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Do not adjust your set. You are about to embark on a journey to the outer limits of Headscratchers/Watchmen.
No discussions have been removed, just put in folders by... ''The Architects Of Fear!''
* Folders courtesy of Veidt Enterprises. Please drink responsibly.
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** The plan wasn't crap. The bomb, for lack of a better word, not only annihilated a giant city, it also sent out those psychologically damaging images and thoughts that caused people to become terribly afraid of the aliens. Without the added fear element it would be a terrible plan, but with the fear element it suddenly becomes far too plausible.
** This is even pointed out to him, in the following paraphrased exchange:
{{quote|
Dr. M: In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends. }}
** I would argue there's a lot of possible meanings for that exchange. The WWII comparison isn't apt, because the threat they united against was defeated (as well, the leadership of the US changed to a less Soviet-friendly President in 1945). The "threat" in Watchmen can't be defeated since it doesn't exist and there's no current way for Earth to reach it. It's also worth noting that Ronald Reagan (hardly a USSR sympathiser) actually had publically revealed plans to put aside differences with the Soviet Union and cooperate with them in the event of alien attack, something Moore probably knew when writing the series. Ozymandias' plan could go wrong in several ways, and it's unknown how he plans to keep things together after his death, but it's hardly impossible to pull off in the short term.
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*** From Ozymandias' point of view, is that necessarily a critical flaw? Besides, he can always create a new monster out in the middle of nowhere instead of causing mass destruction with each reminder.
**** This is why [[Megan Phntm Grl|this troper]] thought [[The Movie]]'s take on Ozymandias's plan was ''way'' more thought-through and plausible. {{spoiler|He used a massive energy generator system built by a duped Dr. Manhattan to destroy ''several'' cites, not just New York, which had several much more believable side effects: it looked as though Earth had been punished by a [[Physical God]] for its warmongering ways (the energy signatures from the blasts could be traced to him); both the Soviet Union ''and'' the United States (as well as various countries ''not'' involved directly in the Cold War) were damaged, which makes neither nation likely to swoop in and attack the other; and fear of Dr. Manhattan would make an extremely potent deterrent to keep war from sparking up again.}}
***** Of course, the downside to the adaptation's version is that {{spoiler|Ozzy was credited as the inventor of the generator system, making it that much easier for a conspiracy theorist or even a dedicated investigator to consider his involvement in the crisis as well. Really, all you'd need is a map and some push pins and the Manhattan attacks are very obviously Veidt's generator locations, which we see the U.S. government knows about. The "alien" had the great advantage of seeming to come from someplace utterly unconnected to anyone on or from Earth.}}
****** That's wrong thinking, because there was only ever ONE generator and it was at Antarctica. The viewers see Dr.Manhattan complete the first and only generator, in fact, the science team even celebrates its completion. In addition, they had just completed the generator THAT DAY, so nobody knows that Ozymandias actually finished the generator yet. The energy explosions were projected from the same generator, that's why there was a time delay between the destruction of every city. When the scene of the energy projection is shown on screen, the glass of the observation room doesn't break, which it would've had the generator actually blown up. Also at ground zero of the explosion in New York, the ball of energy centers on Times Square, and you can see there is no building there to house a generator.
******* The problem with [[The Movie]]'s adjustment to the plan is not simply that the attacks "by Dr. Manhattan" could be traced back to Adrian. Which given that Dr. Manhattan was working with Adrian on duplicating his energy signature FROM A FEDERAL FACILITY is not terribly far-fetched. The issue is more one of Ardian's changed motives between graphic novel and movie. In one of his many [[Motive Rants]] Adrian goes on about fossil fuels basically being the root of all evil. While this makes sense in some ways (fossil fuels are in limited supply, thus creating scarcity and a motive for conflict), it was a non-issue in the graphic novels (as Dr. Manhattan and Veidt had long-since solved the energy problem in the graphic novels), and it doesn't even begin make sense given the alterations made to Veidt's plan. Now, he CANNOT use Dr. Manhattan's energy to break humanity's dependence on fossil fuels without potentially implicating himself in the attacks. Thus something he spends almost as much time ranting on in one scene as he does about war in the entire movie is now impossible for him to fix. The scarcity still exists, the energy crisis must remain in existence for Veidt's plan to be kept secret, and thus conflict will eventually resume.
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*** The aftermath is sort of, why, you know, they didn't ''kill'' Veidt. He's influential enough to try and prevent such eventualities from occuring.
*** And also, don't forget, Veidt is ''human''. He won't live forever, no matter how much he might want to. And since nothing ends, eventually when Veidt dies, well, things will probably go bad again. Veidt has succeeded in his plan, yes...''for now''. It ''can't'' continue forever, and it ''won't''. But he can't see that. And he won't until it's too late. All he's done is delay the inevitable.
**** The above point about Veidt being very short sighted is well-made, and has some support in that Veidt's idol is Alexander the Great: Alexander goes to Gordia to solve "the unsolvable riddle", which he does by cutting the Gordian Knot in
*** The way it read to me was that he not only made people scared of aliens, but he brainwashed the entire world into believing in the aliens, so there would be no need for a second attack. This is a flaw with the movie's version, since it would rely on subsequent attacks. It's also implied that Adrian pretty much bought the world and made it a communist paradise under his rule through coorporations.
*** Veidt isn't unaware of anything. He just refuses to accept it. His entire response could be read as saying "screw you, human nature. I'm going to have lasting peace even if I have to use a giant psychic squid to get it!"
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***** And yet he's dead, most of those monuments are in various states of disrepair, his civilization is so dead that even puzzling out how to read their language was one of the most difficult problems of modern archeology, and only scholars and "Egyptophiles" even know much about him besides his name. Certainly your average schoolchild doesn't "tremble" or "despair" at his works except when forced to name them to pass a social studies quiz.
***** Pardon me, but you are? The very fact that we're having this discussion some 4,000 years after they shoveled sand over Ramses II's coffin would show you've undermined your own point.
****** Not the poster above, but how so? The point is that for all Ozymandias' clearly overwhelming arrogance in life (you don't get people to built statues of yourself calling you the "King of Kings" and imploring everyone to tremble at your mere existence unless you're ''deeply'' in love with your own awesomeness), he died, it all eventually crumbled away and he was largely forgotten about and ignored by future generations. Certainly, we're hardly looking at his works with despair or anything; more a sort of mild interest if that. You don't have to be world famous to, you know, recognize and point this out.
****** Ramses II is often called "the great." He has his [[Memetic Sex God|own brand of condoms]] and was the [[Hey, It's That Guy!|second lead]] in "The Ten Commandments." He is widely accepted as the pharaoh of the Hebrew Exodus (Which only shows most people [[Did Not Do the Research]]
******* Surely this just proves Shelley's point, though? Sure, we remember his name, but for most of us only because of a packet of rubbers and a completely inaccurate movie which isn't even about the real him. Same for the narrator of the poem, who only knows it through a vainglorious boast on a statue that's crumbling away. So much for the King of Kings, about whom we are supposed to tremble in awe and wonder and fear.
******* For that matter, based on ancient Egyptian cosmological beliefs, trembling and despairing before him is probably irrelevant. All that is truly necessary is that his name is spoken and his offering formulas are repeated/studied to bring him efficacy in the afterlife.
******* Although, unless someone actually ''is'' performing the offering formulas for a long-dead Egyptian pharaoh, there might be a bit of a problem for poor Rameses there. And it's not irrelevant to the maker (and presumably also the sponsor) of the statue, who is directly ''imploring'' people to tremble with despair at his very name. Hence, the whole point of the poem; that his arrogance has been brushed aside by the sands of history.
******** To go on a bit of a tangent, I always thought that Shelley's point isn't necessarily that Rameses II was completely forgotten, but that nothing lasts forever. He built a mighty, feared empire which, today, is completely non-existant. The testaments to his glory are crumbling away. The feared King of Kings might have been invulnerable in life, but he died as all men do, and what remains of him but memory? The sands of history washed him away, as they will do to all of
** I was under the perception that Adrian was basically doing the only thing he could. It was obvious that humanity was racing toward nuclear devastation, even to people who ''weren't'' as smart as he was. Being the world's most intelligent human being (possibly to the extent of being superhuman), Veidt might have realized that someone would eventually take over the Soviet Union who would be more willing to work with the West, and history would go down a similar path to the one that it did in the real world. He was trying to hold off apocalypse until that could happen, and if it didn't work, at least he tried something.
* Am I the only person who thinks that Ozymandias' belief that the destruction of New York would cause the U.S. and the USSR to unite to be a bit naive? I mean, was he so blind to the possibility that a nation which had invaded other countries already might simply wait until the U.S. brings all of their weight to bear in repairing New York and attack them with their pants down? They still think that Dr. Manhattan is still on Mars and were probably planning on attacking the U.S. while it was at full strength as it was. Why not when they're weakened? Call me a commie-hater if you must, but it seems to me that the USSR would have thought "Gee, there's an extra-terrestrial threat. We can either work together with our mortal enemies and probably not agree on anything, or we can conquer them easy-peasy right now and then we'll call all of the shots and defeat the alien menace in the way we think it should be done without any interferance.
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** Um. New York being blown up doesn't make all of the US's nuclear missiles magically vanish, nor does "bringing all their weight to bear" to repair New York somehow make it impossible for someone to hit a button and turn on an automated flood of ICBMs. The USSR was not ruled by nice people, but it wasn't ruled by * suicidal* people either. Indeed in many ways looking back on the history of the Cold War it was the USA that was by quite some degree the more risk-taking, <s>adventurous</s> hard line, push-us-to-the-brink-of-apocalypse superpower (and Watchmen largely exists as a commentary on this).
*** Bear in mind Manhattan's presence is said to fundamentally alter Soviet psychology on Mutually Assured Destruction, though: the theory being that since it's actually unlikely they can now inflict complete destruction on the US (Manhattan can stop maybe 80% of the bombs), they will simply die trying rather than be ruled, thanks to the depredations of the Nazis.
*** Russia was, in fact, ruled by suicidal people. They were quite literally trying to construct a doomsday weapon that would end the entire world if Russia got wiped out.
** The Squid's psychic blast affected not just NYC but ''everyone'' with even the slightest bit of psychic sensitivity ''worldwide''. It would be far more pragmatic for the USSR to side with the rest of the planet then try to take advantage of a paradimentional threat.
** You're not even the only person ''[[Critical Research Failure|on this page.]]'' And again, it's largely the point that Ozymandias's peace can't last. It's outright stated in the book by Jon.
** When it comes to choosing between Americans and giant alien psychic squids, Soviet Union would choose America, I assure you. Aside from everything else, Soviet propaganda never really went out against American citizens; the demonization efforts were spent on American governmental system and the rich.
* The Squid wouldn't have fooled anyone. As soon as scientists got their hands on the remains, they would have discovered it was based on the same organic chemistry as terrestrial life with DNA similar to human DNA. It contained no elements or compounds not found on earth and almost certainly had ratios of various isotopes that matched those found in terrestrial matter. Given that evidence they would not conclude that it came from some "alternate universe" or other alien world. They would conclude it came from Earth. Wackiness ensues as the US accuses the Soviets of biological warfare and the Soviets accuse the US of trying to create a new Dr. Manhattan. That's assuming they even wait for the tests, which if global tensions were as high as Veidt believed, they wouldn't. But they weren't and that was really the point: what Veidt did was totally unnecessary.
** It's 1986. Don't you think that squid-crazy would work?
** Does the original troper have some special way of distinguishing terrestrial matter for para-terrestrial matter? Because we don't ''know'' what an alternate universe would be like, we really can't say what something ''from'' said universe would be like. All we'd really have are the notes from the Institute for Extra-Dimensional Research, and it's very likely that Veidt was able to acquire any notes they had - if nothing else, he could have funded research on the condition that they provide him with the Cliff Notes version of their findings, and since he's the world's richest and smartest man nobody would complain.
*** Heck, he ''owns'' the institute, and it wouldn't be shocking if he did much of the work personally.
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**** That's only assuming that the same man who figured out chronotons and teleportation has somehow missed that detail. I'm sure Veidt has particle physics well in hand.
* This is all ignoring one key thing: the US and the USSR are on the brink of war by the time the squid-thing arrives. Don't you think that when Nixon, or for that matter a ballistic-missile submarine captain somewhere hears that New York has just been destroyed, he'll immediately assume that this is a Soviet attack and order an all-out launch? Would every single sub captain, all of whom have independent launch authority, wait for verification that it was not a Soviet attack?
** Wait wait wait. ''Every single'' submarine captain ''independently'' has launch authority for nuclear weapons? You're saying that a submarine captain can, at any point, initiate ''nuclear war'' with no orders or authorization ''at all'' from the anyone in the higher chain of command? Do you realize how utterly ''daft'' that is?
*** Granted, I'm not in the military, but everything I've seen indicates that you '''''need''''' the authority of the President and/or the rest of the government to even ''consider'' launching nuclear weapons. Giving that kind of authority to an entirely-independent submarine captain is a ''stupid'' idea.
*** Go watch the film ''[[Crimson Tide]]'' and see exactly how stupid the idea is.
*** [[Reality Is Unrealistic|It may be stupid, but it's real]]. In the UK, that's the actual orders: fire if you discover that Britain is gone. It isn't policy per se in the US or Russia, but the actual security needed to launch a missile is basically "the captain and X other officers push the button", for any X less than three. In fact, the Soviet "Dead Hand" system (Perimetr), was basically this for land-based missiles: if sensors indicate we've been hit, you push this button and end the world.
**** Um, this really isn't accurate. Perimetr requires being armed first by the soviet leadership, and can always be overruled by Soviet Command. Otherwise, US nukes are secured with Permissive Action Links, which prevent captains and generals from just launching on their own initiative. Overall 'Britain is gone' or 'America is gone' signifies a lot more than the destruction of New York or London. It requires that the normal leadership structure be considered destroyed, with no one left to give any orders. Nixon was very much still around, still sitting in Norad.
***** The exact details of Permissive Action Link technology are classified and I certainly don't know what they are, but there is information to suggest that sub captains have access to their own PAL codes.
**** This isn't an accurate depiction of British policy either. Each sub contains a safe with a "Letter of Last Resort" - sealed orders on what to do if "Britain is gone", which change with each Prime Minister. It's unknown what they are as letters are destroyed when a PM leaves office - but the options suggested are apparently "fire nukes", "do not fire nukes", "make up your own mind" or "submit to the command of Australia or the US".
**** There's also the fact that the entire reason the submarine deterrent force exists in the first place is so that even if an enemy first strike utterly obliterates the entire country before anybody else can get a shot off, the boomers can still launch a retaliation strike. That's the sword of Damocles that makes the enemy decide that first-strike is not a viable option. The missile submarines are ''specifically designed'' to operate independently as the ultimate last-ditch contingency. Admittedly, step one of this procedure is 'Make ''really really sure'' that your government has actually ceased to exist before defaulting to independent command', but the ability to operate 100% independently if need be is the entire reason they were built.
* So, having read every post in this folder, I think I'm rather confident that for the most part the Veidt scheme would have probably worked for some limited amount of peace for some limited amount of time. But what really bugs me is this. Although the alien monster thing kills half of New York, it's never really explained exactly how it was supposed to have gotten there (obviously I mean in Veidt's official story that it's an extra-dimensional being). So what are the USSR and US going to do to arm up against ANOTHER one? What the fuck is the plan to fight a thing that just appears out of nowhere and blows up? Are they going to start sending US military forces into teleporters in the hope of finding the alien's home dimension? At the end of the book one of the voices heard on the news in Veidt's fortress even says "Could further attacks be imminent?" and the response is that they probably aren't and that the creature is some sort of alien bee that instinctively stings upon death. So yea, in summation, how the fuck are we supposed to come together in peace and harmony to fight non-intelligent creatures that appear out of nowhere at random and explode killing millions and themselves?
** How? Ask Adrian Veidt, of course.
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----
----
== Is Rorschach's Absolutist Worldview Good? Or Bad? (Y/N) ==
* Rorschach is supposed to have this unyielding moral code - if someone does something bad, they are a bad person, period. The only correct response to evil is to obliterate it. So why does he oh-so-casually brush off the Comedian's attempted rape of Sally as a "moral lapse"? True, he wasn't so unbending when he met the Comedian, but he could easily have gone after him following his psychotic break.
** Well, he has some pretty weird views about women and sex, having been brought up by a prostitute who appeared to care more about the johns than about him. Maybe he thought Sally "had it coming to her"?
*** Yeah. That kinda shows when he comments the lesbian chick's death as her being "a victim of her own indecent lifestyle". He calls Sally a "bloated whore", so he probably thought she kinda invited Comedian's actions upon herself.
* Because Rorschach as a character is an exploration of passionate political ideals, and with that necessitates hypocrisy. (Not to mention, every character in Watchmen is hypocritical and short-sighted. It's the human condition.) He detests criminals, yet he is one. He defends women and children, but detests them. He's moved to tears by what Veidt does, yet idolises Truman for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
** Rorschach does not detest children, and I really can't imagine what could possibly give you that idea. It's the other way around. The one thing in the world that he can't stand, the one thing that can make him lose his cool, is the idea of children suffering, scared, being abused. "Personal reasons," he says (hinting to a link to his own childhood), and remember: his failure to save the Roche girl from a horrible ordeal and death is what turned him from Kovacs into Rorschach.
* As for the disconnect between rape being a crime and the Comedian, his idol (and remember, he sees everything as black and white. Positive associations with the Comedian means that any negative ones should be ignored.) being a rapist; perhaps he doesn't view crimes committed by costumed heroes as crimes at all, he and his own are above the law.
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**** Rorschach loves America. The Comedian fights on the side of the American government, therefore The Comedian is good {{spoiler|rape and pregnant baby-momma-killing aside}}.
*** This troper wouldn't call Rorschach a misogynist. He treats the current Silk Spectre much more respectfully than he does anyone else, and we see him taking great joy in beating the crap out of a would-be mugger/rapist/both.
**** Still he call her mother a whore, for no good reason. I think the respect he has for
**** There are a number of instances where it is indicated that Rorschach/Walter Kovacs is made disgusted and uncomfortable by female bodies and therefore by extension women themselves - consider the scene where he says he took the dress and "cut it until it didn't look like a woman any more". Whether or not this constitutes misogyny per se, he is still not entirely rational on the subject of women. (Additionally, Rorschach strikes me as the kind of person who holds to "it's the law and lawbreakers must be punished"-style beliefs. Rape is against the law, so how he personally feels about women likely doesn't enter into it.)
**** He says his job in a clothing factory is unpleasant because he has to handle women's underwear. Rorshach is asexual, not misogynist. A misogynist would revel in the touching of female underwear because he'd view it as a sexual object on par with an actual woman.
