http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page ... e&id=19333
Comic fans discussing
Watchmen-
(extract)
ATOM!: Say! I don't remember that Elvis Costello quote being there!
CARR:
You're talking about the final panel in the collected edition? The chapter titles are part of quotations or song lyrics or lines from poems, but the comics did not reprint all the source quotes. The first issue that actually has the quote in the last panel of the issue is chapter IV, "Watchmaker." It's a quote from Albert Einstein and therefore public domain. But the first two titles are from modern songs: "At Midnight, All the Agents" is from the 1960s Bob Dylan song, "Desolation Row," and
"Absent Friends" is derived from an Elvis Costello song called "The Comedians." Appropriate since this issue is basically built around the Comedian's funeral and flashback to his life.
My recollection is that it was a legal rights concern that kept the lyrics from being published but eventual permissions were received by the time the issues were collected into trade paperback. "At Midnight All the Agents..." sounded like a reference to something, but even though I was a big Elvis Costello fan, I didn't connect the phrase "Absent Friends" to the song. "The Comedians" was from a lesser Costello album, "Goodbye Cruel World" which was sandwiched between "Imperial Bedroom," which was considered a masterpiece and "Punch the Clock," which contained his first top 40 hit, "Everyday I Write The Book."
ATOM!: Lesser Costello album? Them’s is fightin’ words.
CARR: I have been a Costello fan since "My Aim is True," but let's be honest, "Goodbye Cruel World" is not Mr. McManus's shining moment. I think even he said it was over-produced. "The Comedians" also had some popularity as a Roy Orbison cover during his 1980s comeback. Curiously, the Grateful Dead apparently covered “Desolation Row” regularly. And the Grateful dead is one of the bands that Gibbons has cited as having a symmetrical album cover that he uses in one of the later issues.