comment that if one “smoke[d] enough weed”, one could imagine anything. The impression I got is that W&B tried to break the Watergate story, but Nixon was so popular that nobody much cared (as was the real-life case early on). Also, there was a throwaway reference to Al Haig’s resignation, and a great many people had speculated that Haig was Deep Throat (since proven wrong). Unable to make Watergate amount to anything much, I infer, Haig resigned. Nixon, after Vietnam, was untouchable.
Woodward and Bernstein were almost certainly killed by the Comedian, his denials notwithstanding. It was at that dinner honoring Blake, and Laurel Juspeczyk was questioning, “Why?” and “everybody seemed real pleased with him.” The revelant line was, “See those Post reporters they found in that garage? Woodward and whatsisname? Jewish name…”
Ah, I thought the line was “See what those Post reporters found…” i.e. they claimed to have found out something useful about Watergate but were dismissed.
Well, it seems pretty conclusive that HJ was gay; but, I’m not sure I buy that Captain Metropolis was gay as well, much less HJ’s abused lover. The references to him as “Nelly” seem to me to be more of a disparaging nickname than anything else.
Back when The Minutemen were still around and the Comedian wore a yellow harlequin outfit, HJ beat the crap out of him. HJ had an extremely good reason. But, all the Comedian would care about is that somebody else was able to utterly defeat him in combat. The Comedian is the kind of guy who holds grudges and who must always prove how tough and macho he is. Once he had some government contacts and support, he uncovered HJ’s identity, tracked him down and killed him.
Re Manhattan and time
He says things like ‘I can see the strings, but I’m still a puppet.’
RE Ozymandias
I think he’d be realistic about his chances. Remember that he unmasks himself when he predicts public opinion turning against superheroes, rather than thinking ‘But, I’m so great that they will always love me.’ If he thought that the odds weren’t good on his becoming a second Manhattan, he’d develop another plan.
Comedian (after being beaten by HJ) “This is what you like huh? This is what gets you hot” and “But I got your number, see? And one of these days, the joke’s gonna be on you”
From the Under The Hood Excerpt at the back of issue 2 Re Silhouette
“, and six weeks later she was murdered, along with her lover, by one of her former enemies.” As Hollis Mason mentions the Comedian’s assualt and attempted rape of Sally on the same page, he certainly would have made some kind of allegation if he believed the Comedian to be responsible for the murders.
HJ and Captain Metropolis
From Sally’s scrapbook at the end of issue 9
Letter to Sally from her agent Larry
“Nelly called me last night, upset over yet another tiff with H.J. Those two are getting worse, the more they row and act like an old married couple in public, the harder they are to cover up for. I know that you’ve provided a steady alibi * for H.J. up to now, and that the publicity we got from that hasn’t exactly hurt you either, but it can’t last much longer. Nelly says he’s always out when Nelly calls, out with boys, and apparently there’s a lot of rough stuff going on.”
Emphasis mine. We know HJ is gay. But Larry says “they”.
The Under The Hood Excerpt at the end of issue 2 mentions that while HJ and Sally seem to be dating, Hollis never sees them so much as kiss. Being of an earlier generation, he never realizes that Slly is HJ’s beard.
BTW I should have said that Manhattan tells Lori ‘This conversation ends with you in tears.’
There is, I believe, a foreshadowing of HJ and CM’s relationship early on, in issue 1, page 25, panel 4 (the restaurant). Two older men, one bearded, one not, are showing mutual affection. The two men roughly resemble HJ’s alleged alter ego (the German strongman) and CM’s civilian appearance.
Are they the right ages, Bryan? Maybe they really are them. I agree that Comedian would have killed H.J. and that the book suggests that’s what happened to Rolf Mueller, but it could be that the Comedian was fooled about H.J.'s identity. I always assumed Mueller was supposed to be H.J., but I recently read a pretty convincing repudiation of that somewhere (on the SDMB?). Although I can’t remember why I was convinced. Anyway, maybe blake killed Mueller thinking he was H.J., but was wrong.
Man. Almost 20 years later and I’m still hearing new elements to the story.
Once in college, on a blind date, a girl told me that her English class was studying some stupid comic book called Watchmen. Despite being an attractive young co-ed, she never got a second call from me!