Watchmen (comics)/Characters

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Spoilers follow. Read at your own risk.

Heroes Who Became Active During The 1930's

Captain Metropolis (Nelson Gardner)

"Please! Don't all leave...Somebody has to do it, don't you see ? Somebody has to save the world..."

A former Marine who applied his knowledge of military strategy to crime-fighting. A very insecure and nervous person. Remained active until 1974, when he was decapitated in a car crash.

The Comedian (Edward Blake)
"Blake is interesting. I have never met anyone so deliberately amoral. (...) As I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such an understanding. Blake's different. He understands perfectly -- and he doesn't care."
—Dr. Manhattan

A veteran 'hero' who was vicious even when young, and has since become a full-blown hired gun on government payroll. Dies on the first page, though we only later find out why.

  • Anti-Hero: Type V
  • Anti-Heroes Want Redheads
  • Asshole Victim
  • Becoming the Mask: At one point Rorschach theorizes that The Comedian took on his persona in order to become a satirical reflection of society's corruption. If this theory is true (Rorschach is hardly an unbiased observer), Blake appears to have gotten into the part a bit too much.
    • Also, he defies this trope when he discovers Ozymandias’ plan and raves about it to Moloch: He discovers that even he cannot laugh this off as another joke:

I mean, what’s funny? What’s so goddamned funny? I don’t get it. Somebody explain… Somebody explain it to me.

Dollar Bill (Bill Brady)

A star college athlete from Kansas who was hired by a bank to be their in-house superhero. Died in 1947, when during an attempt to foil a bank robbery, his cape got caught in the door and he was shot.

  • All-American Face
  • Born Lucky: According to the RPG, his sporting and superhero career were studded with incredible strokes of good luck. Up until a certain day, that is...
  • Impractically Fancy Outfit: The bank who sponsored him insisted that he wore the cape that led to his untimely death.
  • Nice Guy: At least, according to Hollis Mason in Under the Hood.
  • Superheroes Wear Capes: Deconstructed, as Alan Moore was showing how impractical wearing a cape is, and how wearing a cape lead to his death.

Hooded Justice (Possibly Rolf Muller)

"You sick little bastard, I'm going to break your neck..."

Possibly the first costumed superhero. Little is known about him, save that he was extremely violent and brutal, and a supporter of the KKK and Nazis. Disappeared in 1955, possibly at the hands of The Comedian.

Mothman (Byron Lewis)

"Me, I hope we keep out of it. Just thinking about war, it scares me..."

A millionaire playboy who decided to become a superhero both out of a desire to add spice to his life and out of guilt over his privileged lifestyle. Ultimately, his alcoholism (and being hauled before the HUAC) turned him into a shell of his former self, and was eventually committed to a sanitarium.


Nite Owl I (Hollis Mason)

"This is the left hook that floored Captain Axis!"

One of the first superheroes to fight crime, and a former police officer, Hollis Mason has since retired, revealed his identity and written an autobiography that provided dramatic insights into the world of superheroes. He has seen the rise and fall of superheroics in the world, and fears for the new generation of costumed crimefighters.

The Silhouette (Ursula Zandt)

"Perhaps the Poles thought so too, eh? You agree, Sally?"

A bored Jewish aristocrat who fought crime for thrills. Was exposed as a lesbian and drummed out of the Minutemen in 1946, and killed by an old foe afterward.

  • Civvie Spandex: In the comics, her costume is a simple black pantsuit with a red sash. The Movie makes it look more super-heroic.
  • Death Glare
  • Lipstick Lesbian
  • Rich Bitch: Her only line is an insulting dig at Sally (who had covered up her heritage), and she's mentioned as being a rather unpleasant person.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Being Jewish, she despised the Hooded Justice, who was openly supportive of the Nazi regime.

Silk Spectre I (Sally Juspeczyk/Jupiter)

"Laurie, I'm 65. Every day the future looks a little bit darker. But the past, even the grimy parts of it... well, it just keeps on getting brighter all the time."

A former model who started fighting crime for publicity and became a founding member of the Minutemen, but hasn't been doing much since, except training her daughter to follow in her footsteps.

"So what if she didn't have a normal life? Normal life stinks! You can ask anybody!"

Heroes Who Became Active During The 1960's

Dr. Manhattan (Jon Osterman)

Comedian: "Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Pregnant woman. Gunned her down. Bang. And y'know what? You watched me. You coulda changed the gun into steam or the bullets into mercury or the bottle into snowflakes! You coulda teleported either of us to Goddamn Australia... but you didn't lift a finger!"

The only truly superpowered character in the story, due to a Freak Lab Accident, Jon Osterman gained godlike powers. He's used his powers to revolutionize the world, provide energy for electric cars and blimps, and continues to work on amazing new technology... but as time has passed he has turned more emotional distant to the people around him and indifferent towards humankind in general, and just doesn't seem to care about anything any more, or do anything unless he's told to.

Doctor Manhattan: Please if everyone would just go away and leave me alone... I SAID! LEAVE ME ALONE!

  • The Omniscient: In the first part of the story, while he's still a side character.
  • Prescience Is Predictable: Dr. Manhattan describes himself as "a puppet who can see the strings." Since he literally views all time simultaneously, he can't change the future because, to him, it's already happening. This causes him to stop caring about what happens and just go with the flow. When a tachyon storm disrupts his ability to tell the future, he becomes excited, saying he had forgotten the joy of uncertainty.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: He is definitely this. He is a reality warper that people say isn't as good as an atomic bomb because 'you don't have to get an atomic bomb laid'.
  • Physical God
  • Power Glows
  • Pro-Human Transhuman: At times.
  • Reed Richards Is Useless: Averted. His presence and abilities have definitely solved many of the world's problems. (Not as many as he could solve, though.)
    • Lampshaded by Niteowl I. He states that he plans to run a car repair shop after he puts up the cape, saying that even Dr. Manhattan can't change cars. Manhattan then explains how he can do exactly that.
  • Story-Breaker Power: Ironically, it doesn't do much. Even when Dr. Manhattan is vaporized and comes back.
  • Superpower Lottery: It's not even fair--nobody else in the series has any powers at all, and he's a Physical God!
  • The Spock
  • Time Dissonance
  • Tin Man
  • Unexplained Recovery
  • Walking Wasteland: Dr. Manhattan's presence is said to give people cancer. Subverted, as it's actually Veidt deliberately inducing cancer in Manhattan's past acquaintances.
  • Walking on Water
  • You Cannot Change the Future: Dr. Manhattan exists in a multidimensional quantum solid state, and quickly tires of listening to his friends talk about what "could have happened" or what "should happen", since he already sees his entire time-stream. For him, the only difference between past and future is directional causality. The effects of causality on Dr. Manhattan himself are slightly contradictory, as future events can affect him backwards by causing him to report them, but not in any other way; he's unable to use the knowledge to interfere, and sees himself as bound by one-directional causality much like normal people.

Dr. Manhattan: Miracles by definition are meaningless. Only what can happen does happen.
Dr. Manhattan: (repeating himself twice) Excuse me Rorschach. I'm informing Laurie 45 seconds ago.

Nite Owl II (Dan Dreiberg)

Rorschach: Used to come here often, back when we were partners.
Dreiberg: Oh. Uh, yeah... yeah, those were great times, Rorschach. Great times. Whatever happened to them?
Rorschach: [exiting] You quit.

A former superhero fan, then full-fledged superhero, and now retired intellectual. A gadget-based hero who flies the night skies in his state-of-the-art airship, Archie, he sometimes questions his use of million-dollar technology to fight petty crime.

Ozymandias (Adrian Veidt)

I DID IT! after he destroyed New York to stop a nuclear war

Probably the most successful and effective hero of the lot. Adrian has honed his body and mind to near-superhuman perfection, created a multibillion dollar corporate empire, and mastered the sciences to change the world.

Rorschach's Journal: Possibly homosexual? Must remember to investigate further.
—His computer has a file in it titled "Boys".

Although he's DREIBERG's age, his face is serene and unlined by worry. Blond and pale, he looks thirty. When he's sixty he'll look forty.

Rorschach (Walter Kovacs)

"The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicans will look up and shout 'save us'... and I'll look down and whisper 'no.'"

The only non-government superhero still active as of the beginning of the book, Rorschach is a ruthless, disturbed vigilante who believes the world to be falling apart around him. He speaks in fragments and lives like a bum, having devoted his life almost entirely to fighting crime--and it's his devotion that allows him to pick up the trail of a man's mysterious death...

  • Abusive Parents
  • All of the Other Reindeer : Some bullies show this to Rorschach and he goes berserk on them.
  • Ambiguous Disorder: He has No Social Skills, an extreme dislike of physical contact and bizarre monotone syntax.
  • Ambiguously Evil
  • Ambiguously Gay: The "holding a handshake too long" scene that demonstrates Nite Owl II's sexual tension for Silk Spectre II is mirrored later with confirmed bachelor Rorschach doing the exact same thing to Nite Owl II.
  • Anti-Hero: Type IV or V.
    • Type II or III during the early days of his career. He was in better health mentally, being a vigilante was still legal, and he would leave criminals to be arrested by the police, instead of murdering them. But the Keene Act and mentally snapping after the brutal murder of a girl had driven him nearer to the edge.
  • The Anti-Nihilist: Rorschach believes that rules and principles are the most important in life because the world has no more meaning than the one we impose on it.
  • Anti-Villain: Type III
  • Asexual: He likes to think of himself as this, although he may not be completely asexual due to his active Oedipal hang-ups. He says once that putting on his mask lets him be free of "fear or weakness or lust", and he once had some kind of creepy wet-dream nightmare about his mom when he was a kid. Of course, this may signify the start of his asexuality.

"I had feelings when I woke up. Dirty feelings, thoughts and stuff. The dream, it sort of upset me, physically. I couldn't help it. I feel bad just talking about it."

"None of you seem to understand... I'm not locked in here with you. YOU'RE LOCKED IN HERE WITH ME!"

  • Bash Brothers: With Nite Owl.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: His quote above. He feels the complete opposite when New York is destroyed.
  • Becoming the Mask: "NO! MY FACE! GIVE ME BACK MY FACE!"
  • Berserk Button: The same as Batman's: don't ever harm a child.
    • Also Rorschach's one limit. He won't punish his landlady for (falsely) telling the news he slept with her, because her kids are with her. Also, perhaps, because he saw himself in her son. And unlike his mother, she was holding her kids like she loved them.
  • Black and White Insanity
  • Black and White Morality: How he sees himself, although to the other characters it's more like Black and Gray Morality.
  • The Blank : The whole idea behind his mask.
  • Bold Inflation: Aside from the ill-fated Crimebusters meeting (which took place long before the 1975 kidnapping case which completely redefined him), the only instances where he spoke like this are when he was unmasked by the police and when he goads Dr. Manhattan into killing him.
  • Butter Face: A Rare Male Example. Has a very muscular and athletic body but, from the neck up, he's rather unattractive. Plain-looking at best.
  • Byronic Hero
  • Celibate Hero: He's freaked out beyond all recognition about anything to do with sex, due to child abuse. He has a massive madonna-whore complex and mentions once that he was "offered Swedish love and French love but not American love [by prostitutes]," however you want to interpret that.
  • Combat Pragmatist: To an insane degree.
    • Rorschach's solution to the "Gordian Knot problem". When faced with an impossible lock, Rorschach will simply kick the door down.
  • Conspiracy Theorist
  • Civvie Spandex
  • Coat, Hat, Mask
  • Cool Mask: Made from a failed prototype for a designer dress. Contains black fluids in latex which move from heat and pressure but never mix into grey.
  • Crazy Survivalist
  • Creepy Monotone: In the comic book and to an extent in the film.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Particularly with Big Figure ("Small world").
  • Death Seeker
  • Determinator: Even after he jumps out a window which is at least five stories up, he lies on the ground telling himself to get up while the police kick him unconscious. And them some.
  • Does Not Know How to Say Thanks
  • Does Not Like Guns
  • Does Not Like Women: Rorschach, from his poor experiences with his mother.
  • Do Not Call Me Walter
  • The Dreaded: This was seen in the comic when Rorschach entered the bar and the bartender begged him not to kill anyone today.
  • Dying as Yourself: Rorschach takes his mask off just before Dr. Manhattan kills him.
    • Possible subversion - perhaps he had conceptualized Rorschach as some kind of force of justice and only allowed Walter Kovacs to be the one who really died.
  • Expy: Of The Question and Mr. A.
    • Moore also puts in elements of Batman noting that "He would be considered a Nutjob in Real Life"
  • Expressive Mask: And how. It does more than cover his face; to Rorschach, it is his face.
  • Extreme Melee Revenge
  • Fatal Flaw:

Rorschach: No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.

Rorschach: Why are so few of us left active, healthy, and without personality disorders?

Silk Spectre II (Laurie Juspeczyk)

"I don't know anybody! I don't know anyone except goddamned superheroes!"

Stage-mothered almost from birth into continuing her mother's legacy, Laurie has become very bitter and disillusioned since the Keene Act and starts out in the story as Dr Manhattan's girlfriend.

Other Characters

Laurence Schexnayder

A description of the character goes here.

  • The Heart: Managed to keep six (briefly seven) people together as an effective crime-fighting team, in spite of their neuroses and occasional hatred for each other. Perhaps a subversion in that he didn't actually care about any of the individual members (except for Sally) and dumped the team when he saw that they weren't going to be profitable for much longer.
  • May-December Romance: With Sally. He seems to have hooked up with her when she was about seventeen or eighteen.

Moloch (Edward Jacobi)

A description of the character goes here.

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