While watching Rambo: First Blood Part II, I noticed veteran tough-guy character-actor Martin Kove (head of the dojo from Karate Kid, among other credits). He’s featured early in the film piloting a helicopter during Rambo’s insertion on his POW-finding mission.
What caught my eye was what he was wearing: a “smiley-face” pin.
Granted, it’s altered to be a “frowny-face,” but it’s very visible, on a character one can easily see playing the Comedian at the time, and very timely to the creation of Watchmen.
Anybody have the DVD they could do a screen cap from?
All the characters from the original comic book are based off superheroes from old Charlton comics. In this case The Comedian is a dark turn on a character named the Peacemaker.
Now, “Rambo 2” was released during 1985, and “Watchmen” was published during 86 and 87, which makes it possible that either the writer, Alan Moore or the artist, Dave Gibbons, could have watched the film and picked up on that detail, even including the delay between planning, makig and publishing it.
Sorry, I should have made clear that I knew about the Charlton inspirations. That was actually why I said “an inspiration” in the thread title. Just forgot to expound.