the smell of fresh oil still on my fingers

i retired. to mend cars. probably for the rest of my life. as i see it, part of the art of being a hero is knowing when you don't need to be one anymore, realizing that the game has changed and that the stakes are different and that there isn't necessarily a place for you in this strange new pantheon of extraordinary people. the world has moved on, and i'm content to watch it from my armchair with a beer by my side and the smell of fresh oil still on my fingers.

hollis mason, under the hood // by alan moore and dave gibbons, watchmen

a nice quote for my return to the world of the living, i suppose. it belongs to hollis mason's biography, titled under the hood. a fictional biography of a fictional character, both belonging to moore and gibbons' masterpiece, watchmen. 

watchmen is not comics. it's not literature either. it's something in between, and simultaneously it is even more than that. a true masterpiece, if i've ever had set my eyes upon on. 

and the question remains: who watches the watchmen?