Watchmen: Chapter 2: Absent Friends Summary & Analysis

While Jon attends Edward Blake’s funeral, Laurie visits her mother in a retirement home in California. Laurie and her mother, Sally Jupiter, are terse with each other. Sally seems saddened by Blake’s death, which makes Laurie angry and confused because of what he did to her. Sally claims that one must let go of the past; after so many years, it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal anymore. With Blake gone, Sally notes that there are only three of the original Minutemen left. Laurie is unconvinced, especially after what Jon told her that Blake did during the Vietnam War. Sally proudly shows Laurie a pornographic comic of herself that an old fan recently sent her. Laurie thinks it’s disgusting, but Sally finds it flattering, and states that the older she gets, the better her opinion of the past becomes.

Sally flashes back to a publicity photo session with the Minutemen, decades before. After the group leaves, Sally stays behind to change clothes. Edward Blake, dressed as the Comedian, appears and tells her that, in her skimpy costume, she’s practically asking for sex. Sally tries to push him off, but Blake punches and kicks her hard and tries to rape her, pinning her on the ground. Sally pleads with him to stop. A hero in a black hood with a noose around his neck, Hooded Justice, sees them and beats Blake up, threatening to break his neck. As Blake slinks away, Hooded Justice tells Sally, “For God’s sake, cover yourself.” In the present, Laurie is still disgusted by the porn comic of Sally. Sally counters that at least the government doesn’t keep her around just to have sex with “the H-Bomb.”

Adrian Veidt stands at Edward Blake’s funeral. He flashes back to decades before, when Captain Metropolis holds a meeting to try to organize the current heroes into the Crimebusters, a follow-up to the Minutemen who disbanded in 1949. Captain Metropolis displays a map of the U.S. with various problems labeled, such as “drugs,” “promiscuity,” and “anti-war demos.” Veidt, dressed in his own costume, supports Captain Metropolis’s idea, but the Comedian says it’s all a waste of time, just old men who want to dress up and fight bad guys again to feel important. The Comedian states that once “the nukes” start flying, there’ll be nothing left to protect. To make his point, he takes a lighter and sets fire to the map. As the others disperse, Captain Metropolis exclaims that someone still has to “save the world.”

Jon stands at Blake’s funeral and recalls the day that he and Blake were waiting to leave Vietnam, having won the Vietnam War. Jon thinks all the violence must have some significance in the end, but Blake thinks that all of life is one sick “joke,” and he just plays along with it. He hates Vietnam and he’s ready to leave. A pregnant Vietnamese woman arrives and tells Blake that she carries his child, so he must provide for them. When Blake tells her he’s just going to abandon her, she hits him with a glass bottle, cutting his face. Blake shoots her in the head. Jon tells him he should not have done that, but Blake points out that Jon didn’t even try to stop him.

Daniel Dreiberg stands at Blake’s funeral. He recalls a day when he and Blake, in their vigilante costumes, tried to disperse a crowd of protesters. The police are on strike until the vigilantes get off the streets. Daniel pilots their floating airship while Blake gleefully shoots rubber bullets and tear gas canisters into the crowd. A protester calls Blake “a pig [and a] rapist.” Blake insists that the vigilantes are “society’s only protection,” but Daniel questions who it is they’re protecting society from. On the walls, people have spray painted, “Who watches the Watchmen?” As protesters disperse, Daniel wonders aloud, “What happened to the American dream?” Grinning and holding a shotgun, Blake tells him, “It came true. You’re lookin’ at it.” At the funeral, Daniel throws Blake’s smiley-face pin into his grave.

Rorschach follows an old man home from the funeral and attacks him in his home, pinning him to the ground. Rorschach identifies the man as Edgar Jacobi, also known as the villain Moloch, and demands to know if he had anything to do with the murder. Moloch claims he served his time and retired; he only went to the funeral because Blake visited him shortly before he died, drunk and terrified. Blake rambled about an island full of writers and scientists and artists, involved in some plot so horrific he couldn’t find the joke in it, then left. Rorschach believes Moloch and lets him stand. However, earlier, Rorschach found illegal non-prescription drugs in the man’s house. Moloch tells him they’re just placebo pills—he has terminal cancer. Rorschach says they’re still illegal and he’ll report the crime later. He leaves.

“Rorschach’s journal. October 16th, 1985.” Rorschach sneers at pornographic billboards and prostitutes as he stalks the streets. He thinks about what Moloch told him and wonders if Dr. Manhattan is in danger somehow. Returning to Blake’s grave, Rorschach pays his respects alone, reflecting that heroes never die peacefully in bed. Either someone kills them, or they waste away, trying to hide from reality, but the future can’t be hidden from. Rorschach reflects that Blake understood the horror of the modern world and made himself a “parody” of it. Blake seems like the only person who truly understood the world, which was why he was so lonely.

Rorschach remembers a joke where a man sees his doctor and tells him he’s depressed and the world is horrible. His doctor tells him to go see Pagliacci the clown; he’ll cheer right up. However, the depressed man is Pagliacci himself.

Another excerpt from Hollis Mason’s Under the Hood: When Hollis decides he wants to be a caped crusader, he starts spending every evening training at the police gym, leading a friend to nickname him Nite Owl. He adopts the moniker as his hero name. By 1939, heroes have become a “fad,” so Nite Owl and others appear frequently in the newspapers. Within a year, there are eight of them. Looking back, Hollis finds their simple ideas about good and evil juvenile. He admits that their motivations for dressing up in costumes vary from person to person. Some are after money, for others it’s a sexual fetish, and some just want adventure. On their own, however, they were each doing some good. Hollis thinks that if they hadn’t formed the Minutemen, the heroes would’ve simply disappeared after a time and the world would be better off.

Hollis recalls that the Minutemen formed in 1939, when Captain Metropolis convinced Sally’s agent—and later, husband—Laurence Schexnayder to organize a publicity campaign. Given all of the heroes’ “extreme personalities,” problems are inevitable. Hollis thinks the worst of them is the Comedian, who tries to rape Sally in 1940. Schexnayder convinces her not press charges for the good of the group. In 1946, the public finds out that Silhouette, the Minutemen’s other female member, is a lesbian, and Schexnayder forces her out. In 1947, Sally quits being a hero to marry Schexnayder, and by 1949, there seem to be no interesting villains left to fight in America. They disband, but Hollis thinks, “The damage had already been done.”