Our walk through Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen ends with issue #12, “A Strong And Loving World.” Or does it? Because nothing ever ends? No, this ends, as Dr. Manhattan and Laurie Blake return to Earth to confront Adrian Veidt; and our assembled heroes are faced with an impossible decision.

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The theme music for Watchmen Watch was written and performed by Jeff Solomon.

Plus, here’s a transcript of the episode, so you can read along as you listen:

Alex:                         Welcome
to Watchmen Watch, who watches it? We get ready to watch it as we’re coming up
on Watchmen Watch on HBO, but first, we’re going to be watching a comic book
which just kind of sits there. I’m Alex.

Justin:                     I’m
Justin.

Pete:                        I
am Pete.

Alex:                         We
are going to be talking about the final issue of the Watchmen comic, the 12th
issue, A Stronger Loving World, as we wrap up our recap of the comic, and
transition totally seamlessly into recapping the TV show, no breaks there,
don’t even worry about it. Before we get into it though, I’m a little concerned
here, I see you Justin, I see you Pete, our fourth co-host including-

Pete:                        Come
on man-

Alex:                         …
some of the biggest four people, isn’t here, what’s going on?

Justin:                     Well,
It’s a great day here. I actually have some very exciting news. Alan is here,
Alan go ahead and introduce yourself. Hello… I’m just kidding, he’s not here.
It’s-

Alex:                         Man.

Justin:                     …
he bailed again.

Pete:                        That
was…

Alex:                         That
was fine.

Justin:                     We’re
doing this really insulting them.

Alex:                         Yes.
We do this over video Skype chat. Even though I can see you when you start
doing that voice, I was like, I’m convinced he’s here. That’s how good your
voice was.

Justin:                     Yes,
I am here.

Alex:                         He’s
here again. Pete is here.

Justin:                     No,
that’s just me. That’s how seamless when you’re a classically trained actor as
I am, you can slip in and out of a character. Sorry, Alan Moore isn’t going to
make it for the 12th and final time.

Alex:                         Man,
that is too bad. Well, hopefully I know how psyched he is about the show, he’s
been out on the promotional tour, chatting it up, talking about what’s going on
in HBO.

Justin:                     He’s
at a Buffalo Wild Wings premiere party for Watchmen.

Pete:                        I’m
going to be there for that. [crosstalk 00:01:48 ] Are you kidding me? Come on.

Justin:                     He
has a sauce that’s branded the Alan Moore nuclear explosion wings.

Alex:                         I
heard they’re also putting that on the Rorschach shows.

Justin:                     Those
are not shows.

Alex:                         Yes.

Justin:                     It’s
tricky. Alan Moore has lost a step as a writer, especially when it comes to
naming a product tie in appetizers.

Alex:                         He
used to be so good at that too.

Justin:                     Yes.

Alex:                         It’s
surprising.

Justin:                     That’s
right. He was the one that came up with unlimited breadsticks. They used to be
unlimited potential Doctor Manhattan breadsticks.

Alex:                         That’s
all-

Pete:                        Were
they blue?

Alex:                         …
why I always feel like it’s five minutes to midnight whenever I go to the olive
garden.

Justin:                     100%.
Guys-

Alex:                         It’s
the-

Justin:                     …
Their original slogan was, when you’re here, you have a blue dick, they changed
it to family.

Alex:                         I
remember I went there one time and I was like, “Hey, we’ve been waiting
for a while for our food, can we get our food?” And they were like,
“You ate it 35 minutes ago.”

Justin:                     That’s
how they made a fortune in their early days.

Alex:                         They
get you, every time they get you, do you know who also gets you? Adrian Veidt
gets you, Ozymandias gets you and he gets the entire world. He got them. He did
the ultimate punked episode. He punked the entire world in this issue. Really
glad I went for that reference.

Justin:                     No,
this is the context we should speak about this final issue. It is the ultimate
punkting.

Alex:                         When
we left the characters of this book… I was about to say the what.

Justin:                     When
we left the characters, we said a hardy goodbye last day issue. And here we
are, knock, knock, knocking on the character’s doors again. Let’s go inside,
issue 12.

Alex:                         Hello,
Watchmen, you there?

Justin:                     Hello
Alex.

Alex:                         It’s
me-

Justin:                     Alan
Moore.

Alex:                         Well
anyway, New York got destroyed by a giant psychic squid that Ozymandias dropped
there in order to create a fake alien invasion, which is something that we
affirm in, we talk about more in this issue, in order to promote and cause
world peace. Right now, Nite Owl and Rorschach are both at Adrian Veidt’s
headquarters, they’ve just been told about his plan.

Alex:                         They
are pretty shocked at the end of this issue when it actually turned out to
actually have happened. Meanwhile, Silk Spectre and Doctor Manhattan are all
the way up on Mars, though they’re heading that way as well and everything
comes crashing together in this oversized final issue. Before we get into it,
this feels like a very dumb question to ask with Watchmen, having revisited the
series, what’d you think about it?

Alex:                         But
really, I mean like, we’ve been talking about this all along, but I’m curious
now that we’ve reached the end, now… and we’re going to go through the whole
issue, and we’re going to walk through the issue, but what was your general
take on it with this re-reading now in 2019?

Justin:                     I
think too, we change as readers over the years, obviously, and I haven’t fully
sat down and read this in probably six or seven years. I do think, just as a
fan of comics, the older you get and the more time passes, the more time that
you live, a fan of comics are in the world where the political atmosphere chain
is changing all the time.

Justin:                     I
think this comic deepens so much. I do think that happened. I think the
topicality of reading it right now, in our political atmosphere, the current
sort of a state of the world and with the series about to come out and sort of
reframe this whole series, it’s an exciting time to read this comic.

Alex:                         How
about you Pete? How are you feeling about it now?

Pete:                        Well,
it’s a lot to talk about, but for sure, I mean the problem is, when you’re
looking at a comic like this that was written so long ago, there’s a lot of
bullshit that you have to kind of try to ignore like the female characters, the
oversexualization, there’s a lot of bullshit, but-

Justin:                     I
will say that was there in the original read. They didn’t take any more women
out. It didn’t use to pass the Bechdel test and then now suddenly has failed
it.

Alex:                         Well,
I will say, this is coming right off of right before we taped, there was a
thread in our patriot slack, about this very issue, which frankly I think is
what Pete’s very rightly responding to and that’s something that we’ve talked
about all along in the podcast, that this, it’s an incredible comic book, it’s
an undeniable artistic achievement, but it’s also very much a product of its
time at the same moment.

Alex:                         I
think something I struck by which you’ve talked about a lot, and you just
mentioned Justin, is the very timeless aspects of the book in terms of
criticizing society, talking about panic, talking about conspiracy theories
that feel so relevant right now but to Pete’s point, same sort of thing that,
yes, the female characters are absolutely underserved and I think from a 2019 perspective
when we’ve seen… I’m not going to say infinite more but a lot more female
creators and male creators also being more cognizant about these sorts of
things in terms of creating