Watching The Watchmen. The Raw Materials That Built A Comic Book Masterpiece. Super Inspiring! 

This has become my new favorite youtube channel. I just draw for hours while listening to you guys geek out over drawings/paintings and giving out free comic book lectures.

Cartoonist kayfabe you guys have literally have changed my life thank you my comic homies love you guys from maine

The diagonal shadows across the Rorschach card are from the bars in the window of the interrogation room where the doctor meets Kovacs for the first time-you can see the window in the establishing shot. Excellent look at an excellent book! Well Done, Kidz! 🖖

Amazing. Thanks guys for dissecting and analyzing comics and books like these in particular the way yall do. As an (aspiring) illustrator this was so dope to see and fuels me a lot!!!

56:36 Many European cartoonists built models to use as reference, notably Roger Leloup, the creator of Yoko Tsuno, whose hobby was model building. He created many intricate models for his comics and makes amazing technical drawings.

"Prisoners of Gravity" shout-out. Nice! I can't overstate how happy that show made me back when it first aired on TV Ontario.

It’s cool to see you making the connection to magical realism here. I think Gabriel Garcia Marquez might be one of the authors you are referring to. There are so many great books and paintings that fall into that genre, but I never really thought about its influence on comics. It would be interesting to see a video on magical realism in comics if you guys are into it.

best part of social distancing: I finally have time to watch all the great cartoonist kayfabe content

Damn. This is deep. Ive had this on for the last hour in the BG whilst Im trying to do some admin work. Zero admin work done. Cant wait for your next deep dive. Cheers.

This book is one of the prizes of my geek collection; I asked Dave Gibbons sign it after i interviewed him in 2009. What a great day that was.

My wife usually volunteers at the NY Aquarium on Sundays but they've cut back to essential personnel for the time being so I said, "Let me introduce you to the Sunday routine, make breakfast and indulge in Cartoonist Kayfabe." The fact you were covering Watchmen which was so instrumental to both of us was simply perfect. Bravo.

Just started this video, ordering this book now. Also, if Chip Kidd is available, get that mother on quick cause he's a cool guy

Thanks for reminding me of this book. I got it in 2008, pulled it out and enjoyed it all over again.

Just picked this up after watching this video. Looking forward to diving in!

Do a youtube search of Chip Kidd and you'll get some great interviews with the guy (including a great one at the Strand with Dan Clowes). In one of the interviews, he talks about this book and how he wasn't able to have his photographer do the photographs, and wasn't able to have the material brought to him so he was ultimately disappointed in how the book turned out, which I found surprising.

Great vid. Hearing them talk about stuff is inspiring.

Regarding the grids on the photograph and the Rorschach cover. I'm assuming the grid for the Osterman photo is to make sure everything is in place when it's drawn crumpled and partially covered in the sand. The Rorschach grid lines are for light and shadow.

My wife picked this book up for me for Christmas the year it came out. It is truly a masterpiece talking about a masterpiece. So glad you guys covered this book....just recently discovered your guys' channel thanks to a friend....now my morning listen to when working on my own indie book. Keep killin it, guys!

And more importantly, thanks for this vid guys!!

Cartoonist Kayfabe credit hours. Thanks guys!

Really appreciate your analyses and critiques. Fascinating and informative.

Another book I'd never heard of. Ordered and on its way now. Thanks for showing it to us.

One of these guys sounds, like, 85% like Dan Avidan and it throws me off so much

I cant help but feel like Ed and I have similar backgrounds. You guys kick ass. I fux w the channel

@17:30 that piece is significant b/c it's Alan Moore pencilling and Gibbons inking, before the characters had been fully fleshed out.

Recently discovered you guys, fantastic stuff, can't get enough. As to the lines across the photograph and ink blots I think of them as reference lines for reproduction. All those lines border major elements of each image and intersect the horizontal and vertical borders the image is set on. Using that you can then accurately redraw those images to scale, in perspective and deformed. edit: Ink blot image it's probably light from the barred window, though I think it still makes a fantastic reference line. I had to check the lighting through those thumbnails again though lol

Moore has definitely referred to Magical Realism writer Jorge Luis Borges as an influence. As for the world building and asking how superheroes might change that world, that's probably from Astounding Science Fiction editor John W. Campbell's decree that all new sci-fi must explain how each fantastic element fully changes things in a society. Otherwise it's just Space Opera (bug eyed monsters and rayguns are just "there"), and that's old hat. Anyone who has ever dabbled in sci-fi writing comes up against it. At it's most extreme, the rule veers into Hard Sci-Fi (super factual in breaking down the science). Moore was a fan of the New Wave writers of the 70's.

I'm so glad you guys brought in a talk of Superfolks into the mix! That is a whacky book but a really good read. I wonder what the story behind that book is and whatever happened to the writer?

I first picked up Watchmen as a young teen at the local library. I remember skipping over all the longer written text pieces like the extracts from Under the Hood and also skipping the pirate comic sections! Thought it was pretty good. Few years later, my brother gets a copy so I decide to read again, in full. Blew me away. At about 16 I was ready for this darker take on super heroes. Still loved me Marvel and Image was just launching but Watchmen was my gateway into a completely new way to tell stories in the comic genre. Got my own copy now of course, probably gets a couple of re reads each year

Really enjoyed this, thank you.

I do so hope that you can get an interview under the hot lights with John Higgins-would love to hear about all the things going on at 2000AD during a time when that magazine/comic was doing great things.

Dammit I keep buying more comics/books because of your videos 😖

Buy it Ricky!!!

I think is Gabriel García Marquez the Magical Realism Colombian writer you mention at min. 7. =)

My LCS says they still have copies of the signed limited edition in stock. Austin Books and Comics in Austin TX. They’re on Facebook and Instagram- I’m not sure of the price but you could dm them.

I have been playing around with the splash pages, placing them in 3D space based only on what you mention in this video and from the sketch at the 1:10:22 mark. I think I need some more info about it if you have any. I haven't been able to find any mention of it online.

$7.98. Hot damn.

God, this was great. I think part of the criticism of the ending was it was an already used science fiction trope. Variations on "faking an alien invasion to unite the earth" appeared everywhere from the Twilight Zone to pre-hero Stan Lee comics as a kind of response to the cold war. I had no problem with it, especially since the art sold the magnitude of the slaughter so powerfully. The Watchmen comics were coming out on the news stand later and later as it progressed, so we had plenty of time to think about it. What I believed at the time was that all of those artists and writers that were hidden on a remote island were not working on a squid monster, but on the Watchmen comic, and that the Comedian was freaking out because he found out he was not real, just a comic book character.

Unleash the vengeance!!!! Hahahaha

37:57 I catch a thing I didn't quite understand and figure out by myself. I think it might be a lost-in-translation situation, but when you guys said "pen inking", are you talking about rapidograph type or marker ink job?

Try critiquing Todd Mcfarlane Devils In The Detail.

Oh man! I bought this book way cheap off of amazon after last time you talked about it - it was like £4 or £5 and when I opened the cover over the "who makes the world it" was signed by Dave Gibbons in black marker I was pure happy. But I got a flood over christmas and the book got totally soaked . . .( sad trombone )

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes is who watches the watchmen, therefore it is Roman, not Greek.