Watchmen: Chapter 3: The Judge of All the Earth Summary & Analysis

On a city street corner, a news vendor mourns the state of the world and says that the U.S. should “nuke Russia and let God sort it out.” Next to him, a man sits reading a comic about a sailor whose ship and crew are destroyed by pirates. The news vendor talks to no one in particular about how news vendors see every front page—they’re the best-informed people in the world. The doomsayer with the sign declaring, “The end is nigh” asks the news vendor if he’s saved his copy of New Frontiersman for him. The news vendor gives it to him, and the doomsayer pays him to hold the next day’s copy when it comes in. In the pirate comic, the survivor washes the kelp off his ship’s figurehead, which washed up on the beach.

At their military facility, Jon and Laurie start to have sex. Laurie’s eyes are closed, but she realizes there are too many hands touching her face. When she looks up, there are two Jons in the bedroom with her, and another one doing a science experiment in the next room. Laurie is furious and leaves, but Jon does not understand what he did wrong. In an office elsewhere, an aging Janey Slater interviews with Nova Express and tells them about how bitter and hurt she was when Jon left her for 16-year-old Laurie. Jenny Slater smokes a cigarette and coughs often. She’s glad someone will tell her story and reveal what sort of person Jon is.

Laurie goes to Daniel’s house. A handyman is installing a new lock on Daniel’s door. Laurie tells Daniel about her fight with Jon and how he barely notices the people around him—even now, after she’s left him, he’s probably just getting dressed for his TV interview. She says she’s tired of being around “super-heroes.” Daniel is about to go have a beer with Hollis, so Laurie offers to walk with him there. The repairman warns them that they’re headed toward a bad neighborhood.

Jon Osterman teleports himself into the TV station for his interview. A producer talks Jon through which subjects to stay away from. The cameras roll and the interviewer tries to make small talk with Jon, but Jon does not understand how to banter. He speaks simply and directly. Doug Roth, a reporter for Nova Express, lists off many of Jon’s former associates, including Janey Slater and Moloch, who all have terminal cancer, and insinuates that their illness has some connection to him. This upsets Jon, and the producers end the interview. Reporters harass him, and Jon becomes so angry that he teleports everyone else in the TV studio out to the parking lot.

On their walk through the streets, muggers with knives approach Laurie and Daniel. Laurie and Daniel beat them up. They catch their breath and laugh it off, then part ways. Laurie goes to find a hotel. Daniel goes into Hollis’s house and finds him watching Jon’s botched interview on TV. On the street corner, the news vendor looks at the new edition of Nova Express, which insinuates that Dr. Manhattan gives people terminal cancer. In the pirate comic, the survivor worries that the pirates will go to his home village and murder his family unless he can find a way to get there first and warn everybody.

When Jon returns to the facility where he lives, he finds an officer fixing a “quarantine” sign over his door. Jon tells the man to let Laurie and everyone else know that he’s leaving, first to Arizona, then to Mars. The officer doesn’t believe him, but Jon vanishes in front of him. In Arizona, Jon walks through the rubble of an old bar and finds a photo of a man standing next to a young Janey Slater. Jon takes it, walks out to a clearing, and teleports himself away.

On the street corner, the news vendor talks to the doomsayer about Dr. Manhattan’s disappearance. They suspect the Communists are somehow to blame. In the pirate comic, the survivor digs a pit to bury all the dead bodies washed up on shore. He thinks of his wife and children and hopes someone buries them after the pirates find them.

At the military facility, Laurie watches as men in protective suits take their home apart. A government agent tells her that she’ll need to be screened for cancer. He blames Laurie for Dr. Manhattan’s leaving and doubts that he’ll ever come back. Now that he’s gone, the government won’t support her financially any longer. The man thinks they’re all in “big trouble.” In Daniel’s house, Rorschach breaks in to tell Daniel that Dr. Manhattan’s gone too, and all the masked heroes should be worried.

On the street corner, the pirate comic ends with the pirate ship headed for the survivor’s home and family. The story’s lack of ending angers the man reading it and he gives it back to the news vendor. However, the news vendor is staring at a headline announcing that Russia just invaded the Middle East. He’s so shaken by the news that he tells the man to keep the pirate comic for free. On Mars, Jon walks alone, carrying the photograph.

In a government building, President Nixon meets with his advisors, who claim that if Russia makes it to Pakistan, they’ll likely try to capture Western Europe as well. They run a computer simulation of what will happen if Russia launches its nuclear arsenal. The simulation predicts that hundreds of millions will die, including everyone on America’s east coast. The President decides they should wait a week before firing any missiles themselves.

In another excerpt from Under the Hood, Hollis recalls that the 1950s saw the decline of costumed heroes. The public stops being interested in their exploits—now that Schexnayder no longer runs publicity for them—and the government forces the majority of them to stand before a court and reveal themselves. The Comedian, with his government contacts, is the only one who thrives, becoming a sort of “patriotic symbol.” During the McCarthy Era, Hooded Justice disappears, though some believe he is a Communist who later turns up with a bullet in his head. There are no more costumed villains left, since they all retire or turn to more professional, business-oriented crimes. Without flashy villains to fight, the  costumed heroes feel silly and unnecessary.

In the 1960s, Dr. Manhattan appears—the first true “super-hero,” who makes all the other heroes obsolete. Hollis thinks that Dr. Manhattan’s existence changes the entire world, causing both fear and wonder that settle into a constant sense of unease. Ozymandias, with his “boundless and implacable intelligence,” seems almost superhuman as well. Hollis realizes that he and his generation of heroes are aging, so he decides to retire and find a real job to do. He opens an auto shop to be a mechanic like his father and feels content. A young man (Daniel Dreiberg) writes to him, asking if he can become the next Nite Owl, and Hollis agrees to it, passing on the identity and costume. Laurie, who is just coming of age, sounds as if she will take up the hero life as well. Once again, costumed heroes seem to be a new mainstay “of American life.”