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***** Rorshcach also implies a belief that while he fights crime, most people who are wronged have it coming. He probably thought this of Sally. Not that this troper agrees with him, but her costume and publicity were less-than-modest. He wasn't there to stop the Comedian, so all he could do is forgive him, under the impression that he was an American "hero", and agree that a marketing plan like Sally's is going to attract at least a little bit of the wrong attention.
*** It seems like Rorschach is more dedicated to stopping crime before it happens. Most of the people he kills are either in the act of committing a crime (like the man trying to rape or mug the woman in the alley), or very likely to commit a crime again (multiple rapists, people who kill children and feed them to dogs, etc.). He would probably see the crimes in The Comedian's past as being either something done years before or something horrible but necessary (like his actions in war). He didn't know about The Comedian killing the woman in Vietnam, or he probably ''would'' have killed The Comedian.
** Rorschach is deliberately painted as hypocritical and inconsistent. That's the whole problem with black-and-white
*** Indeed, his justification of his less moral actions as for the better good is actually a common theme and trait in Ditko's villains, and in the frame work of that story it is meant to show that a black and white view carried by the Question prevents slippage into gray, whilst Alan Moore's antithesis of Rorschach shows that you can slip into gray and have eroded morals even if you do have a Black and White outlook.
*** [[Your Mileage May Vary]], on the weaknesses of objective morality. This troper felt that the Comedian should've been stabbed on the spot, preferably in the lower regions, for his actions, no questions asked. The only times hypocrisy creeps in is when people allow emotions such as love or hate to color their choices.
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* Rorschach and Ozymandias are the same character. One's just prettier.
** No, they're pretty much complete opposites. The biggest difference is probably in the fact that whereas Rorshach's view of morality is based on absolutes, Ozymandias considers morality as arising from practical concerns.
** As the above poster said, they pretty much are opposites. However, they do share the belief of the true nature of humanity, [[Humans Are
*** Actually, even in that they differ. Ozymandias seems to believe that humans have both good and evil in them (or rather the appropriate equivalents in terms of moral relativism) and that humanity is capable of things both great and terrible. He then takes it upon himself to ensure it is the greatness that prevails, and not the terror.
**** Terror, like, you know, bombing New York and inducing worldwide panic.
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* Hurm...
It appears to me that most tropers don't understand that Rorschach's unyielding moral "absolutism" is firmly based on absolute relativism. Reread his monologue to Doctor Long. It's very plain and clear. "This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces." "Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose." "Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. There is nothing else." And finally: "Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach." This is, well, conclusive. There are no two readings. Rorschach is an atheist and an existentialist, he realizes the inherent subjectivity of the human experience of morality and believes there are no moral absolutes whatsoever. Therefore, as we live in a morally blank world, with no meaning and no pattern, he is free, as free as everyone else, to upheld his own sense of right and wrong every time he clashes with society. And that's exactly what he chooses to do, certain of his freedom, with unyielding determination, even in the face of Armageddon. Absolute moral relativism that leads not to nihilism but to existentialism, that is Rorschach's way of thinking.
I must say, Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus would have been proud of him.
----
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* Also, I know that we're supposed to regard Rorschach as a psychotic obsessed creep, but the more you read Watchmen, and the more you see of the other "heroes," the better Rorschach looks. The Comedian was a sadist and a sociopath. Night Owl was a disgusting whiner who quit when the going got rough. Ozymandias was a sociopath with delusions of godhood. And Dr. Manhattan was utterly inhuman. Rorschach was the only one of them I could feel any sympathy at all for by the end.
* I agree with you except for about Night Owl. he seemed the most normal. Rorschach was by far my favorite and the 2nd least meesed up in my opinion. but Night Owl is even less messed up than he is.
** Please don't project your own biases on everyone else. I still had quite a lot of sympathy for Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, all their personal problems aside, and even had sympathy for Ozymandias. I actually think Moore uncovered something very disturbing about comic book geeks by using Rorschach as, well, a Rorschach blot. The fact that you can dismiss Nite
*** ''"...natural, human revulsion toward violence and conflict..." "...says something disturbing about..."'' Please don't project your own biases on everyone else. This troper, for one, has long found human failings and weaknesses to be some of the most pathetic things in existence, and the heroes [[Shinji and
*** This Troper would like to make the observation that most people who idolize those characters who "refuse to bend to their emotions" tend to be, for lack of a less blunt term, losers with little to no social interactions to speak of. Through forming bonds, you realize the importance of emotion, like Nite Owl did. Rorschach's fans are something like people who hate romances because they've never experienced love. They identify with his lack of emotion because they wish to harden themselves against the tough truths of the world: Emotion is all we really have. You experience all the emotions you can, then you die. That's life. Heroes who strive for normalcy are the most real in this Troper's eyes.
*** Characters without failings and weaknesses just aren't realistic, and are frankly boring. Watchmen isn't supposed to be an escapist adventure story, but an exploration of some messed up people. Everyone has flaws and weaknesses, and makes mistakes, and fails. You linked to a fan-fic featuring a Marty Stu (inspired by a tabletop game...) to demonstrate your idea of heroism and you classify a revulsion toward violence and conflict as a weakness. Holy shit. Face it, Rorschach is all about human frailty. He is, ultimately, a failure. That's why he's sympathetic - out of all the characters, he's the one on the verge of total collapse. His ideals just don't match up with reality.
*** I had sympathy for Nite-Owl as an intelligent, but despairing individual, and pity for Silk Spectre and Rorschach as victims of their upbringing. I could admire Ozymandias: He had faced the futility and desperate brutality of human life, like the Comedian and Rorschach, but he, at least, was willing to change the world for the better through unpleasant means, rather than just striking out at what angered him. I agree that this work is a Rorschach of the reader, and yes, my own sympathies disturb me in this case.
***
**** However, the world of Watchmen isn't the real world. It has different leaders, events, and technologies. And most importantly, as pointed out by one bits in the TPB, it has a world with two superpower nations, but where one has been forced to endure humiliating defeat after humiliating defeat and setback after setback, and is looking to recover that lost national pride and dignity with a vengeance. Furthermore, I think one of the main themes was about authoritarianism and the addiction to power. The US of Watchmen has dictated terms to the rest of the world for so long, been so absolute in it's command of geopolitics, that it no longer knows any other way to respond to a Soviet provocation. There's no attempt at discussion, negotiation, or the like, it's instantly an ultimatum: "Stop or else!" The longer an authoritarian system/person is in place, the more rigid and inflexible they become, unable to do anything but make such commands.
**** Also note that this was written in 1985, [[The Great Politics Mess-Up|before the collapse of the Soviet Union]].
** Also note that this is a personal thing. Every character has good and bad sides, and for you that balanced out with all characters but Rorschach as unlikable, while for this troper everyone but the Comedian ended up as good (if flawed) guys.
*** I agree with you on all of that.
**** What disturbs this Troper is that ''anyone'' would sympathize with Veidt and regard him as a [[Moral Event Horizon|flawed good guy]]. That, and the events of the past 8 years, suggest to me that Alan Moore was not far off in his cynicism about human nature and moral hypocrisy. Just take a look at the ret-conning of the Iraq war in the past year, for instance...
***** [[media:i-did-it.jpg|This panel]] Suggests that Veidt had no qualms about his absolute annihilation of millions of people. This Troper thinks that those who are sympathizing with Veidt probably saw the movie version as a more accurate portrayal; he actually shows remorse and doubt, humanizing him about his extremist actions.
***** ''What?'' Sorry, but I think you're missing the point with that one. In that panel, Veidt is reacting to the news broadcasts shown in the previous panels that were describing a peace treaty between the US and USSR and and immediate end to the war. Veidt isn't reacting to the millions of deaths that he caused, which, after all, [[Memetic Mutation|he had already done 35 minutes ago]]. Veidt is so happy in this panel because after decades of planning and organizing and gambiting, he did what was trying to do all along: ''saving the world''. I think the comic makes Veidt quite sympathetic, although YMMV, and there's still plenty that Veidt has to answer for. This Troper sympathized the most with Veidt in his conversation with Manhattan after Manhattan killed Rorschach:
{{quote|
** This troper, who has slightly strange thought processes, can't help but think of Rorschach's view of the world as very similar to, of all people, Sam Sprinkles from ''[[Zebra Girl]]''. Yes, I am aware I am comparing a psycho vigilante to a giant talking cartoon rabbit. [[Better Than It Sounds|Hear me out, please?]] In both cases, a truly nasty childhood led the character to retreat into a black-and-white, idealistic world where they could actually effect things and their problems weren't important. The biggest differences are in method: Sam worked to increase the good, while Rorschach tried to eliminate the bad. Sam was forcibly snapped out of it when he was fired, but Rorschach, working outside the law, could just dig himself into the fantasy even further. Even so, they actually end up in a rather similar state- wandering the streets, dead broke and nonfunctional. Just Sam's drunk and cynical and Rorschach's insane and a very warped idealistic.
** I've always felt a lot of sympathy for The Comedian. Apart from the rape, every other questionable moral he has can be put down to a twisted result of depression due to being denied a relationship with his daughter. His two scenes with Laurie Juspeczyk are quite emotional, mostly down to Gibbons' true skill in drawing his facial expressions.
*** I have to disagree. The Comedian's sociopathic personality (which I think the rape scene shows was always there to some extent, just brought more to the light by war and the passage of time) goes beyond anything you can chalk up to "depression." Or even "I have some issues to work out." He's callous, sadistic, morally bankrupt and self-centered. I think he does have some real, genuine sadness about his daughter, sure. That's a part of him, but not all of him---suggesting that his behavior can be traced to separation from her oversimplifies the character.
*** Like a real comedian, The Comedian is a master of analyzing others. He predicted very accurately the outcomes and feelings of other characters, including the silk spectre's feelings for him while being forced to pretend to be in a relationship with the closet homosexual Hooded justice, He raped her because deep down she WANTED him to, which she had only realized in her old age. I like to think of him as the opposite of Dr. Manhattan : he has no empathy towards others because he understands people so WELL. He knew how everything was going to play out and was frustrated with the slowness of everyone else. So naturally he relieved his frustrations by throwing napalm on everything.
*** Um, no. He was callously beating the shit out of people for the jollies of it long before he had a
*** The most fucked up thing to me, is that if The Comedian wasn't a rapist, and a murderer who killed his own child (which may explain why he feels so bad about not being able to know his own daughter, by the way) I'd say he was the character I most Identify with, the one I like the most, and the one that if I met, I'd be most likely to become friends with. He sees past all the bullshit and stabs right at the issue, he brings up the elephant in the room, says what everyone's thinking but are afraid to mention. You take away his sociopathy and he's so likable. That's disturbing beyond words. He's almost like an evil version of [[Seinfeld|Kramer]]
*** I despised the Comedian the more I read, but... I really felt bad for him when he broke down in front of Moloch.
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*** I took her change of costume to mean that she was abandoning her former [[Stripperific]] costume for something more like what the men wear (black) and something more practical (a gun), leaving behind the stereotype of the female superhero. Moore had already deconstructed the way female superheroes are portrayed, and I took Laurie's comment as part of that. Why ''can't'' a female super hero dress in armor and carry a weapon like a man?
* I'm starting to agree about Dan being a bit screwy as well. Despite being the more "normal" person, it strikes me that Dan just doesn't value their friendship as much as Rorschach. Rorshach even states explicitly that he knows it's tough being his friend with the awkward handshake (Dan's probably his ONLY friend). They take a trip to the Arctic to stop Veidt. Then the whole NY thing happens, and everyone's kind of gobsmacked. Dan knows Rorschach is leaving and very distraught, yet he doesn't offer him a ride home, or do anything to make sure he's all right. Instead, Dan sleeps with Laurie. I know Dan couldn't have known that Rorshach would die, but he has no excuse for leaving Rorshach in lurch.
** Dan always struck me as being rather naive, a case of [[The Cape (trope)]] becoming powerless because he's too tied to his ideals and too afraid to do anything. I think that naivete and a willlingness to believe in good in everyone is part of his relationship with Rorschach, which seems to be born more out of pity than actual friendship. He tries to be nice to Rorschach because he feels sorry for him, and he's the only one who can tolerate being around him, but they're not exactly friends in a real sense. I mean, could YOU be friends with that guy? If Dan had really gotten to know Rorschach he might have been able to do something to help him before he totally snapped. But it's pretty obvious that Dan doesn't really know Rorschach or what's going on with him, nobody does. They all didn't know how crazy he was until it was too late.
** And to be fair to Dan, part of the reason Rorschach admits that he knows it's hard being his friend is because ''Rorschach is a huge dick to Dan''. Let's not [[Draco in Leather Pants|over-idealize here]]; for all that Rorschach may value his friendship with Dan, he still breaks into the guy's apartment numerous times, sponges off him, steals his food, expects the guy not to inform the police that a known killer has stopped by and, despite doing all of this, insults the guy to his face. It's only because Dan finally gets sick of putting up with Rorschach's shit and calls him out about it that Rorschach is moved to acknowledge this in the first place. Kind of hard to value ''that'' particular friendship too highly. As for not giving Rorschach a lift home, Dan is ''also very distraught'', having failed to prevent millions of people dying and being forced to secrecy about it by the threat of global-nuclear holocaust; he's a bit overwhelmed himself, and Rorschach doesn't exactly reveal the extent to how overwhelmed he is.
* So basically, this whole thing is just a huge elaborate version of [http://www.talisman.org/quizzes/robin-hood-morality.shtml the Robin Hood Morality Test.]
* I'm going to have to go with Silk Spectre as least messed up, and Dr. Mahattan as most messed up. Reasoning: Silk Spectre is easy; she isn't running around killing everything. She has some obvious Mommy/Daddy issues to work through, as well as some problems with self-image and commitment, but over all, she isn't in half bad shape. Dr. Manhattan is easily the most messed up because he has completely lost touch with humanity. He started life as a human, yet by the time Ozymandias impliments his plan, he has completely lost touch with emotion in general. He regards life and death exactly the same. He has become a God, yet it has made him uncaring. Like the other Characters are messed up, but at least they still feel, still look at people as something more than a fancy collection of particles.
* I'm gonna go wild here and say that Dreiberg is the least messed up. Sure, he may be somewhat lame, but he's got no thick issues. His mother wasn't a prostitute, or raped. His father died when he was older, and I think peacefully. He's not really the guy you'd want saving your ass, but he's the guy you'd want to hang out with sometime. The character with the least mental problems seems to be him. Seeing as how Veidt has a little of a god complex. Manhattan is a self-aware force of nature. Silk Spectre II spent most of her adult life hating a man who was her father, and who tried to rape her mother; has no life skills beyond being a superhero, and was pushed into that life by her mother. The Comedian is... the comedian. And Rorschach is... well Rorschach. Nite Owl II is easily the least screwed up main character. If you pick side characters, that guy walking on the street seems to have a normal life.
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* What the hell is up with Alan Moore? Really, this is a general question- the man writes truly bizarre scenarios that are even more bizarre and questionable when you consider the underlying philosophy. The incident where the all-powerful Dr. Manhattan has his faith in life and humanity restored by the knowledge that his girlfriend is the daughter of a man who previously attempted to rape her mother is especially offensive.
** Now, while this editor can't read Alan Moore's mind and tell you what the hell's up with him, the scene cited does not go as you apparently think it does. What changes Dr. Manhattan's mind isn't that knowledge (and, for all it's worth, it was only ''attempted'' rape, broken up by Hooded Justice; the encounter that led to Laurie's conception happened later.), but the sudden realization that all of life is so random as to be completely unpredictable, which smashes through his then-ironclad fatalism. This is emphasized when the scene pulls back to reveal he and Laura are standing in a giant crater on Mars that ''just happens'' to be a smiley face. N.B., during the "Face on Mars" controversy, genuine NASA scientists had produced pictures of a crater that ''really'' did look like a smiley face.
*** Roger Ebert [https://web.archive.org/web/20130207211327/http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/03/were_all_puppets_laurie_im_jus.html understood this], and he only saw the film!
** How to put this delicately? There have been rumors for 25 years, if not longer, that Mr. Moore has a taste for certain substances that most governments proscribe. And given all the psychedelic themes in so much of his work, like the infamous "LSD love potato" from one particularly surreal arc of "Saga of the Swamp Thing" he wrote in the 80s, he isn't trying very hard to dispel the rumors. If anything, the rumors stem from people noticing that he keeps gravitating to these ideas. This is, of course, only rumor, and I am just some random guy on the Interweb who claims no knowledge of his personal habits.
**** He's stated in interviews that he uses psychedelic drugs as part of his "religious" ritual.
**** He wouldn't be the only comic writer to get off his gourd now and again, and the fact that he smokes terrifyingly huge quantities of dope has never been denied. Anyway, what does this have to do with anything?
***** Ah, [https://web.archive.org/web/20130926020602/http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp02132008.shtml Alan Moore]. To be slightly more serious, for a long time it has seemed to me that, for whatever reason, possibly related to the above, possibly not, he does not look at the world quite the same way the rest of us do. It comes through in his storytelling. Sometimes what he creates is delightfully different. I personally enjoyed "Tom Strong" and the first "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" graphic novel a great deal, for example. Sometimes his visions fall flat, like "Lost Girls," which probably would never have seen print had it not had his name attached to it.
***** I think it is well summed up by this brief description of Moore from [[wikipedia:Alan Moore|that other wiki]]: "He is a vegetarian, an anarchist,(17) a practicing magician and occultist, and he worships a Roman snake-deity named Glycon.(18)." Moore is an unusual man.
****** Glycon was also a puppet, and had a woman's face. Its name translates as "sweetie". It was a fictional deity made up by the satirist Lucien, like the Flying Spaghetti Monster of ancient Rome.
****** Does anyone else get the impression that Moore is, in fact, just quietly and benevolently taking the piss out of everything? Like the Comedian, but <s>minus the sadism</s>.
******* Be nice if he'd take some out of himself at some point.
* (Back to the original question about Quantum Determinism and Dr. Manhattan's motivations) --
** Ok, but even so, how does the knowledge that a twisted nihilist tried to rape a woman at all break his [[The Fatalist|fatalism]]? It's still a really weird, borderline-offensive source of 'epiphany.'
*** Because that's not what got him back. Laurie wasn't born from the (failed) rape; she was born from when her mother voluntarily started an affair with the Comedian later (and regretted it). This is made pretty clear by the scene with Sally kissing the photograph at the end. Manhattan is fascinated by Sally starting an affair with someone who she has "every reason to hate," and realizes that he doesn't understand everything. Of course, this can seem a little twisted too...but the point isn't that Manhattan learns that life is meaningful, it's that he learns that life is unpredictable and therefore "miraculous" in a way that particles and planets are not.
**** Exactly. And looking at it from Manhattan's point of view, it seems unlikely that he would be able to fully appreciate the horror of that attempted rape anyway. You shouldn't go into Watchmen expecting any kind of easy, cut-and-dried moral [[Aesop
*** I always thought that he had his epiphany because before he never really appreciated the randomness of human existence. He says that out of the millions of sperm that could have impregnated the egg, only the one that would become Laurie did. And the fact that her mother had every right to hate the Comedian, but decided to have sex with him anyway. And the fact that these two people being born was just as random as Laurie's birth, and so on for the entire human race. After all, had that single sperm not impregnated the egg, someone else besides Laurie would have been born, and he would not be having this conversation right now. He compared the existence of every person to the idea that oxygen can spontaneously turn into gold: highly improbable, but with a small chance.
**** And so, often, is history. As much as it's subverted by the Black Freighter thread, what Veidt's attempt shows, as well as Manhattan's realisation, is that the world as we know it stands on a deep, twisted and irredeemably complex historical formation, one where the exact causal relationship between the present and the past can be almost impossible to trace. That's also one of the reasons for the book's structure - it constantly weaves storylines together, interposing panels yet drawing brief connections between them by symbolic allusion (eg the perpetually reoccuring bloodstain). Manhattan knows: he can see the crystal castle that's already visible in the deep sand from which it will rise.
*** Interesting that the particular case of "the randomness of life" in question had something negative (the relationship between Edward Blake and Sally Juspeczyk) resulting in something positive (their daughter Laurie). Shortly afterward, Dr. Manhattan is confronted with the actions of Adrian Veidt, which are again a case of something negative (the destruction of a city) resulting in something positive (saving the world).
*** So let me get this straight - Dr. Manhattan gave up on his all-knowing passive role once he realized he still doesn't understand women?
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* Additional discussion:
** Dr. Manhattan explicitly states that he can see ''only his own future.'' Meaning that it's entirely possible that it could be deterministic in a quantum pseudobabble sense: because he is observing his future at all times, it is forced to resolve itself into a single state, rather than a Schrodinger's Cat-like flux of states. It is deterministic because he believes it is. What with his other pseudointellectual nihilistic bullshit, it's entirely possible that Dr. Manhattan is simply too self-involved to really ''understand'' the big picture at anything above the subatomic level.
*** ...Well, that's not how quantum physics actually works (at the macro level, everything really is
**** So we can therefore determine that Dr. Manhatten is... [[Grand Unifying Guesses|Muad'dib]].
**** Wouldn't he change the future by observing it? Isn't that what Heisenberg says? So he really doesn't know anything.
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** I've always thought he was just lying. He knows very well that there are differences between a living body and a dead one; he just doesn't care for unrelated reasons, but finds it easier to pretend to science his way out of it, knowing nobody in the room has the ability to call him on it.
** Dr. Manhattan quite simply fails thermodynamics forever, and all processes related to thermodynamics (i.e. anything macroscopic and non-simplifiable, such as a human body). The "thermodynamic miracle" of two cells coming together to form this particular Silk Specter, for example - chance doesn't work that way. Next time you see a car, look at it's license plate. Wow, did you see that? PX-13-AA? What's the chance of getting that one? One in a million! That's a thermodynamic miracle! (No, it isn't, because you could be this surprised at any license plate, however unlikely this particular one happened to be). In thermodynamic terms, human interactions and even their identities are microstates of the macrostate of "life". Any particular ordering of microstates is rare, but there are many that have the same result (impending nuclear annihilation). The fact that the Silver Specter exists is as miraculous as finding some chewing gum on a particular tile of the pavement (the tile still being unspecified until the moment of finding), from a thermodynamic perspective. She's just another microstate. What is a miracle is that he managed to engage in quantum physics (not to mention get a Ph.D.) with such a terrible understanding of statistical physics. So, anyway, given his less-than-high school knowledge concerning statistical physics, it's no wonder he fails to see the entropic decay, change of fluid dynamics, destruction of constant maintanence of chemical homeostasis, and just plain drop in brain polarization, associated with a severe case of death.
*** First off, it's Silk Spectre.<ref>
**** (Manhattan fails thermodynamics guy here). No, the license plate could have been any number. If the person driving it had went somewhere else, or had left their keys at home, or if the traffic lights were just off by a few seconds, or if the owner had bought a car a day later, etc. etc. The point is that it's not statistically valid to be surprised at an outcome you didn't predict. Also, if he doesn't even understand human life, how did he get into this deterministic rut in the first place? If every single human you see is unpredictable, how could he ever get saddened by the predictability of life? As to the astronomicality of odds - the chance of all the numbers of the US national lotto coming up in the order they did is smaller than of Napoleon Bonaparte suddenly appearing out of thin air and cutting your head of right now. Yet you will be surprised to find yourself suddenly decapitated, but not surprised at the lotto numbers being in the current order. It's because I predicted your head being cut off, but nobody predicted the Lotto numbers (with 100% accuracy). No matter how unlikely the event, it is not scientifically valid to be surprised by it. There are billions of chance events taking place every second, so it is merely statistically necessary that some of these events will yield astronomically unlikely odds. And why would Manhattan look "from the most basic level possible". That is, [[Xkcd|as scientists are calling it, "pretty darn stupid"]]. It is at least as easy to recognize the difference between a dead and living human as between a human and a plant, if looking at small scales (is there ATP? Y/N).
***** It comes down to this. No matter how smart Doctor Manhattan is, he can't demonstrate more knowledge than his own writer, and Alan Moore isn't a physicist, a biologist or a mathematician. He's a mystic with some very odd ideas about the universe, and Manhattan is voicing some of them. You're technically right to say that the character should know better, but there's a clear answer to all this - ''Alan Moore'' likely doesn't know or care about the details, he's just making his own philosophical point. Superhumanly smart characters are still limited by their humanly-smart writers. Within his own universe, Manhattan's correct simply because that's how the story's been written. We can use our real-world knowledge to say that he's babbling nonsense, but that doesn't really change anything within the story. It just tells us that the writer isn't a scientist. (With that said, I do sympathize with your being annoyed by the logic he's using: it's a lot like rolling a 6-sided die and then saying that whatever random number comes up only had a 1 in 6 chance of being rolled, so it's a miracle.)
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== Would Masked Vigilantes Be Taken Seriously As Extranormal Heroes / Threats? ==
* The police strike has never made sense to me, mainly because the rationale the picketers seemed to be using was that regular cops were being put out of work by annonymous vigilantes. However throughout Watchmen I can't recall any indication that there were more than a dozen or so superheroes active at any one time, and only one of them had superhuman abilities (and he was exempt from the superhero ban anyway). Given how realistic Moore was trying to be in Watchmen, I don't see how a handful of individuals could pose a legitimate threat to police job security. Sure, if you're going to survive as a superhero you've got to be more skilled than an average cop, but most police work doesn't require expert fighter/master detective/escape artist skills. The occasions where such skills ''are'' necessary are (a) not that common, and (b) tend to be so dangerous that most cops probably ''wish'' they could pass the buck on storming the mansion filled with heavily armed gangsters. I can certainly see why the police would protest the government's endorsement of vigilantism, but not for the reasons they gave in Watchmen.
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** IIRC, Moore stated in interviews - during the original run of Watchmen - that the legality of masked vigilantes lead to a breakdown and things got out of control. By the '70's, the police and the courts were faced with numerous cases of a guy putting on a mask, beating on somebody he didn't like, and then when arrested saying "It wasn't assault and battery, I'm a superhero!!" But still, this troper was a bit annoyed at how while this and the existence of other superheroes (other than the main characters we saw) was lightly implied it was never shown in the comic and thus, it seems that cops across America are on strike because three people in costumes are beating up guys who like being beaten (c.f. Captain Carnage).
* In New York City, a densely populated area with about 8 million people, there were only shown about a dozen superheroes and it wasn't implied that there were any more. Seriously, would that small amount of people cause such a big deal? With that distribution, there would only be a couple hundred vigilantes in the entire country, if not less. Even if these people are more "super" than regular vigilantes (which kind of undermines the realism aspect of Watchmen), there would be no way they could make a significant dent in any sort of criminal activity.
** The realism aspect of Watchmen is already a bit hazy. Ozymandias is in his late forties but he's portrayed as a semi-Superman, catching bullets and the like. Dan and Laurie have been in retirement and out of practice for ten years, Laurie in her mid-thirties, Dan in his forties or so, but when threatened in an alleyway they take down or disable ''five armed thugs half their age'' without a mark on either of them. During the
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** It's like with the Joker, only less evil incarnate, and more misogynistic anti-social sociopath with one friend to his name. Other than that, I dunno. There's just something inherently badass about who he is, how he grew up and how he came to be. It's like watching a wild animal that hates his own kind. You just want to watch from the other side of the safety glass and see what he does.
** Surprisingly, the answer here comes from a Mel Gibson movie (no, ''Braveheart'', not ''[[The Passion of the Christ]]'') from Robert the Bruce's father: "You admire this man, this Wallace. Uncompromising men are easy to admire. He has courage; so does a dog. But it is ''exactly'' the ability to compromise that makes a man noble."
*** Considering what the elder Bruce did with his "nobility", that comparison reflects better on Rorschach than Veidt.
** I just want to give him a hug.
*** I would totally give him a hug, even though he'd probably be horrified and kill me.
*** I third the "hug" motion. Furthermore, if [
** Rorschach's appeal is the appeal that every "simple solution" holds. His approach to saving the world is a variation on the Ghaleon Principle: find the right guy (he doesn't have to be a [[Bishounen|long-haired bishounen]]) and beat the everloving ''shit'' out of him. His black-and-white morality is seductive in its simplicity: aku soku
** A lot of the heroes we love just tend to be fanatically-driven psychotic travesties of human beings. Check out the protagonist of [[V for Vendetta]] for an example, although V is much more of a gallant rogue than Rorschach. Probably doesn't smell as offensive either. We love Rorschach for the same reasons people love Batman and his obsessive quest to scour Gotham; ''Watchmen'' just demonstrated the logical progression of the Batman kind of mindset.
** He's an extreme disciple of Kantian morality (though he probably doesn't think about it like that): essentially, things are right because they spring from the right motives ("The Good Will", as Kant termed it). By contrast, Ozymandias is an extreme disciple of Utilitarianism: better to kill millions if it saves ''billions''. Of course, either or both could be mistaken in their moral viewpoint.
** He drives the plot forward, kicks ass and gives hilarious (and disturbing) exposition.
** Ditto to the above, with emphasis on 'drives the plot forward'. Rorscach is the only character in the whole damn book who gets off his hinder and does something. It's only natural that the audience gravitates to him as the 'hero'. The fact that Alan Moore may not have intedned this speaks more to Moore's ability to construct a narrative than the audience's interpretations.
** He's [[The Woobie]]. More seriously, Rorschach plays the role of the classical [[Tragic Hero]]; he's a larger-than-life character who, despite good intentions, is eventually undone by his own flaws.
** His is the only view that actually believes in a 'good' person that still tries to deal with 'bad' people. Most of the heroes totally gave up, Ozymandias is a moral relativist, and so that just leaves Rorscahch as the only one who's handling good and evil at all. It may not necessarily be the right way to handle it, but there is an appeal to knowing somewhere there's good (not that Rorscahch sees much of it) and the bad guys are getting the crap beaten out of them.
**** One of the main reasons I think so many people like rorschach, is because he takes action. He is out there, killing people, breaking fingers, scaring muggers. He ''does'' things. Nite Owl II waits until rorschach's in jail to do anything important, most of Veidt's action, and planning, is off-screen. Manhattan escapes to mars for the first part of the story. Silk Spectre II is against the whole thing. The Comedian is dead. Rorschach is one of the -if not ''the'' only- character/s that move the story forward actively for the first 2/3 of it. He's doing stuff, and looking badass the whole time. I'd have no problem sitting through 90 minutes of Rorschach. He's active. And he's active NOW, not ten years ago.
** Perhaps it's because Rorschach is an outcast. We've all felt like outcasts at one time or another, and can therefore relate to him better than the characters who, while they do have their flaws, are generally accepted.
** For the very same reason that we like [[Badass]] characters, as even stated on that page. He both does what he wants, despite any blockages - Keene act, etc. - and what he believes in - without compromise. And he pulls off insane, over the top stunts in pursuit of what he believes - justice for the wicked, in a manner of speaking.
** This troper thinks it's mainly because Rorschach is a walking [[Think of the Children]] trope. Like it or not, half his backstory and significant sympathetic characterisation revolve around the subject of hurt children: his upbringing; the Roche kidnapping; the final confrontation with his landlady. Nobody else has an explicitly horrible upbringing: Ozy and Dan came from privileged backgrounds, Laurie was kept more or less ignorant of her parentage (her stepfather is a bully, but it's almost an afterthought, unlike the [[Anvilicious|dropping of the anvil]] with Kovacs'), Osterman had a trade but otherwise wasn't underprivileged, the Comedian doesn't have a past, and even Hollis Mason is presented in the [[All There in the Manual|filler text]] as having a loving family. Kovacs, by comparison, is the illegitimate son of a prostitute. He doesn't even know who his father is, his ''own mother'' beats the hell out of him when he's less than ten years old ''and says she should have aborted him''. His early life is implied as one long [[Break the Cutie]] moment, and, despite metaphorically wading through blood, he has great empathy for a little child in a position like his own. That character feature (rightly or wrongly) redeems him, at an emotional level, despite all of his sociopathic behaviour, into [[Magnificent Bastard]] territory; indeed, the presentation of his abusive mother is very heavily implied as direct justification for his misogyny. When he's in prison, he's presented figuratively as a child among adults: physically smaller than the people who threaten
* In addition, Rorschach has a badass mask.
* Because ultimately he's the only character to refuse to accept Veidt's (and Moore's) concept of "benevolent" fascism, that people are stupid and gullible and need the smarter and more powerful to manipulate them into doing things for their own good. Rorschach may hold humanity in contempt, but he still believes in humanity's right to make its own decisions. He advocates for liberty and truth in the face of fascism and lies. He's the only character that is willing to own up to who and what he is, as much of a horrible mess as that is, whereas all the others pat themselves on the back for being good and moral and true but constantly yield to subjective morality. He's pretty much a lousy human being, but he's also pretty much the only one worthy of being called one.
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== Alternative Morality - Rorschach Vs Ozymandias ==
* How can someone actually see Rorschach's morality in positive light? While he is badass and has a freudian excuse for some of the stuff he does, he has went so far along the "he who fights monsters" line that he can no longer see the good people he should be protecting, just the evil people he thinks he should be smiting. [[Main/Kerrah|I]] personally lost my last ounce of sympathy for him was when he told about brutally slaughtering two dogs for the sole reason that their owner had fed them a kidnapped girl. Like animals have the capacity to "choose the side of evil", as he puts it.
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*** That does not mean people are either "good" or "evil". They're not. But that does not reject the concept of absolutes. The protagonist and antagonist of [[Les Misérables]], for instance, both believe in cut and dried morality; the antagonist simply falls flat in believing people are either-or.
*** Ozymandias is pretty far from being objectivist. His view seems to be that morality is an incredibly complex thing, made up almost entirely of conflict of things that would generally be deemed 'good'. He doesn't even seem to believe that good and evil exist objectively, but rather that they're defined by a mix of genetic imperatives and cultural memes.
**** That's called "subjective morality" and it's exactly the thing people use to justify stuff like, oh, eugenics.
** Probably just a [[Misaimed Fandom]]. I think the book makes it obvious that Rorschach's cut-and-dry morality... well, everything you said. He's not supposed to be sympathetic.
** [[Main/Gattsuru|This Troper]] will admit it's a matter of Misaimed
*** But he ''did'' turn into a monster. He stuffs an at-this-point-harmless old man into the fridge for literally no reason. He breaks several barflies' fingers for talking to him funny. Everyone is terrified of him because he's totally off his rocker. He is seriously the most evil (living) person in the whole entire comic.
**** '''That''' is your definition of "the most evil person"? Breaking the fingers of the guys in a [[Bad Guy Bar]] and putting a guy, formerly a supervillain, in a fridge for a grand total of, maybe, 30 seconds? '''That''' is "evil"? I'll agree that he's a monster in the [[Those Who Fight Monsters]] sense, but saying those two things are proof of his "evil" is just ludicrous. If you want to call him "evil", cite the really ''nasty'' shit he does, at least, like burning a dude alive. But even that is [[Pay Evil Unto Evil]] at worst
No, Rorschach is pretty firmly in the "good" alignment, if you consider that he targets known criminals, typically while they're in the process of, or have just finished, doing something horrible to someone. His methods are monstrous, certainly, but that doesn't make him "evil" unless you're going by a very, ''very'' broad definition of "evil".
If you're going to call Rorschach "evil" for breaking some fingers for information, then you have to call Dan and Laurie "evil" for their utter brutalizing of the knottops that attack them, especially since it's implied Laurie took them through the neighborhood specifically so they'd attract that kind of attention.
**** More evil than Veidt? You do realize Veidt and Osama bin Laden have approximately the same motivations right?
**** He breaks
**** The murder of a rapist and murderer, who turns out to want to save the world through destroying large portions of it. Rorschach ''is'' pretty dark gray, but so is the rest of the world; he's not, however, ''more'' evil than, say, Ozymandias, if we're judging by motivation alone.
*** No. The most evil would be Big Figure, or some of the knothead street gangers who killed Hollis Mason, not Rorschach.
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**** I don't think anyone will argue that Moore thought Rorschach was a good guy. There are too many interviews to the contrary. But it takes more than burning a child murderer to make a [[Complete Monster]] out of the man.
**** There's a difference between 'monster' and '[[Complete Monster]]', of course. Largely, Rorschach ''does'' do what he believes is "good," but that doesn't mean his methods of doing things necessarily mesh with those of others. He's a psychopath, if a well-meaning one.
*** To interpret the words of some of the people above, Rorschach may be [[I Am Not Shazam|Adam]], but he's not [[Frankenstein]]. He's violent because he's screwed up, has a few stock [[Freudian Excuse
** Wait, killing two dogs is what qualifies as [[Moral Event Horizon]] for you? Wow, hope you never have to work at a pound.
*** Rorschach doesn't seem to be a good guy or a bad guy, he seems to only care about his brothers in arms he doesn't give a crap about the common man or any one over the age of innocence.
{{quote|
***** "The age of innocence" is an arrow pointing at that flaw in Rorschach's way of thinking. What ''is'' the cut-off age for 'not deserving of murder'? 10? 12? 16? To Rorschach, 99.9% of the world is whores and politicians, and that just isn't true, even in Watchman's [[Crapsack World]]. The fact that Rorschach ''doesn't'' care about 'the common man' is what makes him a monster (though not a Complete one), even though he's not necessarily evil.
** Moore showing us the ugliness of this train of
** Killing the dogs was done to torture the child-murdering sicko he'd tracked down. Also, considering that Rorschach had a psychotic break due to the sheer horror of that man's evil, I'd cut Rorschach a little slack.
** This troper feels that Rorschach's admiration of the Commedian is a strong strike against his hero-status. He brushes the Commedian's attempted rape of Silk Spectre off as a 'moral lapse of a man who has died for his country', which kinda undercuts his position as an uncompromising force of justice. Apparantly, another masked guy who fights dirty gets a free pass in his book.
* I think I like Ozymandias more than I'm supposed to. It's not because of what he did-normally I dislike people who believe that [[Utopia Justifies the Means]]. But out of all the characters he seems to be the best and brightest. He's the only one who really believes that humans have the abililty to make a better world for themselves, if only they stop being stupid. Am I reading something wrong?
** Well, [[Tropes Are Not Bad|Tropes Are Not Wrong]], so... I think it's a case of the villain being the only competent/dedicated/stick-tuitive character, I know there's a trope name for that, where you have to admire him as a fictional character, even if he's a [[Complete Monster]], because he's the only smart guy in the room. Like Keyser Soze. You can't do that in real life because in real life there's always a "somewhat good" person capable of putting up an argument against fanaticism.
*** What ''is'' the trope name for the preceding paragraph? [[Do We Have This One?]]?
*** [[Only Sane Man]] mixed with [[The Determinator]]?
** Or even arguing that, if sacrificing millions to save billions is a good thing, then risking the lives of billions for the truth (Rorschach's argument) can't be dismissed either. (Would Russia have really initiated WWIII having just learned that an [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|evil capitalist]] had initiated a false-flag operation against America? Or would the US have [[Ontological Inertia|returned to Def-Con]] <s>4</s> [[Defcon Five|2]] after learning Veidt did it?)
** But in real life the "practical, somewhat good" person will say "no, we don't want people to know the truth, but we don't want the guy who did it to get off scot free either." Ironically this is one shade of grey Alan Moore didn't explore. What if the "heroes" had "extraordinarily renditioned" Veidt? Not that they were able to, of course.
*** Ozymandias needs to go free because only he can lead the Free World to peace. He's got the means and the motive, and now the opportunity. If they were to bring it in, everything he worked for would fail.
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** He didn't start a war, he just allowed the Cold War to escalate, and ''that'' was well under way by the end of the 1940s. It wasn't as if [[Reds with Rockets]] only became a serious concern when he showed up.
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== One More Body Amongst The Foundations / (Spoilers) Was It Worth It?! ==
* You know what bugs me? The ending. Rorschach's death bugged me, if only because the character could be used for some interesting moral/psychological exporation. The implication that ''half of New York'' died for naught bugs me.
** The most interesting thing about Rorschach is the way he chooses death, in my
** I think it is supposed to. Watchmen doesn't have a conclusion AT ALL, if I'm right, so it is left for the reader to come up with one. Besides, half of New York didn't die for nothing, they died for world peace. Or did they?
*** The 'or did they' is the part that bugs me. Granted, I doubt it would have worked as well if it had ended differently.
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**** I belive that was a solution, but only temporary. Everybody would be at each other throats in less than 100 years.
***** 100 years of world peace is worth half a city. Lot more would have died in the prevented wars, and money that would have gone to the millitary/industrial complex could be applied to medicine, food and economic buildup.
****** If someone killed your family and said "I'm a genius who understands these things, it had to be done for the greater good", would you kiss them for it? Because if not you're a hypocrite.
*** Don't assume that "peace between the U.S. and Russia" is ''world'' peace. There are plenty of countries and cultures where a mere alien invasion and the death of all New York would be an annoying distraction compared to the ongoing battles against the traditional age-old enemies of their people. There certainly would not be a cessation of wars for a single generation, let alone 100 years.
**** Peace between the USA and USSR leads to world
***** Yep, a single hegemonic superpower would have the ability to crush any pissant Third World troublemakers like Iraq or Afghanistan real easy. What a wonderful world they were able to make. Empire is never pretty, and it isn't nice. A divided world isn't pretty and it isn't nice. World Peace is a dream because human beings live in the world.
****** It's interesting how no one considers the possibility of the creation of an al-Qaeda-like organization that operates outside of international boundaries. Almost ten years into their notion of a "war on terrorism", and al-Qaeda continues to operate unchallenged and gather new members in plenty of the world. The fictional Brotherhood of Nod would be an even larger example as well, in that it's not tied to one specific religion. If a superstate were to form, its true greatest threat would be an enemy without a single location that operates in many respects as a virus does.
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**** It's also a subtle punishment of Veidt. Ozymandias obssesses on small details. Manhattan is fucking with his head a bit to suggest there's even a ''possibility'' that Rorschach is still alive.
* I read somewhere that the reason Rorschach is crying when he unmasks himself is because he has realised about his hypocrisy. He was in favour of President Truman's order to use the atomic bomb, reasoning that it was better than having to invade Japan, which would have been much more costlier in lives, both in the Japanese and the American side. And now, he has realised that Ozymandias' plan is exactly the same (killing relatively few people to save many, many others), and he finds himself in the quandary that his morals want him to tell everyone, yet his personal beliefs want him to stay quiet. Probably he was crying because he realised that Manhattan, by killing him, would stop him from having to go against his morals or his personal beliefs.
** Why do people keep trying to compare the dropping of the atomic bombs to what Veidt did? The atomic bombs were acts of declared war, against a power that not only had vowed that they'd kill all of our POWs if we landed an invasion force on their soil, but had also demonstrated they were willing to murder ''their own'' population rather than letting them "suffer" under American occupation. The atomic bombs were an attempt to end a war directly, openly, and honestly, and the Japanese were even warned about it. Veidt's plan was mass murder based on deception, manipulation, against a population he was not at declared war with, based on nothing but his own sense of superiority and subjective morals.
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== Why Did They Let Him Live? (Spoilers) ==
* Why did they all let Ozymandias live? I can understand why they didn't tell anyone that Ozymandias was behind the destruction of New York. But they're ''vigilantes''. They kill outside the law based on their own moral code. How could they justify leaving him alive? It might be that I don't find the murder of innocents acceptable under any circumstances (not even to prevent a nuclear holocaust), but I would have killed Ozymandias and left his body to rot in the Antarctic.
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** Because the plan isn't over yet. Ozymandias still needs to sit behind the scenes and manipulate the chaos in the wake of the war into a strong, noble one-world government. Killing the puppetmaster before the puppet show is over might just ensure that the New York attack hastens rather than delays the end of the world.
** How? I had this thought some time ago and it really annoyed me, until I realized that they might not be able to. Even assuming that Dan and Laurie could talk themselves into going along with a cold-blooded murder, I don't think that it's possible. Neither Rorschach nor Nite Owl could lay a hand on Ozy, and he's proved that bullets aren't necessarily effective. Doctor Manhattan is the only one of the group who could pose any sort of threat, and he more or less agrees with Veidt's actions.
*** He may not agree, but he's willing to go along with a done deal.
** Plus, as alluded to above, Rorshach is the only killer among them. Even Manhattan only kills people by accident, or in the defense of [[The Masquerade]], and Dan and Laurie never do anything deadly we hear about.
*** Then there's the question of "Would we really want them to?" Yes, it would be satisfying for the audience to see, but what good would it do beyond vengeance? Would it change anything for the better? It would be very out of character for Dan especially. And then add in the fact that they couldn't kill him, and you have your ending. Also, keep in mind that this is a deconstruction of previous comic tropes. Beforehand, heroes would always stop the villain from destroying the world. Watchmen takes on something more complex than "kill the bad guy and win" morality. In this story, the heroes/villains are trying to stop a hero/villain from saving it. The conclusion is that the characters realize this and choose to fail.
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** As far as Dan and Laurie go, it seems they just broke down. Giddy after some successes they had donned their costumes once more and faced off against the man they thought was the villain. And he kicked their butts, blew their minds, and then let them stay at his place because he didn't consider them a threat.
*** [[Sus|I]]'m inclined to beliece this. Learning that, after all the heroics you just pulled off, all you managed to do was ''fail'' at preventing the [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] from saving the world is [[Heroic BSOD]] material if there ever was any. As for Doc Manhattan, from his detached viewpoint Ozy's [[Utopia Justifies the Means]] is probably justified or at least the lesser evil compared to [[The End of the World as We Know It|two superpowers hugging each other with nuclear arms]].
* The other issue with killing Veidt is
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== Why did it have to happen to Rorscharch... (Spoilers) ==
* Why did Dr. Manhattan bother killing Rorscharch? The obvious answer is that he wants to prevent Veidt's secret getting out (preventing nuclear war), but that doesn't fit well with the next scene. Manhattan heavily implies that a war will occur anyway, and considering all what he had said earlier about "time being relative", this troper couldn't imagine him killing Rorscharch just to try and give mankind a few more months. After all, if he really wanted to give mankind as much time as possible, he probably should have done more to secure our future, rather then just blow up one vigilante and then leave Earth forever.
** His statement isn't necessarily an implication that the war ''will'' occur. Only that things are by no means over. A war might yet be started or it might not. Perhaps Ozymandias will be exposed, but the peace he built will survive him. Or perhaps everything will turn into [[Crystal Spires and Togas]] yet. The point is, the issue is far from settled.
*** I always took that scene to indicate that Manhattan was subtly punishing Adrian. What could be worse for Ozy than to hear God (''someone who can see the future'') tell him that the future he's been working for is ambiguous at best. To deny the smartest man in the world the certainty of knowledge is the most fitting punishment imaginable. Seriously, imagine trying to steer the course of human history. And then you ask someone who can see the future if your doing the right thing, and he just shrugs and walks away. Horrible.
** Doctor Manhattan didn't need to kill Rorschach. One vigilante (even a very persistent one) with a bunch of crazy journal ramblings isn't going to make a difference. He didn't need to kill him, but there was no real reason to let him live either. Doctor Manhattan doesn't care one way or the other whether Rorschach survives, and the guy was asking him to do it.
** Rorschach was in the middle of a complete mental breakdown (a breakdown of his already shattered mind), it could easily be a mercy kill for someone who's tearing themselves up inside from being utterly unable to accept to what just happened. Alan himself said he felt Rorschach was in emotional pain and had a king sized deathwish the entire comic.
*** Indeed Rorschach's proposition that he intended to make his way back to the Owlship and then somehow repair it and fly back to America suggested a deathwish all on its' own. He's in the ''Antarctic''. Manhattan killing him then and there at the very least avoided the likelihood of a slow, agonising death from hypothermia.
* Short answer to all of the above: ''because Rorschach asked Manhattan to do it.'' Manhattan might have a renewed interest in human life, but he's still fundamentally detached from humanity. A live body and a dead body have the same number of particles ... albeit in a lot of different places.
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**** Why on earth would you assume he didn't consider other plans?
**** Or that Veidt is even eligible to run for President? His parents immigrated to America the year he was born. It's not specified if he was born before or after they'd arrived.
** It's also worth bearing in mind that Ozymandias is quite possibly ''fucking insane''. Just like every other character, Ozy has been affected and twisted by his career as a vigilante. Rorshach became more brutal and paranoid as he went down his path; Manhattan became more detached and inhumane as he goes down his; et cetera. I don't think Ozymandias' plan is supposed to come across as sane and sensible; he's the [[Knight Templar|idealistic monster]], a psychopath with a God complex. You could see him as actually representing Rorschach's ethos, on a massive scale: Rorschach tortures and kills "scum" because he sees it as necessary to carry out justice; Ozy is willing to commit a crime against humanity because he sees it as necessary to save the Earth from itself. And as a result, I think both characters are supposed to come across as compelling and repellent at the same time. Neither is simply a "good guy" or "bad guy." And ultimately, Moore's depiction of their
*** Veidt ''is'' insane. This plan isn't necessarily what Adrien Veidt would do. It's what Ozymandias would do. It's big, elaborate, and crafty. Veidt has little to no regard for the world's fate. He's doing this to satisfy the thirst for feeling like a hero. Why else do you think he executes his plan while wearing his costume?
*** Perhaps he feels it depersonalises him? That Ozymandias, who is not entirely human, may take on morale burdens that the merely-human Veidt may not? After all, the archetype of the superhero is about more than a clever disguise, it's about creating a animate personification of "right"; for the superhero to be something more than human, it is necessary for them to become something ''other'' than human. Veidt may feel that he needs to undertake his plan while in his Ozymandias persona to provide the distance from humanity needed to engage in such a tremendous act of, if we are frank, vigilantism, to allow himself to become something capable of playing god.
**** Doesn't fit with the end of the story and the fact Ozymandias recognises himself as the mariner in "Marooned". He outright says to Manhattan that "I've made myself ''feel'' every death." Empathy's not in the vocabulary of a psychopath.
** Also, to paraphrase Scott
*** That is quite possibly the silliest thing Scott Adams ever said. And the competition is stiff. Smart,
**** Maybe. But try telling that to the guy who goes around calling himself and certainly considers himself the smartest man on Earth.
**** Also don't forget that this is a book, and a superhero comic book at that. The genre is full of "super geniuses" who, aside from having their names on a number of diplomas and devices the author thought up, are dumb as a sack of bricks or at least no more intelligent than their almost certainly not super genius creators. I'd say Ozy fits neatly into this category.
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** It wasn't just the immediate threat of warfare. It was also the strain the Cold War put on the economy of both sides, the growing feelings of hostility, the food crisis, and other such issues. He wanted to end all of them at once.
** Because World War 3 was coming sooner rather than later. Veidt thought that the war was not only inevitable, it was imminent. When he forced Manhattan away from Earth, he wasn't doing so in order to raise tensions from behind the Iron Curtain, he was doing it so that Manhattan couldn't stop him. It didn't matter if tensions rose during the brief period between Manhattan's disappearance and the appearance of the tentacle monster/worldwide catastrophe, because immediately thereafter, things would be fixed.
* As to why Veidt didn't simply run for President: because it wouldn't have given him the power to stop the war in any event. The office of the President isn't a dictator with absolute power; he still answers to Congress and to the people every four years. He's the only one who can launch the nukes, yes, but that doesn't
** As [[Lex Luthor]] says in [[Justice League Unlimited]] "Do you know how much power I'd have to GIVE UP just to become President?"
* There is one thing that bugs me about successness of Veidt plan: Dr.Manhattan can see the future, Veidt finds a way to stop him from doing it. Couldn't he instead to '''ask''' him whether or not the nuclear war was inevitable?
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** It's possible that Dr. Manhattan can't do that kind of fine manipulation of large numbers of atoms. Creating big, uniform vats of chemicals is one thing; doing repair work on human cells without damaging them is another. Or maybe Janie didn't ''believe'' Jon could do that, and didn't want to risk having him try and fail.
** I think the Janey issue is not Dr. Manhattan's excuse to leave her but a reflection on her resenting him for staying young while she gets older. If you notice she was upset by his God like powers and he had to reasure her and she turned out a very bitter elderly woman in the future even after 20 years had passed. I think it was more about she not feeling okay with her aging (and thus growing bitter) and human nature and Silk Spectre II smiling at him was kind of confirmation of her fears thus causing the split. I think if Dr had only been atracted to SS over her young age he would had replaced Laurie for the next new 16 years old a long time before we meet them or had dumped Janey even before (When I first started the GN I though that Dr. Manhattan was a skirt chaser replacing young girlfriends every once in a while, wich is the pattern for guys that prefer younger women it was very interesting to know that he had been 11 years with Janey and 20 with Laurie). No to mention that the Dr. M may just know that Janey wouldn't be pivotal to his next step on the future. I mean if Jon would had been with Janey instead of Laurie during the events of the GN/movie I think he wouldn't had reached the conclusions about life that he did so he just pursued Laurie because he was supposed to do so and had nothing to do with Janey getting older, per se.
* I always wondered if he could cure Janey or Wally's cancer. (And Dr M's relationship with Laurie is one of the points of the book I struggle with. I don't know what he sees in her - obviously there can be no intellectual connection with humans for Dr. M, even Adrian the genius is just an ant to him. He wants her physically, but by '85, she's in her mid-thirties, so one would presume he'd be tiring of her like he did with Janey. But apparently not.
It also annoys me when he says he left earth because she left him, when actually, all he did was go on television. He left earth when he found out Janey had cancer.)
** Manhattan's abilities seem to be focused towards particle physics rather than biology (see the earlier discussion on his mistaken belief that there's no difference between a living body and a dead one). The accident gave him certain abilities, but superintelligence wasn't one of them, and he's a physicist by training, not a medical doctor. Earth of 1985 really had very little idea how to treat or cure cancer effectively, so there's little reason to think Doc could do so either (other than, perhaps, radiation therapy...)
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** Even if he did, they could just make more bombs. Besides, by that point they've been in the [[Cold War]] for decades. If something wasn't useful for defense or propaganda there wasn't much point in supporting it, and if Manhattan refused he'd have been branded as a traitor and probably vivisected... somehow.
** He's Omnipotent he could have disappeared all of Russia, maybe he just didn't want to.
** To keep people from fighting completely, he'd have to do more than make a handful of bombs disappear, he'd have to police people's behavior. That's something he'd be capable of doing, but willing? I think the scene with the Comedian in Vietnam show how detached and fatalistic he is. He just does what the government tells him to. Frankly, the real question
*** Because he probably told them that it wouldn't work, because [[You Already Changed the Past|he could see along the timeline and could tell he hadn't done it, therefore it was never going to happen.]] Also, the US probably couldn't predict the consequences if he chose to do so: anything from uniting the planet against the US, to messing with the world's electromagnetic field, to the damage in public relations: at this point in history the Holocaust was still heavily on people's minds, and having one man unilaterally erase an entire ''people'' from existence would bear [[Unfortunate Implications]] to say the least.
** He wasn't omnipotent. If that wasn't clear enough just from what he does (or, more accurately, what he doesn't do), he specifically says he could only intercept about 50% of missiles launched by Russia. Why do so many people think he's omnipotent?
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** I was talking about his crappy [[Silver Age]] revival peices, like Supreme, and Tom Strong. Those seem to me like an "Oh shit, what have I done! I'd better try to bring comics back to the way they where before Watchmen!" attitude.
*** You presume they are, in fact, crappy. A hell of a lot of people *like* his Supreme and Tom Strong. ( also, Tom Strong isn't retro Silver Age, its retro Pulp )
*** Er, that's because most of the comics based on Watchmen suck quite hard. The whole "Watchmen taught us that comic book superheroes have to be dark and grim and depressing!" is one of the most colossal examples of missing the point I've ever seen, and the eventual backlash against it almost destroyed superhero comics as a medium (if nothing else, because some [[Moral Guardians]] were quite justified in saying that "Modern Age" comics were increasingly about justifying and glorifying mindless slaughter because it was awesome). Hardly anyone who was involved in the shitty faddism of "post-Watchmen" comics will talk about it now without apologizing for
*** Also, Rorschach is awesome. The half-dozen hundred clones of Rorschach that came afterwards, not so awesome. Especially when you subtract the tragedy and moral ambiguity and replace it with an endless droning chorus of "FUCK YEAH I'M AWESOME I ROCK". ([[The Authority]], I'm looking at you.)
** There's also the fact that it's success resulted in DC Comics screwing him over, which in turn pretty much caused a complete fallout between the two, which would result in some understandable bad feeling. Ultimately, though, Moore's never expressed any dislike for the work
** Unless you like that kind of thing. I myself am a huge fan of the so called [[Dark Age]].
** I honestly don't think Moore has apolgised for anything he has ever done, ever. It's just not in his nature.
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** Basically, after Watchmen came along, a huge portion of the comic book industry devoted itself to 'deconstructing' the superhero genre through a lot of gratuitous violence. Whether you like the [[Dark Age]] or not, it was missing the point. As gritty ultra-violence and malevolence became the norm for supeheroes, the best way to deconstruct comics ''again'' would be to go for something [[Lighter and Softer]]. Hence, the stuff which seems like an 'apology' from Moore is really just more of the same, with different pants on. I think the real source of disappointment here is that he hasn't made anything quite like Watchmen again since - but really, it's lightning in a bottle. You very often ''can't'' do something like Watchmen twice.
** Put yourself in Moore's shoes. How would you feel if everyone told you that book you wrote 25 years ago was your best work, even though you've been putting other books in the years since? Most people I know believe thier skills improve with age, and I'm sure Moore prefers his recent efforts to some of his first.
*** Maybe I'd try and, I don't know, make something original instead of doing adaptations of other peoples' work, and then getting mad when other people adapted my adaptations. But that's just me. (In other words, I don't feel his skills have improved with age, and he's just being petty. ''Watchmen'' was, after all, born out of his petty desire to destroy the characters of people he didn't particularly like and DC telling him that he couldn't, so he instead filed the serial numbers off.)
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== Adrian Veidt's Peccadillos (Book/Film) ==
* Why does Adrian Veidt ever embark upon a career as a costumed vigilante? It seems uncharacteristically naive that a man of Veidt's intelligence and erudition - especially one who idolizes an ancient military and world leader such as Alexander the Great - should ever consider crimebusting on such a relatively small scale as being worth his efforts. I can accept the Comedian having a better grasp of the human condition than Veidt, certainly, but not the global political situation and where it was heading.
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*** For a workout? For fun? Most likely, to establish himself as a household name and build his unassailable PR fortress on the hero image. And just because fighting petty criminals won't save the world doesn't mean he isn't improving a small part of it by doing so. Probably all four.
*** Don't forget that, for all of Veidt's intelligence and logic, he completely and utterly in love with himself. A part of that is proving dominance through violence. He picked a fight with the Comedian in his youth, just to see what would happen, and when we see Veidt holding him over his head ready to throw him out the window, he is clearly ''loving'' it. Veidt was better at everything than everyone, and liked to prove it. Being a "mystery man" was a good way to prove his mental and physical superiority on a regular basis, and be hailed a hero for it.
*** Going by some of the hints of [[Intelligence Equals Isolation]] in the movie, it could be he was trying to look for people he might finally be able to ''relate'' to.
** Egomania. Veidt worships himself and wanted to have action figures of himself under millions of Christmas trees so that small children would worship him as well. They don't make action figures of CEOs. (Well, they do now thanks to "irony", but that was a few decades off when Watchmen was written.)
* This toper only saw the movie so he can't be sure if it was there in other versions, but what the hell was that horned tiger Ozymandias had as a pet?
** That is Bubastis, named for the Egyptian city of the same name, which the center of worship for the feline goddess Bast. It's a mutanted lynx that Ozymandias made. And yes, Bubastis is in the graphic novel.
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* Re. the movies-only "Boys" folder, or at least I'm fairly sure that was film-only: The smartest man in the world can't hide his porn better?
** Hey, now, there are many perfectly legitimate things that could be kept in a folder called "boys". For instance, plans for an army of Ozymandias look-alikes to carry on the legacy. Or something.
** I mean, I know, but everyone jumps to the conclusion that it's porn. Personally, Movie!Ozymandias would more likely hide his personal viewing material in a folder marked, I don't know, Plans For Brain-Blasting Giant Attack Squid. Something. (This troper does have a WMG that they're many, many family photos of his hundreds of illegitimate children.) It ''could'' be related to the action figures thing, or an army of mini-Veidts. But if it's not, well, gosh.
** Why BOTHER hiding it? It is his own personal machine. No one else was supposed to use it and its not like he needs to feel ashamed of it. I don't bother hiding my porno, why should he?
*** It's not hidden at all. The entire computer set up was to get Rorschach et al to his arctic base to explain his plans to them. The folder is probably empty.
**** Just because the computer was left accessible to Rorschach and Nite Owl doesn't mean it wasn't also his personal computer. It is sitting at the desk he spends hours behind every day, I doubt he went out and bought a fresh one ''just'' to stick it there for the plan. Or if he did, he still had to spend hours at it anyway, so he browsed porn at it, since his sexuality wouldn't matter one way or the other to the plan.
* The worst bit of [[Fridge Logic]] for me - there's no possible way Adrian Veidt hasn't ''read'' "Ozymandias". It's about the hubris of proclaiming yourself the best and greatest in the world - a ''memento mori'' to the human race. So either Ade didn't get that, or he's so fantastically meta-arrogant that he considers himself above the rule of ''irony itself''...
** I think Ozy totally gets that. He named himself Ozymandius so that he doesn't forget that. Look through the comic, and he never proclaims himself the best and greatest in the world - it's others that do.
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== Black And Grey Morality ==
* The fact that one of the three characters I found vaguely comprehensible from a moral standpoint (Rorschach, Doc Manhattan, and Silk Spectre II for reference) ended up dead, and another had a [[Face Heel Turn]]. This book is not black and gray morality or even grey and gray, it's purple and green and hell why not yellow morality. IMHO, and don't tell me I'm missing the point, Rorschach ''wasn't'' the one who dealt with monsters and became a monster, Ozy was. Ozy, and everyone who went along with him.
** Then go ahead and call me a monster too.
*** You're a monster.
** You are missing the point if you thought that was anything but exactly what was intended. Human morality is complex and difficult, otherwise people wouldn't talk so dismissively about reducing the world to terms of 'black and white'. As for Ozy being a monster, it's probably true, but I would point out that Rorschach's brutal quest to deliver justice was meaningless by his own admission, changing nothing, whereas Ozy's crime meant peace - at least for a while. Is it worth shattering that? Wouldn't that make Dan and Co. more monstrous? It wouldn't bring back those who died, and it might very well cause billions more deaths. It would be hard to protest the value of truth and integrity while being vaporized in nuclear fire.
*** It seems to me the ''whole point'' of the morality in Watchmen is expressed by the very concept of Rorschach, as he expresses it to the shrink: the world ordinarily ''doesn't'' have meaning or morality. It's just a random set of events, as meaningless as a Rorschach inkblot; one only makes order by ''imposing'' some meaning on the inkblots. That's why Kovacs becomes Rorschach: he is simply functioning within the world as he understands it to operate. You get an interesting echo from Dr. Manhattan on Mars when Laurie realises whose child she
*** Peace achieved by permitting a mass murder and letting the killer go free is an empty peace. It's like saying leaving Nazi Germany alone, or doing nothing to Hitler once WWII was over is the right thing. And no, they'd be more heroic bringing Ozy to justice and letting the system do what it wants to him. In addition, consider this- If you had a patient in a hospital, going to die no matter what, and you could keep them alive a bit longer, but they'd be in intense pain, would it be better to let them die, or keep them in pain even longer? Keep them in pain, or let them die in peace?
*** ''Nothing'' is like the Nazis. The key assumption here is whether or not Ozy averted the ''end of the world'' in doing what he did; if he ''did'', then would that not, objectively, logically, be worth that tiny fraction of the billions of human lives on the planet? If he ''didn't'' (and that seems to be what you've decided), then yes, he's a monster and a mass-murderer, and so is everyone who willingly went along with it. Dan and the others decided that yes, Ozy saved the world, which seems to be supported by Ozy's TV screens. Whether or not they were right is supposed to be a standing question at the end of the novel, with the subtext that these decisions cannot be made by normal humans; but then, who can make them? Who decides right and wrong? Who watches the watchmen? (For the record, I'd ask the patient.)
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*** That's... um, [[Knight Templar|kind of insane]]. What the hell would be the point of gaining justice for one man at the cost of everything else? Who would it benefit? But that aside - Ozy's implied to have made his own punishment. He's going to be wracked by doubt and guilt for the rest of his life, and one day he'll realise that when he dies, the peace may collapse without him to maintain it. For a man as arrogant as him, that would be a truly terrible realisation - that his genius amounted to nothing.
*** Also, "Fiat iustitia et pereat mundus" translates more literally as, "Let justice be done, ''and'' destroy the world", making it something of a foregone conclusion, rather than a possible outcome.
**** In [[Real Life]], the post-Stalin leaders of USSR were nowhere near as monstrous as some Watchmen-readers seem to assume. They are hardly the "unseen, Sauron-like threat" - Ozy is. And to a lesser degree, the superheroes themselves - who allowed themselves to be used by corrupt politicians to push the world to the brink of Armageddon. How are Ozy's motivations any better than Nixon's? Of course, the Soviet leaders had Stalin's blood on their hands (though they rejected and condemned Stalin after his death), but they certainly weren't in the same league (and if Ozy had been a bearded Middle-Easterner, would all those enlightened utilitarians still defend his actions?) This thought process is not "Fiat iustitia et pereat mundus"
***** The leaders of the USSR were in fact [[Complete Monster]]s (just like the leaders of modern Russia) and the only reason they didn't have as big of a body count as Veidt was that the rest of the world wouldn't have let them get away with it. They tried (and are trying) pretty hard anyway.
*** It'd benefit the heroes, in my view. Picture this- Nite-Owl and Rorschach have brought in Ozymandias, and are exposing his action on a global address. "All this time, you've been scared of those of us who wear masks, while the real evil was right there all the time, peddling himself to the masses." Can you say Keene Act repeal, justice is served, and an overall show that even in a cynical world, there's still a place for ideals? And hey, we managed to outlast the Russians here- Who says we can't in that Earth? [[You Fail Logic Forever|False dilemma, anyone?]]
**** Uh, sure, and what would that accomplish? Why is repealing the Keene Act some kind of objectively good thing, given that many superheroes * were* objectively psychotic violent bastards who abused their anonymity and their power * all the time* ? Part of the point of Watchmen is that it starts you out thinking the story will be about the Keene Act and ends up showing you how ridiculously narcissistic such a point of view
**** Also, we outlasted Russia in our universe because we didn't become totally dependent on Dr. Manhattan for our national defense, and because we didn't shove the Soviet leaders into a corner and force them to go out in a blaze of glory rather than simply be crushed by the American juggernaut. In real life the USSR had the chance to crumble under its own weight, because it had the chance to run its own little empire and
**** You can't claim someone is objectively a bastard while asserting that there is no fixed moral absolutes. Also, Watchmen is a commentary on the ''American'' empire, and the hypocrisy of American obsession with "Soviet expansionism" when we own and claim military hegemony over half the world. Nixon was an [[Expy]] for Reagan, don't forget.
***** Yes, we're all aware that Alan Moore is a political moron, thank you.
*** Rorschach took that path and he died for it. Principles intact, but he's still dead. Look, what Ozy and the others did wasn't ''right''. I'm not saying it was, not at all, but I ''am'' saying that it's understandable that those characters would allow it, and I'm also saying that it's not exactly ''right'' to bring him in, either. (There's a variety of reasons, one being in the era Watchmen was written everybody did not expect the Soviet Union to collapse and lived in a state of constant paranoia which is hard to grasp today, another being that I would be astonished if Ozy allowed them to bring him in.) Moore's point (and mine) is that there aren't as many right choices in a situation like that as many comic books would have us believe (i.e. possibly none), which he spends every one of his pages setting up and explaining. It sure would be nice if there was, but Watchmen isn't about nice, which the scenario you described would completely undermine, rendering the book's tone deeply schizophrenic.
*** Really? IMO, the dark tone would make it all the more inspiring and frankly enjoyable. Like walking through a city on a dreary day and then noticing a flower poking from the sidewalk.
*** In ''your'' opinion. In my opinion, and that of everyone I've ever heard talk seriously about the book, every page is leading up to that end - a subversion of the shiny-heroes-beat-the-black-caped-villain-and-stop-his-plan end - in ways too numerous to list. Honestly, dude. If you want a story that celebrates heroes where everything is clear-cut with a happy ending, you really should look elsewhere. Watchmen is not that book and it never was intended to be, except possibly way ''way'' back when it was still the original Charlton characters.
*** Oh - and there are moments like that. They're not very frequent, but they're often enough for there to be too many to type up.
**** Some folks seem to be defending "Darker and Drearier" for it's own sake, as if Deconstructionism automatically equals [[Diabolus Ex Machina]]. A lot of postmodern writers seem to believe that. The worst part is they take the ''"How I learned to love the bomb"'' stuff seriously, and try to sell us on the notion that thanks to our own Dr.
*** No one has provided a feasible way for Adrian to be brought to justice at the confrontation in Antarctica. Veidt already pummeled Walter and Dan without breaking a sweat, and Laurie couldn't even finish Adrian with a gun. The person who actually outmatched Adrian was Jon, who is more or less down with Veidt's plan.
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== Sympathy For The Comedian ==
* What [[Just Bugs Me]] is the fact that I seem to be the only person who's "Watchmen character I identify with" is the Comedian. Morally reprehensible, certainly, but Blake has the one and only aspect of any character in the series I recognized in myself: his understanding that most of modern society is just a colossal joke who's punchline seems to be so far over everyone else's . . . well, you get the idea. I'm no moral nihilist but I'm probably a societal nihilist (does such a term/classification even exist?). Everyone takes everything way too seriously, even things deliberately intended not to be taken seriously. Am I the only one?
** No, you're not the only one. However, it is difficult for people to say that they identify with a morally reprehensible character without someone accusing them of being morally reprehensible themselves. Many people find his attempted rape of Sally difficult to overlook, even if they can see merit to his attitude about other things.
*** Wait, what?! He ''murders'' an unarmed civilian (and I'm not talkin' about murdering someone who kidnapped, killed, chopped up and fed to his dogs a little girl, he shoots an ''innocent'' woman who just so happens to also be pregnant and oh-yeah-by-the-way it's ''Blake's'') and the ''attempted rape'' (later completed voluntarily, by the former victim's account) is what people can't overlook?! I guess I have another JBM now. Feeling bluer and bluer every day.
**** Hardly an ''unarmed'' woman; the seconds before he shoots her, she breaks a bottle and seriously slices in to his face with it. If her swing was a couple inches lower, she could have easily sliced open Blake's neck and killed him.
**** She dropped the bottle when he was aiming at her. She was unarmed and she wasn't a treat to his life, he was just pissed off because his pretty face got screwed up (that also got his rage up with Sally). I pity the man that tries to pass as self defense killing a pregnant woman that cutted him in the face with a bottle and then drops it and ask for mercy while crying...Pity I said? I would laugh at him while he gets his ass fried on the electric chair.
**** "She dropped the bottle when he was aiming at her"... dirty little secret of the infantry, especially pre-embedded reporting: "hey, I tried to kill you but I screwed up can I surrender now?" more often than not gets a bullet in response.
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***** Oh please. Blake's not an idiot. He must have been well aware that sleeping with a woman (presumably sans protection; the Pill was hardly widespread in those days) was likely to lead to pregnancy. He's hardly a victim; how about keeping it in your pants?
****** Uh, nobody ever claimed he was a victim in the above posts. Besides, it's very heavily implied murdering a pregnant woman was not beyond his range of experiences.
** That's the point. The Comedian is a deconstruction of America and the American Dream: as a country, the US, like ''all'' countries, has a lot of [[Kick the Dog]] moments (if the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay didn't hate us when they were captured, they sure as hell hate us now). As for Blake's baby-momma, I thought it was a combination of blasting Viet Cong for days on end and an unconscious [[Secret Test of Character]] for Dr. M: "You could've turned the bullets into ''snowflakes'' or the bottle into ''(something harmless)'' or even sent us to fucking ''Australia'' but you ''didn't!''" It just shows how different Blake ([[Heroic Sociopath]]) is compared to Dr. M ([[Ineffectual Loner]]). That scene's interesting, purely because even prior to Baby-Momma's appearance, Blake is miserable at a time when one would assume he'd be thrilled. He fought a war, his natural element, and better yet, America beat Vietnam. But instead, the cracks are showing (the movie makes this even clearer with the reading of 'Bitter? Me?' followed by a big, false smile and 'I think it's hilarious.') and he can't help looking at the bigger picture. (Paralleling Veidt, and of course, Dr. Manhattan. And on the opposite side to Rorschach, who obsesses over the small details. It's fascinating, because of course, Rorschach worships the Comedian, and their end is similiar - they'd rather die than live in a world where Veidt's plan succeeds. Despite how jaded, violent and generally repulsive they are, they still care.) Just like he hurts anyone with the knowledge that it doesn't matter, because the whole world's a joke, and everyone's going to die soon anyway; he can't feel joy about the petty stuff he claims to care about - his country, women, violence; for the same reasons. If America had gone crazy, as a nation, it would have made no difference. Blake's halfway to crazy at this point himself.
*** I saw the comedian as a deconstruction of Batman, like most of the other major characters. The Comedian is a freelance defender of the traditional social order; his crimes are always against "uppity" women. His faults reflect the corruption of the underlying society. On the other hand, he is not without virtues. His actions during the riot are excessive, but work to protect society.
**** His actions protected society? Hell no, they protected his little superhero fraternity, and nothing more. The protesters where demanding the Keene Act.
** I agree. Even our money is a joke. The dollar is money only because the government says it's money. Why do people spend so much of their life working so they can have bigger numbers in a computer and some pieces of green paper? Why does anyone consider it valuable to trade for anything? Lots of people I meet expect me to act perfectly and any indication that I have emotions and do not like being walked over means they never speak to me again (especially if they were the ones in the wrong). The Joker put it well, "Why, so, serious?
*** So our money is a joke because... it's money, and operates exactly how money does. Huh?
*** No. Fiat Money. It has value because authority says it does. That's the joke. Haha.
*** Only fiat money has ever existed. Gold? Utterly worthless except for electronics or reactor shielding. Silver? Likewise. Diamonds? They can make them out of anything. What can you find that has intrinsic value that doesn't vary from person to person? Not even sex will work. So, what, a barter system? So inherently flawed as to be unworkable. The idea of money is one of the best jokes I know. Besides all that, US currency is more valuable than gold because think about it, what backs the money? The country. The whole country. How much is New York City worth? It's infinite. You couldn't buy it, not the whole thing. We don't have gold reserves, but we have uncounted tons of valuable country to back our money. So stop telling that joke and what takes over? How do you get the things you need? I'm with the Comedian. Human beings are pretty damn funny.
*** Of course, if you take this to its logical conclusion you get anarchism, which is, it would seem, [[Older Than They Think]].
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*** I think the above explains mostly my discomfort and lack of sympathy for most of the characters. The only character that is sympathetic is Hollis Mason, and he dies!
** Jeffrey Dean Morgan addressed this issue when asked "Do you identify with something in your character?": "What? (laughs) Oh, yes. Murdering pregnant girls and trying to rape women are part of my personality. (more laughter) Kennedy? Never liked that guy. Seriously, nothing. As an actor are interesting aspects in the Comedian and you can sympathize with him besides the atrocities."
* My take on The Comedian is this. The Comedian believed that nuclear war was inevitable. The world was doomed, and nothing anyone did mattered. Even his own actions don't matter, so he's going to do whatever the hell he feels like. He might as well shoot his Vietnamese lover, or rape Silk Specter, since they're all just going to die anyway. It doesn't matter! Yet people kept going on with their daily lives and planning for the future, as though there was going to be a future! Isn't that hilarious, that people act as though their lives matter when the world is about to end any minute now? It's nothing but a fucking joke! When he starts participating in Veidt's plan, he has a [[Villainous Breakdown]], not because [[Even Evil Has Standards|he feels guilty about all those deaths]] or because he thinks the plan won't work, but because he thinks it ''will'' work. If there isn't going to be a nuclear war, then actions really do have consequences, which means that he's no longer just a comedian making fun of the futility of existence. [[Heel Realization|He's a monster]], and he doesn't know what to do any more. [[Redemption Equals Death|And then he dies.]] The Comedian is the only character in the story to have a ''redemption'' arc (of sorts); he was an evil bastard, but you can still feel sorry for him.
** Wow, that's interesting. But yeah, that makes sense really.
** A good theory in general, but when The Comedian tried to rape Silk Spectre, the nuclear bomb didn't even exist yet. He was already a cynical bastard way before the threat of a nuclear war arose. I agree with your point about his [[Heel Realization]], though.
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** This troper thinks it was just a joke, really.
* What Just Bugs Me is reading all the [[Alternative Character Interpretation|Alternate Character Interpretations]] on Nite Owl II (is "Dan Dreiberg" his real name? could he be related to one of the older heroes? might he have been working as Veidt's lacky?? Could they be half-brothers?? ''could he have killed the Comedian??!'') in the Wild Mass Guessing that I didn't even think about while reading the book, and knowing this would make for some interesting background for him but that's impossible due to (1) the slavish devotion to the comic and (2) this thing isn't getting a sequal (probably).
** Dear God. If they make some kind of sequel to the Watchmen film the fans will start setting Hollywood on fire building by building, and I will be one of them.
*** Jeffrey Dean Morgan illustrated it well when he said that Hollywood would never make a sequal unless they wanted the actors to be murdered by rabid fans.
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**** Another alternative: maybe he doesn't catch the bullet from the initial shot at all. He catches its ''ricochet'' off a part of his armour that we haven't seen. A straight shot from a gun certainly has all its kinetic energy intact, but a ricochet is much slower and has less penetrating force. Hence the blood on his hand, getting knocked off his feet by the sheer force of the shot, and catching the bullet anyway with a mild injury to his hand (the bullet's bloodied in the book, remember). The bloodied hand is just to conceal the fact he's wearing body armour. As for the problem of Ozymandias remaining uber when everyone else seems to be aging, you might as well ask [[Frank Miller]] how the hell Batman isn't a complete arthritic wreck at 50+ and leaping off rooftops after roughly ten years of not doing that sort of thing. The answer for both Ozy and Batman is that they are constantly training, constantly honing their martial skills and constantly pushing to remain at their physical prime, even for their age. Ozymandias also adds terrifying intelligence to that equation, and his [[Curb Stomp Battle]] against Nite Owl and Rorschach has as much to do with him knowing them so well he can predict what their tactics will be: remember he messes with Rorschach's 'face' by messing his cowl; he knows Nite Owl is more about nonlethal takedowns and gadgets than physical skill, so he anticipates the mini-laser and Dreiberg giving him a chance to surrender first. Superpowers is one thing, but the world of Watchmen seems to anticipate that the average costumed hero has physical prowess and combat skills well above the average person; Ozymandias is just at the uppermost end of that spectrum - even Rorschach concludes that he can't imagine a more dangerous opponent, and that Veidt is faster than Nite Owl and perhaps faster than Rorschach himself.
** The "No Superheroes Except Dr. Manhattan" rule isn't a real "rule"
*** 1) Nowhere is it explicitly stated that other people with superpowers don't exist. We just haven't seen them. One argument is that the psychic's brain bit and the fact that everyone on Earth is psychically receptive, in fact shows that they do exist but everyone else is unaware of them. 2) Catching a bullet (at least from a low-powered gun) is not physically impossible in terms of the hand or body movement, but Veidt would either need ''absolutely'' perfect timing, or precognitive powers (because the bullet would move too quickly for his eyes and optic centre to process, let alone his reflexes).
**** I think the film did a nice job of explaining this by having Ozy wear gloves, which likely were Kevlar-based.
***** And the bullet is partly red, so it still hurt him a bit.
** I explain that in a much simpler way: Alan Moore is not only a user of mind-altering substances, but a mystic, who [
* I'm going to provide an alternative explanation: Alan Moore has admitted that he does everything in the first draft, partially as a result of the limits of the medium. The first parts are in print by the time that you're writing the end, so you can't go back and rewrite stuff. As a result, Moore wrote himself into a corner and needed a [[Deus Ex Machina]] to save the plot. This Troper's reaction to the finale of the comic was, "flying kung-fu and psychic powers exist? Since ''when?''"
* I read it as a sly joke, in the context of the rest of Watchmen at least. The whole thing is a serious deconstruction of comics as a whole, that culminates with the villain suddenly unleashing seemingly super-human level abilities despite being a normal. It's the kind of thing that wouldn't look at all out of place in most comics, yet comes completely out of the left field in Watchmen and is much more effective for it.
* Alternative explanation: Ozymandias cheated. We know he has beyond-realistic levels of scientific capacity in the field of genetics specifically. Its not out of the question that he, at some point between his fight with the Comedian and the present, juiced himself and augmented his own physical capacities. He just never told anyone because he preferred to come off as a mysterious martial arts guru.
* Why did the movie seem to go so far out of its way to tell the audience who the villain was? In the comics, up until [[The Reveal]] Ozymandias's personality was that of an intelligent businessman with some idealistic goals; in the movie he seemed cold and imperious from the get-go. His costume was changed from shiny gold to dark synthetic armour. The attempt on his life involved a bullet ''between the eyes'' for a man who Ozymandias was moments prior having a tense argument with. He was even given Captain Metropolis's red herring motivation against The Comedian, as now the Crimebusters were his brainchild that The Comedian savagely shot down. What's the deal? Did they figure the audience wouldn't accept a superhero turned supervillain? Did they think they would be frustrated at a mystery where, heaven forbid, they didn't know who the bad guy was until the end?
** This bothered me too. I wonder if they weren't going for [[The Untwist]], in this increasingly [[Genre Savvy]] time. Think about it...all the other suspects are morally grey at best, so making one character seem like the messiah would be a bit of a dead giveaway.
* Would most modern comics even have the chance to be told in extended page length chapters full of slow character development, novel like plot progression and narration, more dialog and less action, and sections full of prose, to tell an entire story like a novel, or would such a project just get canceled before it was finished? Most of Alan Moore's stories take time to simmer in the back of comic anthologies until they're ready to be collected as one story, but today's single issue comics lack that freedom and need everything to happen immediately. Watchmen is an example of the graphic novel done right, so why don't more companies use a similar publishing format for telling complete stories instead of relying on 22 page serials with a required shock at the end of each issue?
** You do find companies that publish graphic novels in one go, they just tend to be small press independents who don't always get the same shelf space as DC and Marvel.
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* Why did Ozymandias kill The Comedian? It didn't look like he was going to do anything to stop him.
** He probably wasn't, but he ''might''
*** Ozy went after the Comedian because he was afraid that the Comedian might tell somebody about his plan. The Comedian had already told Moloch about it. Even though he wouldn't have interfered, he was also in such an unstable state that an unintentional leak was possible. Not to mention that Ozymandias might have held a grudge against the Comedian for beating him up decades earlier. Ozy let Dan and Laurie for the same reason he lured Rorsharch and Dan to his Antarctic base; he still values his friends.
**** Or because he was only afraid the plan was spilled ''before'' it was put on practice, when he could be stopped. After it was done, there's little chance they'd risk the state of peace they achieved for the truth, specially because it couldn't be undone, anyway.
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*** This troper reads it as an ironic reference to the Book Of Genesis, specifically how Adam and Eve felt shame and covered their nakedness after eating from the Tree Of Knowledge. You could say that Jon's eaten the whole damn tree, and as a result, he feels no shame or need to cover his body.
** Simply put, he slowly realized that no one can make him wear clothes if he doesn't want to. He doesn't need them to keep warm or clean, so he just doesn't wear them.
** It's symbolism, showing that, for all his power, he's still a sexual being. Hell, he falls for Sally Juspeczyk after Janey Slater gets old.
** Relatedly, why does it bug everyone that they show his privates in the movie? OMG, no! Naked blue man!
*** You have a point. The nudity didn't bug this troper, but I do have to wonder. They spent $17 million on Dr. Manhattan alone. How much of that $17 million was spent on the dick dangle physics? [[Sarcasm Mode|I suppose that when all 40 feet of it will be wagging in the breeze on an IMAX screen, you'd better make sure it swings correctly.]] Maybe I'm being a bit of a pessimist, but if it ''didn't'' swing correctly, there are undoubtedly a few fans that would call them on it for how ''unrealistic'' it looked. (As if having translucent blue skin with tiny subdermal atomic reactions isn't unrealistic enough.)
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* Two points and an [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]: why does everyone mention that we outlasted the Cold War when this was written ''during'' the Cold War; two, part of Dan Dreiberg's appeal was that he was a slightly squishy pot-bellied human, not quite cute as in the film and three, Ozymandias's shoes in the film. They are HUGE.
** Hollywood casts pretty people when average ones would do, and above average people when unattractive people would do.
* The fact that the guy who killed half of New York is the most optimistic and hopeful person in the book bugs me. Does it bug anyone else?
** Bothers me because no one smiles except for him. Come on, lighten up!
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*** No, no, it doesn't bug me that Ozymandias is an optimist. It bugs me that no one else is.
** [[Monty Python's Life of Brian|Always look on the bright side of death!]]
** Dunno from the film, but in the book at the end he doesn't seem incredibly optimistic to me; he puts on a front of confidence and optimism when his plan's gone through and it looks like he's won, but then he confides to Dr. Manhattan at the end that he's making himself feel the death of every person he killed, he confesses his nightmare, he practically begs Manhattan to tell him he's done the right thing and that he's made the world better... that sounds like someone struggling from a pretty serious case of doubt rather than someone who is the most optimistic and hopeful person around.
* You read this book because you wanted to enjoy a story or the universe that is created? [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|Then you are doing it ALL wrong.]] [[Fan Hater|If you didn't treat this as a morality journal or symbolism on what it means to be an american, then you are uneducated swine.]] If you didn't appreciate what a [[Spotlight-Stealing Squad|God-powered atomic age superhero]] was doing in a universe where the so-called "super powers" are [[Badass Normal|nonexistant]] and the actual Superheroes are just vigilantes, then put that book DOWN and start sucking your thumb, you little baby! You don't read this for FUN. You do NOT interpret it differently than what everyone else wants you to. [[Hype Backlash|Instead, you are supposed to read perfection in a comic book because then you will be murdered by the blue penis otherwise.]]
** You know, it JBM that people think that reading it for its fine literary qualities means I'm not having fun. Or that I didn't enjoy the story.
*** Not the OP, but I think the issue was the "if you don't wanna analyze it you are a dumbass" attitude, not the "I like to analyze it, but you don't half to," attitude.
** Where did "what it means to be an American" come from? Alan Moore is British.
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** As a reader of pulp stories from that time, yes. The D-word is thown around a lot.
*** It's mildly implied in some part of the book (I think it's some part of Under The Hood) that Silhoutte's murder may not have been a hate crime, but an attack on superheroes disguised as much, so who knows, perhaps the killer even had a bit of respect for homosexuals.
** The killer might have had idiosyncratic [[Even Evil Has Standards|personal standards]]
** This could be a case of [[Fridge Brilliance]]: ''Watchmen'' is set in an alternate universe, and there may be some subtle differences in language. Note that the lesbian characters in the comic never refer to themselves as "lesbians", but as "gay women". It's possible that in the Watchmen universe "gay woman" is the neutral term, and "lesbian" is a slur word, equivalent to how in our world "lesbian" is neutral, and "dyke" is a slur.
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*** Sorry for that being vague on that term. I didn't mean released as in intentionally set free, I meant released as in unbound. Not in their cells any more. What I was asking, though, was why the time was linked to the death of the guy in the hospital bed. I know the Boss guy had "privileges", but why were they all waiting for the guy to flatline, and if they weren't, what was stopping the from getting out of their cells earlier/suddenly allowed them to get out?
* Why does Veidt's
** That's something the actor did on purpose, as noted on the main page. In public, he practices a perfect News Anchor Accent. With a good friend, like Dan, he just speaks normally and naturally; he doesn't yet know why Dan's there, so he's just talking to an old friend. The one at the end is more in between, probably because he had planned the confrontation and wanted to make sure he was clear.
* After they drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Jon's father says what boils down to "They have atomic bombs now, therefore watchmakers are useless". I'm sorry, that [[You Fail Logic Forever|fails logic forever.]] I mean, is he talking about relativity? Because it's not like relativity only existed after the bomb.
** Not really. He doesn't mention atomic bombs, he ''is'' talking about relativity. In fact, his actual line is something like, "They say time is all relative now, no point in making watches."
** Also, note Jon Osterman's origins as a "watchmaker." This is a reference to the theory in Deism in where "the world is a watch and God was a watchmaker who left the universe to move on and work on another watch(or world). This "watch" theme is also displayed through the reoccurring "bloody smiley" that symbolically resembles a clock ticking five minutes away from twelve. Keeping up with the Deist themes is the ending where Jon(now Dr. Manhattan) leaves Earth to "perhaps create some life out there." Practically, although Jon is now a God and above normal men, he is still a watchmaker, and he is done with the world and is now moving on to better things by metaphorically creating other watches. [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Thus, because the world is a "watch," we are all little "watchmen" in it watching over one another.]] It alludes to what John F. Kennedy said about us all being "the watchmen of the world."
* Why does Moloch have [[Pointy Ears]]?
** Probably he modified them for dramatic effect when he was a supervillain, and never got around to having the cosmetic surgery to fix them.
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**** As a [[Flying Spaghetti Monster]], I find all of these morals offensive because they do not acknowledge my noodly omniscience.
***** As an atheist, I find the former moral to be correct. Religion is responsible for millions of deaths, thousands of years of hate and more than a few human rights violations. Had religion never come into existence, many wars would have never happened, many lives would have never been prematurely snuffed out and millions of people could have been happy.
****** And as a person who has actually read history, I am mindboggled at the theory that removing one historical excuse used by greedy and powerhungry rulers to send armies out to kill and loot will somehow result in said rulers deciding to just pack it in and live peacefully... as opposed to simply using ''another'' excuse to try and justify their greed and powerlust. Yes, religion has been invoked by people to try and justify having a war. And so have nationalism, tribalism, various competing schools of economics, and even the very concept of freedom itself. That doesn't make all of these things automatically bad things. It makes ''war'' a bad thing, but hey, we knew that already.
*** Bullshit. You can't say "well, if this one thing hadn't happened, everything else wouldn't have happened." You don't know, and one thing that's been made painfully clear throughout human history is that we homo sapiens are really really good at coming up with reasons to kill each other. If it hadn't been "my God is better than your God" behind a given conflict, it would've been, "Your land is better at making crops than my land."
** As someone in the middle (grew up as a catolic christian, study mythology and comparative theology and I think that God maybe exist/existed but I believe that he maybe doesn't interfere on human existence as much as we made out to/or wish, because he can't/won't/is for the best/who knows but again is all a maybe) I think the movie message was just bringing it all into full circle: The presence of Dr. Manhattan brought the imbalance of power to the Watchmen universe that lead to almost nuclear war, it was only fair/just that he was used to bring peace and balance again.
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*** It really comes down to your definition of "god." In terms of worship, no. Which, in our world, is basically all God is: a being that may or may not exist, but whatever state He or She is in, God needs worship badly. But on the other hand, when faced with a being who is literally capable of disassembling you molecule by molecule and ''would not care,'' you might as well call it a god.
** I always believed that in both works, the "Manhattan is God" idea was rejected when "he" started giving people cancer. The movie simply took it a step further by turning him into the threat. It isn't a "fear of god" thing so much as a "fear of a blue guy who had us all thinking he was god so we're already kind of bitter" thing.
*** The main problem I have with the ending change has nothing to do with the moral ramifications of Dr.Manhattan being god, it's the fact that he has been shown to be invincible capable of bringing down countries alone, with zero effort on his part. For all intents and purposes, in terms of both power and ability, he IS a god compared to anyone else. Here's the issue, how is humanity supposed to rally against a god? They can't and they should know they can't, they've seen what hes capable of. Against the aliens they know they have a chance, the first one died, so they know the others can, it would just take an united front against them.
**** That may be the point. The world can't beat him, so they'll unite to toe the line to make him happy.
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== Ozy And Manhattan Assumptions ==
* Why does everyone expect Ozymandias's plan to fail? It looks to me like the guy knows what he's doing. He can play evidently play the world governments, his old co-workers, the media, and a living god like a fiddle, gleam fairly accurate predictions of future trends from information presented, fool people, and hide things in plain sight. It seems as though once the people started listening he could get them to play nice.
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** "Why does everyone expect Ozymandias's plan to fail?" Because peace based on a common enemy ALWAYS fails eventually.
*** But peace based on bringing nations together and convincing the people they're not so different doesn't have to.
**** That's not what Adrian was doing, however. His peace was, ultimately, based on Fear of the Other—he was just trying to change the 'Other' from 'the other nation' to 'something we're afraid will eat us both'. That's not a fundamental bringer of accord and mutual understanding, just a distraction. And distractions are not permanent.
** It might have something to do with the fact that Veidt's plan depends on him accurately predicting how people will react to the situation he's created. But just a couple issues before he reveals his plan, we have that whole scene on Mars where Dr. Manhattan realizes how utterly unpredictable people can be. Veidt may have thoroughly planned things through to the point where he's convinced the alien threat can end the cold war, but the whole thing is one "thermodynamic miracle" away from falling apart.
*** And yet the "thermodynamic miracle" that convinced Jon to return was a good thing (Laurie) that had miraculously and defiantly risen in the wake of a terrible thing (the Comedian's assault on her mom). Veidt's plan might have results which are unexpected, but that's not necessarily bad.
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** Well, nothing else anyone's thought of worked either and so he used the only thing he knew Doctor Manhattan to even be affected by. And it did slow him down a little.
** Dr. Manhattan warned that the IFR process was not going to produce creature like him again. He didn't exposed any more on the topic, so there was possibly a chance that Dr. Manhattan himself could find impossible to reassemble himself. Sort of "once in the universe" process. Tiny chance, but what ''else'' was Veidt supposed to try? Asking him to sing the whole π ?
*** Oooh! Ask him to sing the score to ''the H.M.S. Pinafore''!
* Just how does Dr. Manhattan ''know'' that everybody's going to get blown to hell by nukes if the truth behind the squid gets realized? The tachyons were screwing with his ability to perceive the future and manage his way through the timescape (like where he tells Rorschach that he informed Laurie about something twice, once while he was entering and once while he was actually talking to Rorschach), and his other powers don't seem to be affected (he teleported anyways, and was still able to do everything else he did under the influence of them).
** I never got the impression that Dr. Manhattan was using any kind of special foresight when he said that they couldn't reveil the truth behind the squid. In fact, all he said was "Logically, he's right. Exposing this plot, we destroy any chance of peace, dooming earth to worse destruction." He was using logic to come up with this conclusion, not ESP or whatever. Although it could (and has, even on this page) been argued about whether or not exposing the truth would result in armagedon (although I think most of that argument is specifically about Rorschach's Journal), remember that Moore has a tendency to use Manhattan as a [[Straw Vulcan]], and that in this instance, his deduction is meant to be taken at face value.
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== Rorschach's Journal And The Cliffhanger Ending (Spoiler) ==
* I have never understood how Rorschach's journal is supposed to represent much of a threat at the end of the story. Veidt controls most of the media, the ''New Frontiersman'' is a paper read only by right-wing nutjobs who don't tend to be taken seriously or liked even by the story's very emphatically Republican government, and Rorschach's public reputation is that of a paranoid psychotic, while Veidt's is practically saintly. It seems highly, ''highly'' unlikely that even if excerpts from the journal were published that they would do any ultimate harm to world peace, especially because all Rorschach said was that Veidt was behind it all. He didn't back it up with details or further explanations.
** Of course.
Most it would do is create a conspiracy like JFK.
* So Rorschach is supposed to be seen as paranoid kook - but how is it that his "mask killer" theory is supposed to make less sense than the actual plot?
** ''Less'' sense? Rorschach's theory makes ''more'' sense than the actual plot, such that ''everyone'' is blind-sided by Ozymandias's ultimate victory. The problem is that, as stated above, Rorschach can't see beyond the small picture, and can't imagine it's more complicated than a simple plot to kill heroes.
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*** Still, all he says is "Veidt did it". No how, no details, nothing. It's nothing but hearsay from a deranged sociopath, and that is not enough to cause any serious investigation.
** Personally, I always saw Rorschach's journal as being appropriate fuel for those unhappy with the truce between the nations. It wouldn't take much to inspire the disgruntled who resent giving up the fight against the U.S.S.R. Yes, it would be the journal of a murderous hobo, but lesser things have definitely inspired conspiracy theories, domestic terrorism, political campaigns, etc. Anyone looking for dirt on Veidt and bringing down the new world order would take it as gospel.
*** Funny how folks demonize anyone who wants to bring down Veidt, because it might restart the cold war. As Dr. Manhattan pointed out, his plan won't end anything. And American society, for one, was based on revolution in support of
**** Human beings are extremely stupid, reactionary, assholes. People shouldn't be "moral free agents, responsible enough to make their own, well-informed actions" because most human beings are irresponsible and don't give a damn about being well-informed, just told they're right.
***** On that note, watch Ozymandias when he confronts the closest thing to an omniscient source of knowledge that he can actually talk to and get an answer from (Dr. Manhattan, of course). Ozy isn't asking to be well-informed about things he does not know yet. He's asking to be ''validated as having been right all along''. The problem with starting from the assumption that 'people are fools and should not be allowed to make decisions' is that the alleged elite who 'should' be making the decisions for the people? Are capable of being just as foolish themselves. There is a reason Churchill made his famous quote about democracy being the worst system of government ever, ''except'' for all the other systems which were even worse.
*** In case you hadn't noticed, what happened ''last'' time the chips were left to "fall where they may" was the gigantic geopolitical clusterfuck Veidt was trying to solve.
*** Veidt took the steps he did not because he thought World War III was inevitable, but because it was ''imminent.'' Or so he claims, anyway. If the moral debate were simply "Aren't people entitled to even unpleasant truths, that they might make decisions accordingly?" I imagine it would be much easier. But when some of those people are in charge of nuclear warheads, it becomes more complicated. If the truth might end the world, I think it's justified not to let it get out.
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== Pirate Comics Vs. Superheroes ==
* Why is it that pirate comics have completely replaced superhero comics in this universe? just because something exists doesn't mean people will not buy comics based on them. And if the masked aventurers could collect image royalties for action figures, they can do the same for comics.
** Maybe they just never showed you the superhero comics, did you ever see any Giraffes in Book? No? Doesn't mean they don't exist.
** Ever notice how there aren't a lot of Martian stories nowadays? [[Science Marches On|The reality that we won't be getting any visits from Mars]], pretty much dried up the stories. When their universe saw real superheroes, the allure went away and questions of reality drifted in. People would start wondering why Superman caused a train accident instead of lifting the stopped car out of the way or how he could catch Lois Lane when she falls off a building without killing her in the process. Plus you can't laugh off even the most ridiculous of villains if everytime you open the newspaper you read about some horrible thing a real masked vigilante just stopped. When superhero stories stopped selling as well as the pirate comics did, they were probably cancelled.
** This Troper thinks that Moore was lampshading the popularity of superhero comics in the real world - saying in effect that the answer to 'why does the superheroe genre dominate the comics industry and the medium' is 'why not, it could have been ANY genre. Like pirates, for instance.' When superheros faded from popularity in the real world, following WWII, science fiction, horror, and western comics took over; if DC had never revived and redesigned the Flash in 1956, we could easily have nothing but sword and sorcery titles on the racks. And, FWIW, this troper thought the idea of pirates dominating comics to be stupid - then realized that like superheroes, there are many possible kinds of pirate comics (16th century buccaneers, '30's road pirates, space privateers...)
*** And then, he saw how popular Pirates of the Caribbean and the card trading game Pirates of the Spanish Main were, and he promptly shut up.
*** Also FWIW, note in issue one that we see on the newsstand a comic called ''X-Ships''. I'd like to know if the pirate ship Phoenix was in it and if it was [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|all powerful and stuff]].
*** To argue it another way, Policemen exist in real life- doesn't mean people don't watch police procedurals does it? As for fridge logic stuff like the above, well, watch an average episode of CSI- why did Grissom/Horatio/Mac do this stupid thing that serves to advance the plot but doesn't reflect the reality of policework? Doesn't matter, its just a TV show- same principal would probabley apply to media based on superheroes if they existed.
**** Point of order: in our world, police dramas are very popular, but police ''comics'' are not. Maybe in the fictional universe, superheroes are very common in TV fiction that we just don't get to see.
***** Dick Tracy was pretty durn popular for a pretty long time.
**** Possibly it's because superheroes struck an aspirational, yearning, psychological chord with the audience of a 'lower' form? And because, with real idol-figures walking around, it wasn't necessary to get that 'fix' from comics anymore?
** In ''Watchmen's'' world, costumed vigilantes are shown to have lost public interest/popularity after the Second World War, and have developed public resentment to the point of public violence by the 60s. It seems likely that, not only did the public become disinterested in the splashy exploits of costumed "heroes" (and remember, until Dr. Manhattan emerged none of these were "superheroes," they were just people in costumes beating other people up), but had probably had enough time to become skeptical of the idea that someone could just put a costume on and start enforcing whatever morals he saw fit. I think Hooded Justice was included as one of the original vigilantes for a very good reason: the reader is supposed to have a twinge of moral discomfort at the idea of a "hero" who is wearing the icons of racist lynchings. Someone like Rorschach, randomly wandering into "underworld" bars and torturing people for information, isn't likely to win sympathy from the wider public for very long. We like the idea of Jack Bauer, until we imagine the idea of actually being ''around'' Jack Bauer...
*** Hooded Justice is not wearing racist
*** In fact, the news vendor mentions that there used to be loads of superhero comics around - they just started dying out after the war. Hero comics still exist in Watchmen; they just haven't become the overpoweringly primary genre. It's also a dig at superhero comics themselves: the idea that the narrow field of 'pirate comics' would become the main genre seems really absurd, perhaps until we consider how bizarre the superhero genre is. It's [[wikipedia:Defamiliarisation|ostranenie]].
**** Indeed, in this universe superhero comics predate real
** There's also the fact that the Keene Act made superheroes something like outlaws, and superhero comics didn't feel like they were "escapist" anymore. Also, publishers might have wanted to avoid publishing books with such controversial subjects, especially when they are intended for a younger audience.
*** Very feasible, especially given that a large part of the resurgence of superheroes was the need to find a "wholesome" theme after censors began cracking down on the more ambiguous crime comics that had previously been popular.
** My favorite example when people bring up how superhero comics are such a strange and narrow way for comics to have developed is to bring up manga. Manga has a lot of genres, including all sorts of things that aren't superheroes, to the point where it's the poster child for non-superhero comics. But there's a huge (and hugely popular) chunk of it that basically ''is'' superheroes in all but name. Naruto and Bleach are about people using incredible powers to fight each other. I don't agree that superhero comics are such an unlikely event. (Also, the rationale that real superheroes made them unpopular doesn't work well; fictional superheroes have powers and Watchmen-world real ones didn't, except for Dr. Manhattan. And Dr. Manhattan was still unlike comic book superheroes, just in the opposite direction.)
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== How Would Dr Manhattan REALLY Have Affected The Cold War? ==
* While we're talking about Dr Manhattan - why, why, ''why'' can't the Russians try to replicate the experiment? Surely they have spies. If they can figure out how to build one of those Intrinsic-Field-Remover things, (and Ozymandias manages, so it can't be particularly hard or under wraps), they can keep MAD going. Sure, they may lose a hell of a lot of test subjects, but they ''need'' this in a way that makes moral concerns pretty much irrelevant. So again: why isn't there a Dr Arzamas-16?
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** Just because the circumstances of the accident that led to the creation of Doc can be replicated, doesn't mean the results can be. We don't know exactly what happened to Jon in the accident, but it's clear that it was an improbably rare event that isn't going to happen again anytime soon. That said, for all we know, the Russians ''had'' been trying to duplicate it, and had been losing people in test chambers for years.
** You guys are missing the point here. Manhattan isn't a man. He's a ghost. A ghost with god like powers that are the result of all the matter in his body being turned to energy. Like all ghosts he can't move on. Think how tragic his death was. His (up to that point) one true love is standing outside watching him as he's about to die. she then abandons him because she can't bare to what him die. He's been abandoned. That's why he's haunting her. Why do you think that the first thing he did when he came back was visit her? He came back in the Cafeteria where she was eating, after her not being there since his death. SHE was the missing factor that stopped him from coming back before. How are you guys not getting this? It's the most obvious thing in the world. You can't just turn a man into Manhattan, you need to give them a reason to haunt you before throwing them into the chamber.
*** Umm...no. It's never implied that Jon's particular state of mind had anything to do with his becoming Dr. Manhattan. It was a fluke.
*** The book, at least, implies/explains that his
** When was it mentioned that the Russians had any idea how Dr. Manhattan was made? Wouldn't that be, um, classified?
*** There was a whole research center full of people who saw what happened over a period of months and were shocked enough to talk about it publicly. No real way to ensure secrecy retroactively when you aren't even sure at first what the secret ''is''.
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**** There is no way that the USSR wouldn't dig as deep as they could to get their own Dr. Manhattan. Honestly, the Russians were VERY good at intelligence gathering, and I'm pretty sure that they could have found out what they wanted to. For example, how much would they pay one of those government employees for even a vague description of the IFR machine? Finding out what happened wasn't their catch, it was replicating it.
**** And on top of that, who's to say they failed? The experiment could have easily have created a DR. Leningrad who simply looked at the hellhole Earth became and left to make new life, just like Doc M did in the end. The Reds would not want news of a failed attempt to counter the "lynchpin of america's defense strategy" to reach American ears, so they wouldn't tell anyone. Dr. Manhattan might not have been the only superman, just the only one dumb enough to stay.
**** It's mentioned in the comics that Dr. Manhattan warned the Americans that any attempts to make a second superman wouldn't
***** It could always be assumed that Manhattan was lying to prevent someone from becoming like him. Maybe he didn't want the government locking people in a chamber to be disintergrated in the off chance of making a weapon.
**** Personally, if this troper watched a man get disintegrated before my eyes because of a "safety feature" the first thing she would do would be to take the machine apart to make sure it never happened again. It might only be dismantled enough to make it impossible to get locked inside, but any change could have a big impact on the result. By the time Dr. Manhattan appeared again there might have been a lot of changes done to the machine that would prevent someone else from coming back.
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**** Well it's never actually said that the Russians didn't attempt to replicate it, but it's pretty heavily implied that Osterman's ability to re-assemble himself is based on his already strong understanding of the intricate detail of things from both his work as a watchmender and an atomic physicist.
***** So? Maybe if you go into the box you have a 1% or smaller chance of immortality, and a 99+ % chance of death. In the long run, those are the best odds available.
****** Since your physical condition going into the box doesn't matter, why not just use the box on people who are already about to die? <1% of odds of godhood and 99+% odds of death takes on a whole new context if my odds of death in the very near future, whether due to terminal cancer or old age or whatnot, are already 100%. And at least this way would be quick and without pain. Going to the old veterans' home and asking the guys in the terminal wing if they're willing to risk a slightly sooner death in return for a shot at becoming Captain Uberman would probably get you volunteers lining up down the hall.
** Perhaps Soviet leaders simply and ultimately couldn't accept the existence of not only a potential threat to their authority and power (as the ruling class of the Soviet Union would inevitably end up viewing an omnipotent, omnipresent God-like being walking around in their own backyard as being), but of their ideology? Soviet thinking, at least in public, is based around a classless, egalitarian society (of course, the reality didn't quite end up like that, but the Soviet government was ''very'' good at accepting two contradictory viewpoints simultaneously, to misquote Orwell), something which is a lot harder to accept—and, just as importantly, convince the working plebs beneath you to accept—when you have a hyper-powerful God walking around your own backyard. Plus, pretty much handing ultimate power in the Soviet sphere of influence to one of their own grunts or gulag-inmates—not something the hyper-paranoid, power-hungry types who ran the Soviet Union would be ''that'' enthusiastic about doing.
*** In any case, look at what the Americans ultimately ended up with Dr. Manhattan; a distant, uncaring figure who, for all the propaganda, couldn't give a toss about ideology and who sort of aimlessly obeyed orders whilst it suited him but then ultimately completely flaked out, leaving the Americans galloping up Diarrhoea Road without a horse and saddle in the process. No matter how brainwashed and fanatical they were before they went in the chamber, there's no guarantee that when he or she reforms the molecular structure of his / her body that Dr. Soviet is going to be any more willing to obey orders or devoted to the Revolution than Dr. Manhattan ended up being devoted to the United States. Any Soviet spies would doubtlessly gain information about Manhattan's psychological state and make-up (which would be much easier to determine and observe than the circumstances that lead to his creation) and would presumably pass this on, which would give the old men in the Kremlin pause for thought about how much control they'd ultimately have over their own God, given how enthusiastic they were about controlling their citizens.
**** It doesn't help that Jon Osterman was never much of a patriot to begin with. He spent his whole life doing what others told him to do. If he had had anything resembling a backbone, he would not have let his father push him into becoming a nuclear scientist. Nor would he have let the US government turn him into their pet god.
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* Why do people think that the US and USSR will just sit around, static and unchanging, until they stop being afraid of Dr. Manhattan/Giant Teleporting Psychic Alien Death Squids From Nowhere and resume nuking the hell out of each other? Nothing ever ends, but nothing ever ''stops'', either. Look at what's happening at the end of the graphic novel - it's Glasnost, times two. Granted the lack of open conflict with the West changes things as well, but by the time Cold War tendencies reassert themselves, Veidt's plan may very well have brought down the Soviet Union.
** This question has been raised so many times on this page in one form or another. In short, the answer is always: That's the point. Ozymandias's peace is by no means guaranteed permament, and it remains extremely up in the air as to whether it was worth the atrocities he committed.
*** But my point is that even if Adrian's peace doesn't last forever, that doesn't mean he'd have failed. Assuming the USSR's internal politics are anything like they were in the real world, he only needed to buy enough time for the country to collapse from within.
**** Seems like the US would have collapsed from within, under 16 years of Nixon. The Soviet Union was brought down because of Gorbachev's willingness to allow states to secede from the USSR, plus the US massively outspent the USSR in proxy warfare in Afghanistan. Meanwhile they appointed a Carter-esque liberal (Gorbachev). What really destroyed Communism was when the hard-liners attempted a military coup against Gorbachev, causing the then-powerless Russian Republic (controled by "neoliberals" such as Yeltsin) to secede from the USSR itself. (The rough US politics equivalent would be if the US had elected Ralph Nader president, allowed Vermont and Hawaii to secede and all our overseas bases, then Bush invalidated the election with tanks in the streets, prompting Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwartzenegger to secede NY and CA from the Union). None of this would have necessarily happened in an alternate timeline.
* I can understand winning in Vietnam, but winning and Vietnam becoming the 51st state are two very different things. Seriously, what's the story behind that? Did they just abolish the South Vietnamese government after they won? Why didn't they cover this greater detail?
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== Alternate-Timeline Science, Economy, Etc ==
* Given that the corpse of the creature is mostly intact, wouldn't any but the most cursory examination of it reveal that its brain is basically human and that its biochemistry would indicate a terrestrial origin?
