Watchmen #9 pg 18 - Death of Rorschach Foreshadow + Color Guide

I use a version of this with edited dialogue as a banner for my CAF Gallery. Multiple people have suggested to me I should try to find the page etc, not realizing I wouldn't have posted the banner if I didn't already have it lol. Well here it is; no search and recover quest necessary.

It might not be obvious at first, but there was clearly a ton of thought put into the composition of this page to hide a narrative bomb in plain sight.

The layout of this page is nearly identical to the page that comes before it. Three very similar wide landscape panels, panning across the topography of Mars. The characters are tiny against the backdrop, to emphasize Dr Manhattan's point: if they were gone, "the Universe would not even notice."

The dialogue is front and center; this is not a moment of action, this is just a conversation in the middle of the vastness of nowhere. All the panels are the same, there is no momentum building, no energy or action. This is just like the last page where nothing happened. The reader can drop his/her guard. Everything is safe. This is just a quiet moment. Enjoy the view.

Yet, dropped into one of those dialogue bubbles is a throwaway comment with no context: Dr Manhattan kills someone in the snow in some uncertain future. As quickly as it's said he moves on to his next thought. He has killed a lot of people, and he doesn't seem particularly bothered by this. Doesn't say who, he doesn't know, must not be important. He said snow, there's no snow on Mars. It's clearly not happening now and nothing eventful is happening. Oh, time to move on... Laurie still needs to convince Dr M to help. That's why we're here, that's the purpose of this moment. And just like that, with absolute perfect artistic execution, Rorschach's murder is a nonevent afterthought.

For most readers, this moment is just a great easter egg for their second read through. For those who really paid attention to the dialogue, it's Chekhov’s Gun. When the final scene arrives at Veidt's arctic compound the tension immediately builds with the falling snow. As you feel the last few pages in your fingers, it's clear the words "I can't let you do that" are a death sentence. Rorschach's fate was sealed three issues before, and you were in on the joke.