Chapter IV: “Watchmaker”
“The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking. The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.” - Albert Einstein.
Is there life on Mars? Well, currently, yes. Doctor Manhattan has escaped there and now sits sadly poring over a photograph of a woman, but soon his humanity, which despite his best efforts is receding, being reduced and swamped as he moves towards apotheosis, loses out and he wanders over the red planet, looking idly at the stars. He has lost interest in the woman, in the photo, and with her, all of humanity, and feels, at this moment, no further ties to, or responsibility for them. This is rather unfortunate, as his departure has left America defenceless, their main – only – deterrent removed, and the wolves are moving in. Meanwhile, lost in his thoughts, Manhattan is remembering his childhood, remembering his father, who was a watchmaker, and his own fascination at an early age with the mechanical movements and working of the timepieces. We see his father bring in the newspaper with the news of the atomic bomb having been dropped on Hiroshima, and unimpressed with the need there will be for watchmakers in this new world he convinces – orders, really – his son to give up his attempts to follow the watchmaker into his trade and study instead atomic physics, which he sees as the future.
He remembers his time at Princeton, and joining the research facility at Gila Flats, where he is shown all the new experimental machinery, including something called an Intrinsic Field time-lock test vault. An Intrinsic Field is merely a name for a hypothesis: what if everything, all molecules, are not held together by gravity alone? What if there is some other, unknown force acting on atomic matter? The test vault is sealed to ensure no dangerous radiation escapes while the experiments are being conducted. It's at Gila Flats that Jon Osterman meets Janey Slater, who will become his lover, and who is the woman in the photograph he is now looking at on Mars. After someone accidentally steps on her watch, Osterman offers to repair it, which he does, but forgets it: he has left it in his coat back the lab. In fact, it's in the time test vault, which rather unfortunately for him is running an experiment when he unknowingly enters it. It seals him in, and nobody can release him as it's time-locked and can't be overridden. Osterman realises he is going to die.
He does, and he doesn't. His body certainly seems to be vapourised, and there is a funeral ceremony (though there is no body to bury), but months later he appears as a walking central nervous system, a skeleton half-covered in muscle, and eventually returns to life, as we know it, in the form we have come to know him as. After the initial shock has worn off, the new creature is surrounded by ad-men and
PR executives as they try to market the almost unmarketable. From somewhere comes the name Doctor Manhattan, chosen by some bland ad man I assume, but we're told it has been selected due to the Manhattan Project, the shadowy name for the development of the atomic bomb. It's meant to inspire fear in enemies (who or what those enemies are, with the war now conclusively over, is not mentioned, perhaps not even considered) and respect and pride in allies. Manhattan is used as a propaganda tool, a tool for fighting crime, a symbol of America's suddenly unquestioned dominance. “The superman is real,” crows the news, “and he's American,” adding smugly “There has been no word from the Kremlin yet.”
In the wake of the arrival of the new breed, the older superheroes or masked heroes mostly decide to call it a day. Who will need them now, with their razor-sharp reflexes, toned muscles and wisecracks when there is a man on Earth who can vapourise criminals with a mere wave of his blue hand? For somehow, Osterman has realised that he is now able to control matter; he can rearrange molecules, lift things by simply thinking about it, teleport objects or people and pass through solid matter as if it was not there. Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl, decides to retire and run his garage, though he is less than pleased when Manhattan tells him that there are new electric cars about to hit the market, thanks to him. It also seems that Manhattan can see the future – in fact, he sees the future, the past and the present all in one stream, as if there is no difference between them. For him, really, there isn't: past is present and present is future, though he is able to distinguish between them, which is why he says to an annoyed Janey “Soon we make love”, she gets indignant but he is proven correct, as this is the only possibility that exists. Manhattan is never wrong: he knows the future because he has seen it, he has lived it already.