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* Here's what bugs me: this story in a world in which the United States, thanks to Dr. Manhattan, has commercially viable electric cars, and electric flying cars, for that matter, as early as the sixties, but this is also supposedly a world in which the economy is on the brink of collapse by the eighties. How does that make any sense? Also, how is the Cold War still going on? If we have electric cars, plus the ability to mass produce however much of any petrochemical feedstock we might want, you have to figure that the price of oil is close to zero. That means that, first, there's no Middle East crisis, and, second, the totally oil-export-dependent Soviet economy implodes at least a decade earlier than it actually did. Add to that the fact that America won the Vietnam War, and the United States wins the Cold War well before 1980. And not primarily because the United States would have so much more military power because of Dr. Manhattan. More because the United States would be the source of the flying cars and other technological miracles.
* Also of note, one of the reasons the Soviets collapsed in the 80s was due to the immense amount of redundant nuclear weaponry they had to make to match the Americans' non-
** And let's not even get into the degree of environmental degradation that would be avoided if we had Dr. Manhattan. Actually, let's get into it: no mining, strip or otherwise, for any minerals, when Dr. Manhattan can just create them. No industrial, chemical, or nuclear waste, when Dr. Manhattan can just turn it all into air, or water, or, for that matter, any useful substances we might want. And this is just scratching the surface. To be perfectly clear, a world in which we have Dr. Manhattan would be a paradise, not a hell.
*** We send him to fight commies, that's a pretty lame use for God. I think he's not being utilized as useful as he could be.
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** If you want basic economy theory, think of it this way: a capitalist economy is based almost entirely on supply and demand. The price of a particular good is determined both by how much people want it, and how much is available. Oil is considered a precious commodity specifically because there's a finite supply of it. So, what happens when God basically says, "you know what, here's enough oil forever. And if you use that up, I've got more."? ''Economic collapse''. There's no demand because the supply is in abundance. Everyone has what they need. The economy is fucked up because God is on the side of supply, and there can be no demand.
*** The economy in Watchmen is in bad shape because we won Vietnam. After losing a major war, a country's currency undergoes massive inflation. Germany after WWI was one of the worst examples, and as a result of WWII, Japanese still need thousands of Yen to buy anything. Same thing happen in our timeline's United States after Vietnam. (One reason Carter wasn't re-elected was that his administration wasn't very good at controlling it) while this is bad in the short term, having to pay a dollar and half instead of a 25 cents for a bottle of coke, and all, in the long term this was a good thing, as it helped to stabilize the downward spiral that the US economy had been in since the Post WII boom ended in the early 70s. Without the inflation of the late 70s, the Reagan era boom would not have been possible.
*** Do keep in mind that the film invented the whole sequence about Ozymandias creating generators to make infinite free energy out of nothing (somehow) using Dr. Manhattan-based technology. I don't remember that in the book at
*** An unlimited supply of oil would most definitely ''not'' result in economic collapse; it would be the
** Nixon just sucks at economic policy. The characters blame "Nixonomics" for the terrible shape the economy's in.
* ''Why'' did the intrinsic field subtractor have its indelible effect on Osterman? What part of that process granted him such power - and why didn't others attempt the same trick? Further complicating things is that, at Karnak, the same type of device is used to obliterate {{spoiler|Bubastis}}, another living creature. Does this imply it only works on humans, or that it was just a one-in-a-hundred-trillion shot in the first place? (We can probably safely leave out the bit in the film where it was used to vaporize a roomful of corpses, though.)
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== Continuity Issues And Fridge Logic (Book/Film) ==
* When Manhattan says "there is no difference between life and death, they have the same amount of particles"? That is '''completely''' wrong. Live and dead bodies are ''very'' different, (decay, blood loss, microbiology, so many other fields in forensics can show this difference,) so it seems very stupid for him to claim "no difference between life and death." Any ideas for an explanation of this?
** This Troper took it to mean that at the moment of death, there was little difference. Of course, afterwards there are many differences such as those listed....
** No defining line. "Dead now? Nope." Nanosecond later: "Dead now? Nope." Nanosecond later: "Dead now? Nope." A few billion nanoseconds later: "Dead now? No- Um... Maybe? He's been dead for a little while? when did that happen? I guess there isn't really a difference, everything's still pretty much there. [[Our Souls Are Different|Nothing left or anything]]." Only, you know, in Manhattan-think.
** I blame it on Alan Moore. Alan Moore doesn't understand science. In this scene, Dr. Manhattan is basically being a [[Straw Vulcan]]: he's a caricature of a logical thinker. The difference between a live and dead person supposedly can't be explained scientifically, a [[Straw Vulcan]] can't comprehend it. Of course this is still straw; a real logical thinker can recognize a difference even if he can't fully analyze it, and he would use a level of abstraction that's most useful for understanding, rather than reducing everything to atoms and molecules. It would be like a real scientist reading a scientific journal and complaining that the journal is meaningless because it's made of the same kind of carbon atoms as all other journals.
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* How does Rorschach see through his mask?
** Hrmm...
** Light can penetrate it to his eyes. However, only a very tiny amount of light that penetrates it will be reflected back out to the eyes of anybody looking at him. It's the same reason that, if you stand outside on a dark night and look through a window into a brightly-lit room, you can see what's happening in the room, but somebody in the rom can't see you unless they press their face to the glass.
** The same way you can see through a black sock pulled over your eyes.
** Once a week or so he coated the inside of his mouth with a paste made up of lard, pig fat, and Twinkie filling. He had also cauterized the salival glands inside his mouth. Every time he went "hrm" his diaphragm/lungs would release moist air at body temperature which interacts with the paste, creating a mixture of air and pure fat. The fat air dispersed up and through his facial mask and would allow him to see.
* Hollis "Nite Owl I" Mason's autobiography is shown in one panel to be a two-volume hardcover. However, the fifteen pages of "excerpts" included in the graphic novel cover everything from his boyhood to his retirement. Either those excerpts were seriously abridged, or Mason had the very large print edition....
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** Well in the book it's shown that he does over-exert himself. One entry read that he had been awake for 50 hours. The next was that he passed out without removing the skin from his head. Living on sugar-cubes and coffee will do that. As for money, it's reasonable to think that he steals money off the corpses of his victims. They say he moves constantly as well, so he probably gets evicted a lot.
* If
** The human face and body are relatively symmetrical. The fabric might not be sensitive enough to respond to every tiny variance, so the result is fairly even all over.
*** Plus, [[Rule of Cool]]. It wouldn't be a Rorschach inkblot if it wasn't symmetrical. And when he gets kicked in the head, it isn't. But I see your point.
** This has been tested by various fan-made Rorschach masks using heat-sensitive invisible ink and found to be more or less accurate. Unfortunately, invisible ink always takes the same overall shape, so it's not the same effect; a hippie-light or mood ring might be a better example.
** Actually it's specifically pointed out that the material uses quantum phlebotinum to maintain symmetry or some such nonsense.
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*** Considering Moore is English, not all that surprising.
**** [[Two Words]]: Benny Anger. Everything about him comes across as a British BBC host/presenter.
** It's an [[Alternate Universe]], duh. Unless we all just happened to forget Nixon winning four Presidential elections in a row (and, y'know, superheroes). Fashions are different, history is different, technology is
*** Verisimilitude dictates that military traditions would be the same in the Watchmen setting because there is no reason for them to change. It's a clear case of [[Did Not Do the Research]].
**** Unless military tradition changed because of the victory in Vietnam. The film did have the flag folded into a triangle.
** Edward Blake was buried in his civilian persona. Therefore, no military funeral for ''him''.
* By the way, how does
** When did anyone say that his fingers were broken? They had to kill him because there wasn't enough time to cut through the bars (only the lock on the door).
*** Uh, right there on that very page, the goon says "He broke my fingers . . . "
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* Although Rorschach's mask is a veritable quagmire of unexplained mechanics, I'd like to know just how the hell he sees out of the damned thing, especially when he's apparently blinded towards then end when Veidt twists it around his face.
** I always thought the mask kept spots of black over his eyes, and that the black liquid was more translucent than the white one.
** Rorschach isn't blinded when Veidt pulls the mask round. Veidt has obviously worked out for himself that Rorschach is
* In the film version they eliminated the subplot of Rorschach getting an extra outfit from his apartment, instead, he gets his gear back from Dr. Long's case file. Okay, but he breaks into Dr. Long's office during the riot, waits untill Long gets there, then orders him to find it for him. But this is Rorschach we're talking about here! He's incredibly fast thinking and good at locating things quickly and easily, as evidenced by his search of Blake and Moloch's homes. Surely he could have entered the room, got his face, and left within a few seconds, particularly since they WERE RIGHT ON THE SHELF FIVE FEET AWAY FROM HIM! There was no need for him to wait for Dr. Long to get there.
** [[Rule of Cool]] and [[Rule of Drama]]. It was more entertaining that way instead of doing the practical thing of ransacking the place or reading the labels.
** Well, they were actually in a box under a load of other boxes. Besides, you don't know how long he was in there for. It's entirely possible he broke in, tore through a few of them, got frustrated (and he's probably not thinking particularly straight at that moment, considering) then noticed the doctor coming in and decided to a) find his face quickly and b) scare the piss out of Doctor Long.
* Why does movie Moloch have hairspray in his house? The man is bald.
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* Why, oh why did they write out all of the secondary characters? Bernie the News man is my favorite character in the entire book, and they wrote him out? WHY?!?!?!?
** Because keeping them in would have added at least another fifteen minutes to what was already a very long movie. ''Something'' had to be cut, and as entertaining as Bernie and the others are, they are in no way essential to the main plot.
** Don't worry, it's [[All There in the Manual|All There]] [[Left On The Cutting Room Floor|In The]] [[Limited Special Collectors' Ultimate Edition]].
* What's with the change in look? Why did they change the cars, fasions, etc, to look like [[The Eighties]]? I mean it seems they looked at the book and said "this isn't Eighties enough" and changed it so it looked more [[Retraux]]. This seems like they're missing the point, as it's not meant to be the "real" eighties, it's meant to show a completely different eighties that came about because of Dr. Manhattan.
** The youth culture draws from Asia more beacuse Vietnam is now part of the country (The punk equivelent is the Knot tops). Crazy different technologies because Doc Manhattan and Viedt let all kinds of sixties [[Sci Fi]] technologies come in existence, affecting fashion, and the look of the cars, men where 1940s style suits because Manhattan wore a suit to his unveiling. None of this is like the "real" Eighties.
* Why did they screw it up so badly? I mean they have a shot for shot storyboard in the book! The motion comic was better because it stayed true to the original cinematography.
** Comics are not storyboards. Despite the appearance, comics are intended for a ''reading'' audience, not a ''viewing'' audience. Ask any artist who's worked in both media and he'll tell you the intent and the art in each are entirely different. That's even before you get into the "Fearful Symmetry" part of the story which has separate ''pages'' mirroring each other, something that no film can ever do.
* (Movie tie-in related) Does anyone know if any of the winners of the "Veidt Advertising Contest" actually ''had'' their commercials in the movie? I know [[YouTube]] played the
* Why is it that in the comic Dr. Manhattan asks someone "What's up?" at one point and at another point seems utterly unfamiliar with the expression, taking it literally and saying, "'Up' is relative; it has no intrinsic value"? Doesn't he experience all times simultaneously?
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* How can a tachyon stream blind Dr. Manhattan to the future when he experiences all times simultaneously?
** In the same way a snowstorm blinds you to what you are currently experiencing in this present moment. He foresaw his lack of foresight due to the tachyons, because he was experiencing it then and there in the future.
** The exact effect of the tachyons seems to be to temporally dislocate Manhattan, making him confused about which moment in time is which, as suggested when he repeats what he said to Laurie to Rorschach "forty-five seconds ago." "It's these tachyons..."
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== Boys ==
* [[Schmuck Bait|You were wondering]] what was in the other folders on Veidt's [[Magic Floppy]]?
{{quote|
* And an idea for new security software that DOESN'T tell you that the password you typed is correct, but incomplete? So that, you know, you can't type in one letter, trying each possible one untill you guess the first letter right, which will be listed as 'incomplete', then repeat the process for the second letter, then the 3rd, etc.
* And I try not to think about Veidt's Magic Floppy much.
== What was the reasoning behind the big bad's secrecy-killings (spoiler) ==
* Veidt's methods for keeping his plan a secret seem all over the place. First, he kills his superloyal assistants, to make sure the plan stays secret. Then when two people who know part of his plan come to stop him, he doesn't bother killing them but instead tells them the rest, even though he could easily take them. Then Dr Manhattan shows up, and Veidth immediately tries to kill him, even though he's not sure it will work. And when it in fact doesn't work, he shows them that his plan worked, and they can't afford to kill him anyway without risking WWIII again. When one of the people announces he'll try to expose it anyway, Veidth declares he doesn't care. So WHY kill extremely loyal people, when you think even your enemies can't afford to betray you. Why try to kill a very powerfull being before trying to explain it to him, but ignoring a weaker man who announces he'll try to betray you anyway?
** Well, I figure it's this: Veidt's confidence and self-love is pretty much a front. Personally he is filled with self-doubt and guilt about his plan. This explains his dreams - in which he expresses his greatest fear, that he is wrong about his actions. So when he's shouting 'YES!', he's also doing it to sooth his own self-recrimination. What Veidt most seeks is justification, for people he respects, who are not merely loyal yes men, who are indeed his enemies, to agree with him and tell him that 'yes, you did the right thing'. For that purpose, he 'invited' these people there. And made sure that they were not judging under duress. He tried to kill Dr Manhattan because Dr Manhattan had an immediate ability to undo anything he does, while he would let Rorschach leave because in some senses, he was his friend, and because he thinks he can control any damage Rorschach does.
** He kills his assistants because they could have undone his work by warning the world it was coming. By the time he explains himself to Nite Owl and Rorshach, he's already accomplished his plan (thirty five minutes earlier). He baited them out of New York because he cares for them as friends, after all Nite Owl's first act after hearing the "mask killer" theory was to try to warn Ozymandias. He allows Rorshach to leave because, even assuming he survives the trip back to the flying craft and the flight back to civilization, he's a pre-discredited loony. As for Manhattan, Ozy needed to talk to him but Manhattan wouldn't listen initially, having just come from the disaster site with Spectre. So Ozy tried to kill him.
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----
== Timeline Quandaries ==
* What did Laurie do while Jon was out conquering Vietnam? They met before Jon was drafted into the war, but no mention of what she was doing durring that time.
** Jon probably only joined the war effort (as it were) after Nixon became president. Once Doctor Manhattan got involved, it was probably a really quick war.
*** It was. In the comic Manhattan says he's been in Vietnam for two months and the Viet Cong are expected to surrender within the week.
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*** We're polluting the planet, causing climate change. We're wiping out rainforests and species for money. Big business controls the American government. We're overpopulating, now we're up to 7 billion people. Our news is all [[You Can Panic Now]] [[New Media Are Evil]] [[Moral Guardians]]. The RIAA can sue Limewire for 7 trillion and not instantly have their case thrown out. People can lose tens of thousands of dollars if a company decides to make them an example for [[Digital Piracy Is Evil|pirating]]. Companies treat customers like criminals. The US is at what, four wars now? [[Sarcasm Mode|We're living in an optimistic world.]]
**** Interestingly, it's the Comedian who notes that if the US had lost in Vietnam, it would have driven the States a bit insane as a country. Draw from that what you will.
**** Heh, I remember reading that in the 1980s some joints in Vegas were taking bets as to when the USSR/US would nuke each other. All those problems mentioned in the above post (with possible exception of climate change) are surmountable if US citizens would actually take a stand, but legalizing pot and arguing over who is more American than the next guy (birthers...) takes priority. Nuclear annihilation was a very real fear in the Cold War, especially the 80s. I mean, come on, If that had happened, none of the aforementioned societal problems would even exist.
== Captain Metropolis's death ==
* I keep reading in some places e.g. The Other Wiki, that Captain Metropolis's car crash decapitation was actually suicide. I've read over the graphic novel several times but I can't seem to get this piece of info anywhere. Could anyone point to where it might be?
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** I see someone missed the scenes where Nixon is in a planning meeting for a first strike on the USSR, considering losing the east coast acceptable losses.
** One of the [[All There in the Manual|intermission pieces]] in the novel tries to explain the Soviet psychology in the Watchmen world, which basically boils down to: given they spilled more blood than the Allies did in World War Two, and they were subject to destruction on their own home soil, Dr. Manhattan's presence and powers compels a death-wish psychology in them given that since they cannot prevail, they will die trying. By default, if one side launches its' nukes, the other does as well. Also bear in mind how this is borne out in real events: literally the ''moment'' Dr. Manhattan leaves for Mars, Russia invades Afghanistan.
** Bear in mind that it's not a universal "explanation" about "Soviet psychology", it's an assumption by an (American) author of the intermission. In the end he just sees the Soviet people (and, I presume, the leaders of the Union) as "those wacky commies" with some suicidal inhuman ideas. But, yes, the [[WW 2]] greatly influenced the mindset of Soviet people about the theoretical [[WW 3]] - that is, they never wanted such a destructive world conflict to ever happen again (IRL Soviet people were very scared of an idea of a nuke apocalypse - to the point when "I wish there would be no more wars" was a usual wish for any person). In fact, we never actually SEE the perception of the crysis by Soviet people or by the government of USSR in the comic book.
== Create new thread / Unsorted ==
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* I read somewhere that Ozymandias' parents were Nazis. Were they scientists who genetically engineered Veidt into the perfect human genius that he is, or am I reading too much into this?
** Where did you hear this? There's nothing in either book or movie that implies anything of the sort.
* Ok, the original heroes were cops, right? Well then, how were there female heroes? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think women were on the police force back then.
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** The difference is that in the book, the psychiatrist buys his lies about the inkblots, and it's only later on that he catches on and talks Rorschach into telling him the real story. In the movie, he recognizes that Rorschach's bullshitting him right away, so they skip right to the backstory. Call it a product of having to compress the storyline for a movie.
* The Comedian taunts Hooded Justice- "Does this get you off?" Why does this make Hooded Justice so enraged? I've never read the comics, could someone expound on this?
** In the novel, Hood was implied to be homosexual. At one point it was believed that he took in boys from the street and beat and raped them. He probably got pissed because Comedian was making fun of this rumor.
* Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias) and Hollis Mason (Nite Owl 1) are supposedly the only two "Watchmen" who have ever gone public with their identity. The Comedian's mask barely covers
** Well, in the novel, at least, the Silk Spectres were public figures, by virtue of the first trying to use her publicity as a masked hero to jump start an acting career that never took off.
** From about the Second World War onward, the Comedian also spent most of his career as a government Black Ops operative doing all kinds of top secret stuff; he's not in the public eye as much, and no one really cares about his brief public career as a superhero fifty-odd years later.
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* Why is it spelled N-I-T-E Owl, not N-I-G-H-T Owl?
** Because poor literacy is KEWL
I'm going to bed now. Night night.
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*** Ha! I went to bed ''thirty five minutes ago''!
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[[Category:Watchmen]]
[[Category:Headscratchers (comic book)]]
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