FINALLY! I UNDERSTAND THE WATCHMEN'S BLOODIED SMILEY FACE

As I was surfing through the web about everything Alan Moore I ran into a blog that said something like, "A blood-stained smiley-face is a recurring image throughout The Watchmen."

However, it gave no explanation as to what the image is supposed to mean.

So I asked myself, "What the heck DOES it mean?"

And this is what I've got:

The smiley-face is the Comedian's badge and "comedian" is just another word for "comic." The words that Dan Dreiberg says at the end of chapter 1, "The Comedian is dead," could easily be read as, "The comic is dead."

On the surface, The Watchmen takes a serious look on what super heroes would actually do to society and what kinds of people would actually put on these costumes. However, upon closer examination, it would seem that Alan Moore is asking everyone to take the comic as a serious genre and that we must put to rest the notion that comics is a silly medium to put smiles on children's faces.