At a meeting of so-called superheroes Osterman meets Laurie for the first time. Janey notices and is furious: she is getting older and Jon, even if he is a superhuman blue godlike giant, is still a man and wants a younger, prettier girl. His mind probably rationalises it to the nth degree, and he could likely convince Janey that this is the inevitable outcome of the tail-end of their relationship. But women don't like to consider logic when confronted with a young pretender to their lover's throne – who does? - and she packs and leaves. Jon and Janey move in together. Jon is called upon by President Nixon to intervene in the Vietnam War, and like a good little soldier he does. Here he meets for the first time Edward Blake, the Comedian. The war lasts just over two months. Triumphant and flushed with victory, Nixon prepares a constitutional amendment to allow him run for a third term, and Manhattan and Laurie visit Adrian Veidt, who ruminates on the state of the world. Previously the hero Ozymandias, he has retired to concentrate on his multi-billion-dollar business empire.
After protests by police that masked heroes are taking over their jobs and basically operating as vigilantes, the Keene Act outlaws “masked adventurers”, forcing them into retirement. Manhattan of course is exempt, as he is on the government payroll (and anyway, who's going to force the most powerful being on the planet to stop what he's doing?), as is the Comedian (who has just recently returned from a successful mission to free the Iranian hostages) but all the others are now banned. Rorschach, with typical defiance, refuses the order outright. On Mars, Dr. Manhattan has decided to create something. It is a palace, and it very closely resembles the inner workings of a watch.
QUOTES
Jon Osterman: “My dad sort of pushed me into it (atomic physics). That happens to me a lot. Other people seem to make all my moves for me.”
(Even though he is unquestionably the most powerful being on the planet, this is still true of Doctor Manhattan in the present. Despite all his great powers – at least, up to the point where he leaves Earth – the big blue giant is under the control of the military and the government, and can barely make a move without their say-so.
Wally Weaver, on Einstein: “You know, I heard he argued with his wife. Crazy, huh? A guy like that, a genius, even he couldn't figure women!”
Announcer: “We repeat: the Superman exists, and he is American!”
Dr. Manhattan (reminiscing): “It's November. The newspapers call me a crime fighter, so the Pentagon decides I must fight crime. The morality of my actions escapes me.”
(I find this quote very interesting. It shows at once that Manhattan has no free will of his own – even though if he wanted to he could level the Pentagon, all of Earth probably, with a thought – and is completely controlled by the government. They tell him to fight crime, and he fights crime, not because he sees it as his duty, or because he thinks it is wrong, but because he is a mere puppet (a super powerful puppet) being used by the men in power. As he says, the morality of killing people means nothing to him. Manhattan has begun to lose, despite his determination to try to hold on to it as much as he can, any real semblance of humanity, and soon, it will be impossible, inaccurate and wrong to describe him as a human.)
Dr. Manhattan (reminsicing): “It's September 1961 and John Kennedy is shaking my hand and asking me what it feels like to be a superhero. I tell him he should know, and he nods and laughs. Two years later, in Dallas, his head snaps forward and then back. Two shots...”
Adrian Veidt: “With your help, our scientists are limited only by their imaginations.”
Manhattan: “And by their consciences, surely?”
Veidt: “Let's hope so.”
Manhattan: “Pay attention! You will all return to your homes!”
Protester: “Oh yeah? What if we don't, you big blue fruit?”
Manhattan: “You misunderstand me. It was not a request.”
A moment later, everyone is gone: Manhattan has teleported them all away.
Manhattan (reminiscing): “As long as I continue to act under US Government supervision, I am exempt from the law. They can hardly outlaw me when their country's defence lies in my hands. The only other active vigilante is called Rorschach, real identity unknown. He expresses his feelings towards compulsory retirement in a note left outside police headquarters along with a dead multiple rapist.”
Professor Milton Glass (from the introduction to
Dr. Manhattan: Super-power and the Superpowers): “Children starve while boots costing many thousands of dollars leave imprints on the surface of the moon. We have laboured long to create a Heaven for ourselves, only to find it populated with horrors.”
