Perhaps I will make a comment about Ozymandias' hope for a change in humanity. 

Firstly, it seems that humans are conditioned by evolution to be content only about half the time. ("Half" may not be precise, but perhaps it is correct to an order of magnitude.) 

Secondly, things that occur in the world are (apparently) not "important" except in the sense that we think they are important. 

The conclusion is that things can only be important relative to the perceptions of beings who are by nature conditioned to be dissatisfied part of the time no matter what. 

From (not only) this perspective, one has to question the motivations and maturity of anyone who claims to be the world's smartest being and aims to save the world. It is tempting to compare and contrast Ozymandias with President Obama. I think Obama probably looks at things more realistically, i.e. he finds it very interesting and pleasant (perhaps even "naughty") to try to do the job of President in a good and satisfactory way. And he figured early on that he may be able to do it. But he finds more grandiose thoughts ridiculous. All the talk about "yes we can" is more a shrewd political behavior than some kind of breathless enthusiasm. (Notice how when asked about whether the health care legislation project was faltering recently, he replied with I think a smirk that it reminded him of a slogan from the campaign. That is, "yes we can" improve healthcare.) 

This brings up the question of Obama's attitude to religion, which I don't know enough about... 

To conclude, in the end I found the character Ozymandias to be a bit too much of a caricature to be truly memorable. But Watchmen has enough diverse ingredients to be a quite interesting read.

I just found this thread and read it in its entirety.  People have raised some interesting points.  One of the earlier posts reminded me that as a child Walter Kovacs (Rorschach) believed it was right to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima/Nagasaki in order to save lives.  This is the exactly opposite to his feelings about the Veidt plan.  Could this perhaps be and indication of just how much he changed when he "became" Rorschach?  It seems to me that one of the themes in the book are real and imagined identities, and their effects.  In traditional superhero stories, the "real" identity is the person with superpowers while alter ego is the civilian disguise.  Most of the characters in Watchmen are the other way round (i.e. they really are civilians and their alter-egos are masked vigilantes).  Does Rorschach strive to be a full-time comic book character to make his black and white morals more sustainable?  In this respect Dr. Manhattan is interesting, he only has one identity and morality seems to be meaningless to him.

One aside: please forgive me for being nit-picky.  If Dr. Manhattan is not omniscient as he says at one point, and if he can't read minds (he gives no indication of being able to, or wanting to, for that matter), then how did he teleport all the rioters to their homes? 

Jason Kwan

I love the Watchmen, it had me awestruck from the first page. I am not very experienced with graphic novels and I don't want to overstep my own knowledge on the matter, but to me Watchmen defined the entire genre. It works so beautifully (and in my opinion would have been impossible to put to screen) because every frame speaks to the genre of the comic book so brilliantly. Now a lot of the times when someone says something speaks to something else I want to punch him in the face. But I didn't know how to phrase it any other way and so I will try to explain myself.

At the beginning you see a character carrying a sign reading The End is Nigh or something like that. The character keeps showing up over and over and to be honest on first reading I didn't put it together that that character is Rorschach. And later on Ozymandias tells the story of Alexander cutting the knot, if you go back a few frames you'll see the characters cross in front of a giant painting of that story. The power of Watchmen as literature is that you can jump through the frames and find connections across chapters and pages. You get the sense that the story doesn't move linearly so much as it creates an entire breathing universe that you can walk through as you wish.

Not having read it in awhile, what I remember mostly is the book's investigation into morality. Moore carries us through this world and leaves it up to us to pick a character and take their side. He presents the issue of justice as an intangible and meaningless word, a concept that is completely at the will of the individual. And he invites us to be the individual. How can we say Ozymandias is truly an evil character when his motives for good are given to us as genuine? But then again, didn't Hitler think he was making the world a better place? Part of the greatness of the book was Moore's ability to present so many tragic heroes with different identities and different motives inside the chapters of one book. And they were all so memorable (except maybe that girl who never really jumped off the page). He explores so many different themes and ideas without overcrowding the book. And the science fiction part was amazing while not being overbearing.

How you know that this book is truly great is the amount of conversations it inspires. There is so much in there open for so much interpretation.

As to your discussion of the endings Arthur, I actually preferred the movie's ending (it was the only thing I liked about the movie in fact). I thought the movie's ending was simpler and made more sense. But as to avoid repetition I already lamented about the Movie in this post and also discussed the ending.