io9 presents a frighteningly skinny Dr. Manhattan from the mind of artist Alex Pardee. Check out the New York Comic-Con exclusive, but be warned you've never seen your beloved Watchmen like this before.
We adored Pardee's "Letters From Digested Children" exhibit, which is as delightfully evil as it sounds, but now we're bringing you a New York Comic-Con exclusive from the Chadam creator himself. Feast your eyes upon Pardee's limited edition "The Secondmen" featuring one skinny Dr. Manhattan with the vacant eyes and a gang of Watchmen miniatures riding his shoulders.
The limited edition "The Secondmen" Giclee Fine Art Print By Alex Pardee will be available at New York Comic Con Signed for $80. Look for Secondmen at the Zerofriends / Snafu-Comics Booth # 1709 at the Javits Center. And hurry, there are only 50 available.
We prodded a little further with Pardee to see why Alan Moore's work was so important to him.
In addition to a lot of movies, my Dad introduced me to Graphic Novels shortly after i got out of the hospital when I was 15. About the same time as I discovered THE MAXX, my dad got me Frank Miller's The Dark Knight, which then led me to The Killing Joke, A Death In the Family, Hard Boiled, Frank Miller's Daredevil, and Alan Moore's Watchmen. With the exception of The MAXX, Watchmen felt the most real, despite the whole particle teleportation to Mars thing, and the airships. Maybe it was because most of the Minutemen didn't even have powers, they just WANTED to be superheroes, and the world hated them. Or maybe it was because Silk Spectre fell out of love with Manhattan because he was a workaholic, or because Rorshach saw dead dogs when he looked at an ink blot, but never really told anyone what he felt, or maybe it was the fear and the desperation of the guy who was scared of the Black Freighter, and where else can someone like the Comedian be a rapist AND a hero?
Regardless, I was unknowingly obsessed with it back then, as most of the superheroes I drew at that time were just bunk combinations of those characters.
Looking back now, a lot of things from Watchmen stuck with me, I always said my first tattoo was going to be a Rorshach test. I have always looked at owls as lonely but heroic animals. I BELIEVED that when you teleported, you vomited, so much so that I called bullshit on Seth Brundle in The Fly. I never saw anything wrong with Dr Manhattans work ethic and his complete disregard for the rest of the world and his relationships. I subconsciously adapted his work ethic, which is probably a bad thing. I kept sugar cubes in my pocket when i worked at the credit card processing company in Sacramento. I liked the 12 Monkeys movie marketing because it reminded me of "who watches the watchmen?" and I even repeatedly dreamt of going to Mars for a day.
In fact, I still do.
Here is the super big print of the piece: