In Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen, what is the name of the pirate comic read by the characters?

In Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen, the pirate comic read by the characters is Tales of the Black Freighter.

The fictional comic appears as a story within the main graphic novel. Its narrative follows a shipwrecked sailor who becomes increasingly obsessed with returning home to warn his city about a pirate threat.

The pirate story is presented in alternating excerpts, especially through the character of a young newsstand reader. Its themes echo the main Watchmen plot, including fear, moral compromise, obsession, and the destructive consequences of trying to prevent catastrophe.

Readers sometimes mistake Tales of the Black Freighter for a real comic-book series. It was created specifically as a fictional work inside Watchmen, which was originally published as a 12-issue DC Comics limited series in 1986 and 1987.