Glass: “I never said
The Superman exists and he is American. What I said was
God exists and he is American. If that phrase begins to chill you after a few moments' consideration don't be alarmed. A feeling of intense and crushing religious terror at the concept merely proves you are still sane.”
Glass: “I do not believe we have made a man to end wars. I believe we have made a man to end worlds.”
Those clever little touches
I don't know whether it's intentional or not, but when Osterman's father brings in the newspaper, it's folded over and you can see it's the
New York Times, yet the letterer has made it look somehow like
Dark Times. I don't know if I'm reading too much into this or not, but if not, it's exceptionally clever and sharp.
The comparison is made between the scattered watch cogs falling from the windowsill as Jon's father dumps them out the window, and the meteorites falling on Mars. And, possibly, if you take it a little further, the bomb falling on Japan.
Another clever piece of art shows when the stars in the sky above Mars slowly metamorphose, as Jon reminisces, into cogs lying on black velvet.
What about the acronym for the Intrinsic Field? IF?
It surely can't be coincidence that the day Osterman returns as what will become Doctor Manhattan is the exact date of the assassination of President Kennedy? It can't be mere happenstance that Moore chose this date for what would become perhaps the most momentous event in his universe, the genesis of Doctor Manhattan?
As Manhattan watches the Andromeda Galaxy from Mars, and thinks to himself that supernovas are the only place gold comes from, the camera zooms in on the Andromeda Galaxy and as his memories return to the past, changes into a gold ring Janey has given him as a Christmas present. Whether there's meant to be any connotation with a wedding ring, whether Janey and Manhattan are, or were, married, I don't know (but I don't think they were before the accident, and if they had been since, you can imagine the wedding: “You may kiss the, uh, big blue giant” or “Till death do you part – well, till her death: we don't know if he can die” etc.).
As Manhattan reels at the unwanted attention he complains that the ad men are trying to turn him into something he is not, and that it's all getting out of his hands. The accompanying panel shows him dropping the photograph he has retrieved from Gila Flats and taken to Mars with him, and which has been the catalyst for these sudden memories of a woman surely now long dead.
Manhattan and Laurie buy a copy of Time which commemorates the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima. On the cover is a picture of a watch, its hands stopped at the moment of impact, forever preserving that one awful moment throughout eternity. It's a direct link back to the broken watch that Jon went back to the chamber for, the face of which was the last thing he saw before his body was disintegrated and his old life taken away forever. A moment in time, frozen forever. As if this isn't enough, the next panel shows a memory of the first time Janey handed him his beer, and as his hand closed on the glass the phrase “hands frozen”.
There's a really deep and telling philosophical argument put by Manhattan, as he creates his palace on Mars. Who is to blame for his being here, being what he is? His father, for forcing him from the chosen career he had wanted to follow and thereby bringing him into contact with the IF chamber? The fat man who stood on Janey's watch when they were out, thus cracking the face, necessitating Jon gong back to the chamber to fetch the repaired watch and thereby leading to his being trapped in the chamber, and subsequently his death and rebirth? Or is he to blame? Or indeed nobody? Was all this irrevocably written in his destiny, and he always moving towards it, unable to resist its pull?
The story so far
Constantly badgered by what he must see as petty humans, Doctor Manhattan has taken himself off to Mars, where he reflects on his life, his loves, and the accident that made him what he is today. He recalls how getting trapped in a test chamber for something called the Intrinsic Field generator caused him to be destroyed, and yet reborn as the most powerful being on Earth. He remembers how his government used him as a pawn and a tool, and how he lost the women he loved. He thinks back to the act of congress that banned all superheroes, and the effect this had on the people he had been associating with, some of whom may mistakenly have believed were his friends. He ruminates on all the wonderful advances in technology he spearheaded, from electric cars to floating airships, and how he won the Vietnam War almost singlehanded. But he is lonely on Mars, restless on Earth, and seeks companionship. Unable – at this point, at any rate – or unwilling to take the ultimate step and create life himself, he creates a palatial residence for himself on Mars and watches the meteorites fall on the red planet.
And it is now eight minutes to midnight.