Dr. Manhattan's Penis: Traditions of Modesty and Morality in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen

Abstract

ABSTRACTWatchmen expresses its internal debate about the understanding of good and evil through its frequent vacillation between images of both costume and nudity. Ultimately, nudity in the comic comes to represent a transcendence of the conventional morality most often represented in superhero comic books. Moore's and Gibbons's story of the shedding of clothing declares the notion that a traditional knowledge of good and evil may be inconvenient when trying to build a utopia.