- HBO's Watchmen is now in full swing, featuring new and returning characters.
- It marks a great opportunity to revisit the groundbreaking literary achievement that was the original graphic novel.
- Here are the characters to know—some even reappear in the TV show.
Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen first appeared on comic store shelves in 1986 as a twelve-issue "maxiseries." The issues were then bundled into a single work and marketed as a "graphic novel." Comic, graphic novel, however one refers to it, the work was massive, creating both an entirely new superhero tale while also making the bold argument for the comic/graphic novel as a serious work of literature.
No doubt, part of this aesthetic achievement are the characters who populate the Watchmen universe. Part amoral every-men, part comic parody, they remain some of the most compelling masked characters in comic history.
And unlike the superhuman feats director Zack Snyder implied with his 2009 filmic adaptation, most of these men and women exist without obvious superpowers. (The only real Superman-like hero of the universe is Doctor Manhattan, the giant blue all-knowing and matter-bending demigod. And that contrast—powerless vs all-powerful—was exactly the point.)
Rorschach
Rorschach, the story’s narrator and primary protagonist, stumbles upon what he takes to be a superhero-killing conspiracy. After assuming fowl play following the death of The Comedian, Rorschach looks to warn his former masked colleagues. He then pursues the orchestrator to the Arctic. Rorschach exits the story in the final chapter, when he is incinerated by Doctor Manhattan. He had discovered a truth he refused to hide.
Rorschach's character stands in the Cold War paranoia that dominated 1980s social and political life. He responds to the complexity by erecting a moral absolutism of right and wrong, good and evil. The mask he wears, taken from the famous Rorschach ink-blot test in psychology, contradicts much of this absolutism, as the shapes often change throughout the comic.
The Comedian
Though his death acts as the inciting incident of the story, The Comedian figures into the comic through various flashbacks, the most notable of which are framed through the characters Sally Jupiter or Silk Spectre (the mother of Laurie Juspeczyk). The Comedian raped Jupiter when she was a young woman, though Jupiter's perception of the Comedian remains surprisingly tender throughout the story.
The Comedian's amorality is often set against either the apathy of Doctor Manhattan or the moralism of Rorschach. If Rorschach responds to worldly complexity and impending nuclear war with absolutism, The Comedian responds (aptly) with irony. It's said that he chose to "become a parody" of the darkening world. He allows the abyss to swallow him.
Dr. Manhattan (Jonathan Osterman)
Born to a watchmaker, Jonathan Osterman pursues a career in nuclear physics, leading him to a lab somewhere in the desert. At the lab, Osterman finds himself locked in an "intrinsic field" chamber and is incinerated. He comes back, though. First his eyeballs. Then his nervous system. Then he emerges as a blue, matter-bending being.
Manhattan (named after the research project that culminated in the development of the atomic bomb) stands in place of the bomb. His very existence in the universe acts as a nuclear deterrent between the superpowers. Many even consider him a god, parodying Cold War bomb reverence.
Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias)
Another former masked hero, Veidt has transitioned into business, building an empire. His primary endeavor, however, remains avoiding nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Soviets. And so Veidt devises a plan, the plan Rorschach hopes to uncover. The plan involves a false flag operation, an attack on NYC. The plan leaves many people dead.
Veidt responds to Cold War uncertainty with rational enterprise. As the universe's most intelligent character, Veidt hopes that he can use consequentialist acts to justify (what to Rorschach would be) abject amorality. As Veidt operates always under the guise of reason, he seems to represent the kind of calculating force perhaps responsible for the 20th century's horrors.
Daniel Dreiberg (Nite Owl)
Retired, tired, burnt-out Dreiberg is the first hero Rorschach approaches following the Comedian's murder. But Dreiberg doesn't seem to register the concern. The washed-up superhero must come to take back up his costume and attempt to save the world. In doing so, Dreiberg may be the most conventional character. Of course, the outcome of his efforts reminds us of the parody that is Watchmen.
With his avian attire and his various contraptions, Nite Owl's most obviously comic referent is Batman. In the Watchmen universe, however, he's the most powerless.
Laurie Juspeczyk (Silk Spectre)
The love interest of both Doctor Manhattan and Dreiberg, Juspeczyk doesn't do a whole lot for empowerment. She resides, still, in the shadow of her mother, the original Silk Spectre. But, as the story evolves, we learn more about her tragic genealogy; she is in fact the consequence of the rape, the daughter of The Comedian—who she detests. Juspeczyk's personal discovery may be the most emotional and compelling storyline in the comic, the majority of which unfolds as an ironic and generally jaded story.
