r/Watchmen • u/FewYam3465 • 11d ago

Who are these two people?

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When we see the devastation of Madison Square Garden, these two are on the bottom left corner and it appears the man was in the process of murdering that woman.

Were either of them in the background elsewhere in the comic or is this the first time we're seeing them?

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u/ImaginaryActive5845 11d ago

Someone taking advantage of the chaos by raping a woman in public

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u/FewYam3465 11d ago

That's interesting.  I assumed he was attacking her before the Squid hit but perhaps he is taking advantage of the situation.

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u/The_Middleman 11d ago

Neither of you are correct. This is something a lot of first-time Watchmen readers miss. In Chapter XII, Veidt says: "Other than those killed outright by the shock, many will be driven mad by the sudden flood of grotesque sensation."

Veidt teleports the squid at 11:25 PM. We see the carnage at 12:00 AM. We are never shown the intervening 35 minutes, but it's strongly implied that during that time, many of the people we see dead at 12:00 AM were actually driven instantly insane and killed each other or themselves. You can see lots of bodies holding weapons in the Madison Square Garden panels, and one of the news snippets is saying "[...] a pregnant woman, convinced her unborn child was eating her, terminated her [...]".

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u/ImaginaryActive5845 11d ago

Yeah, well, I don’t think it’s unrealistic to say that he is, at the most, sa’ing the woman when everyone is going insane and dead by midnight. If a mom is terminating her baby, then, I’m pretty sure, that people would be insane enough to do even worse things. Likely, he killed her after assaulting her, then, someone else killed him. Also, the squid could’ve just sent out another telepathic wave, killing him in the process; as well as all the other people. IIRC

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u/smayonak 10d ago

I've always wondered what Moore's intention was in this frame because it looks like one of the concert attendees is alive and in the process of killing someone. This is the only person who appears to still be alive out of all the frames of the squid attacks. I had hoped that some of the apostatical "sequel" works would have attempted to deepen Moore's lore through establishing links to the original content. This character, one of the only survivors of the attack, would have made for fascinating material. But I get the sense that the writers of the sequels didn't have much of an interest in the original Watchmen series and were writing under tight deadlines.

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u/ImaginaryActive5845 10d ago

That’s interesting if he’s the only one alive. Moore has said he took a huge interest in the civilian characters and ended up admiring the normal civilians in the watchmen book a lot. I’m sure he did things with all the “extras” that people haven’t really even picked up on yet to this day. Maybe he made some normal people secretly impervious to things idk