I will begin with a confession: I am a comic book geek. Ever since I could read, I have enjoyed the garishly colored adventures of both the Marvel and DC pantheons of spandex-clad heroes. Of course, as I have grown older (if not matured), that enjoyment has become mixed with a bit of guilt and shame. I mean, no one pushing 40 reads comic books. Well, okay, some people do, but they’re really sad, right? My enjoyment has also been tempered by nostalgia: I tend to enjoy reading about the heroes of my youth: the Claremont-era X-men, the Fantastic Four, Batman, etc. So I was a little taken aback when I was told that the graphic novel to end all graphic novels was about a collection of superheroes that no one had ever heard of. Nevertheless, I read and re-read Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, overcome by a stunned sense of wonder through the whole read.
The stunned reaction stems, I think, from the complexity of the novel. Both in plot and in visuals there is an amazing amount of information to keep track of, and none of it is insignificant. Visually, certain motifs appear again and again in different contexts: the smiley face, the fractal-like splash of blood, the clock, the silhouette of the two lovers, the eternal Rorschach blots, the bottle of perfume (or is it a bomb?). The reader’s brain is overstimulated throughout the entire experience.
The plot is likewise complex, and does not lend itself to easy summary. It takes place with Nixon in the White House and the Cold War on the verge of becoming very hot. Superheroes are real, but have been outlawed. Those who survived their dangerous line of work have mostly gone into retirement. The tale begins with the death of a masked adventurer known as the Comedian. The Comedian is a cynical adventurer (think Wolverine, but with fewer scruples) who often comes off more as a masked mercenary than as a crime-fighter. His death is investigated by Rorschach, the only one of the former heroes not to retire. (When the bill requiring him to unmask was made into law, Rorschach replied by leaving the police the dead body of a known rapist with a sign saying “Never” pinned to his clothes.)
Rorschach suspects that the murder may be the work of a “mask killer,” someone out to hunt down old heroes out of revenge. His theory seems to be supported as other former heroes are threatened or killed. In fact, however, he has stumbled onto something far more sinister. One of the old heroes, a super-intelligent megalomaniac calling himself Ozymandius, has decided that the only way to forestall a nuclear holocaust is to create a disaster so global in its scope and implications that international conflicts will be put aside in the ensuing terror. The details of this plot are admittedly a bit silly, but as in all the best comic books, the plot isn’t the point. It’s the characters.
Rorschach
Philosophically, the novel explores a duality set up between two of its primary characters: Rorschach and Ozymandius. Rorschach is the uncompromising idealist. As his name and his ink-blotch mask imply, to him, everything is black and white. Faced with a world in which evil exists, he has decided that it must be cut out like a cancer. He has no time for anything else. Eating, sleeping, personal hygiene, complete sentences, all are sacrificed in his single-minded pursuit of the wicked. His broken prose are weirdly beautiful. As he sits in a diner he watches the trashcan where a message is to be left for him:
Passers-by made various deposits: candy wrappers, newspapers, a pair of keds strangled by their own laces, tongues lolling out horribly. This city is an animal, fierce and complicated. To understand it I read its droppings, its scents, the movement of its parasites… I sat watching the trashcan, and New York opened its heart to me.
Rorschach is ugly in every sense of the world. Even his fellow heroes don’t want to be around him. He scares people, makes them uncomfortable. When not wearing his mask, he wanders the streets with a board announcing the end of the world. When a newspaper vendor notes that the world hasn’t ended as expected, he answers “Are you sure?”
Ozymandius
Ozymandius is the opposite of Rorschach in innumerable ways. He is physically beautiful and obviously quite aware of this. When required to retire from crime-fighting, he did so peacefully, using his intellect to forge a financial empire, marketing, among other things, a line of Ozymandius action-figures and a perfume called “Nostalgia.” In contrast to Rorschach’s smelly isolation, Ozymandius immerses himself in the media, watching dozens of channels at once to capture the zeitgeist and turn it into profit. He is a realist, and while he has no love for the Comedian, they seem to have a lot in common ideologically. As Rorschach notes, the Comedian “sees the big picture” and chooses to laugh at it. Ozymandius sees the big picture too, but foolishly thinks that he can fix it.
Dr. Manhattan
Oddly, the superheroes of the Watchmen universe are without powers. They are simply well-trained (mostly) crime-fighters with a flair for the dramatic. The exception is Dr. Manhattan. Jon Osterman was the son of a watchmaker, whose father ended his apprenticeship and pushed him toward a career in nuclear physics. In a classic superhero scientific accident, Osterman is trapped in some sort of radiation test chamber. A burst of radiation dissolves him entirely. Over the next few months, Osterman slowly manages to assemble a body and returns to reality as the nearly omnipotent Dr. Manhattan. Perhaps the most interesting thing about him is that he exists outside of time and this provides him a very unique perspective. He seems to experience everything simultaneously. The sections of the book narrated by Dr. Manhattan are as strangely beautiful as the Rorschach passages. They make me want to read them out loud. At the beginning of chapter four, Jon stands on Mars, contemplating a photograph of himself and his girlfriend before his transformation:
The photograph is in my hand.
It is the photograph of a man and a woman. They are in an amusement park, in 1959.
In twelve seconds time, I drop the photograph to the sand at my feet, walking away. It’s already lying there, twelve seconds into the future.
Ten seconds now.
The photograph is in my hand.
I found it in a derelict bar at the Gila Flats test base, twenty-seven hours ago.
It’s still there, twenty seven hours into the past, in its frame, in the darkened bar.
I’m still there, looking at it.
The photograph is in my hand. The woman takes a piece of popcorn between thumb and forefinger. The ferris wheel pauses.
Seven seconds now.
It’s October, 1985. I’m on Mars. It’s July, 1959. I’m in New Jersey, at the Pallisades Amusement Park.
I’m tired of looking at the photograph now.
I open my fingers. It falls to the sand at my feet.
I am looking at the stars.
They are so far away, and their light takes so long to reach us…
All we ever see of stars are their old photographs.
Like Rorschach and Ozymandius, Jon exists outside of conventional reality, but for him there was no choice. He just wanted to be a watchmaker, but finds himself transformed into a god.
There is so much more to talk about in Watchmen: the intricate symbolism, the political and theological implications, and the host of other fine characters whom I have not addressed. The relationship between Nite Owl and Silk Specter would make for a fine essay in itself. To sum up, I highly recommend the book. I hope that it will find its way onto high school and undergraduate reading lists. I can’t imagine a better way to engage adolescent males in serious literature.