Who Watches the Watchmen?: Reexamining the Myth of the Superhero with Alan Moore's Watchmen

In 1938 two Jewish kids from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster combined elements of Jewish and Greek mythology with elements in pop culture to create Superman, the world’s first superhero. They sold the idea to National Periodicals (now DC Comics) who decided to run the character as the cover feature in the premiere issue of their new publication, Action Comics. The character proved popular, Superman would be given his own title and in his wake dozens of superheroes would follow. Some were cheap imitations of Superman and quickly forgotten, others were unique and developed staying power of their own. Today, seventy years later, names like Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Spiderman, and the Flash are practically household words. Even people who have never picked up a comic book are at least aware of who they are. Besides the comics that gave them birth, superheroes have appeared in movies, television shows, video games and even as commercial spokesmen (the Man of Steel himself even appeared in a Visa ad along side longtime fan, comedian Jerry Seinfeld). For good or ill, the superhero has found a place amongst our mythic landscape. The question is, in a world such as ours, a world on the brink of annihilation, plagued by terrorists, cynical, corrupt, and drowning in pollution, do we still need superheroes? The answer to that question would come in 1986 when writer Alan Moore decided the time was right to finally shake up the perception that comic books were a juvenile medium. While several publishers of underground “comix” had attempted to do so in the 1960s, most of those publishers were defunct by the early seventies, and by the 1980s only a few big names from the underground (such as Robert Crumb) were even still active. Already a well regarded writer in Britain for his groundbreaking work with Marvel UK, 2000 AD, and Warrior, Alan Moore had been writing for Superman publisher DC Comics for three years when he hit on the idea of deconstructing the superhero. He’d begun his run with DC in 1983 shaking up such minor magical characters as Swamp Thing, the Spectre, Dead Man, the Phantom Stranger, and the Demon. He’d even written some of the most highly acclaimed superhero stories of the decade including the last Superman story before John Byrne’s revamp of the character and the now (in)famous Batman graphic novel The Killing Joke but the idea brewing in his head in 1986 would take superheroes in a whole new direction. As Moore put it, his intention was to create, “a superhero Moby Dick; something that had that sort of weight, that sort of density”. His idea was to place familiar “old fashioned” superheroes in a completely new realm. He initially looked towards the defunct MLJ Comics line of superheroes for inspiration. As originally conceived, the story would have involved Private Strong, a minor creation of comics great Jack Kirby investigating the death of the patriotic superhero the Shield. DC Comics Editor Dick Giordano, who had previously worked for Charlton Comics, suggested using the Charlton superheroes that had recently been acquired by DC; however those heroes were being integrated into DC continuity, so Moore along with his creative partner on the project, artist Dave Gibbons decided to create their own characters loosely inspired by Charlton, MLJ, and DC heroes. The comic that would eventually emerge was Watchmen, a twelve issue limited series published by DC Comics between 1986 and 1987. Watchmen would go on to be reprinted as a trade paperback and popularize the graphic novel format, win a Hugo Award, and be listed on Time Magazine’s 2005 list of “100 best English language novels” published since Time Magazine’s founding in 1923. Alan Moore begins Watchmen with the murder of Edward Blake, a middle aged government agent who was also active from the 1940s through the 1960s as the cigar chomping, violent superhero known as the Comedian. Rorschach, a paranoid masked vigilante investigates the crime and discovers an ominous plot that endangers all former superheroes and may eventually cost the lives of millions of people. The Comedian has tumbled onto a plot by former superhero Ozymandias to create a false crisis to force the world to unite against a common threat and through that create a utopia. The quest for the truth about Ozymandias’s plan leads to the superheroes Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II coming out of retirement and joining forces with Rorschach and the godlike Dr. Manhattan. Set primarily in 1985, in an alternate version of the United States where superheroes are real, Richard Nixon is still president of the United States, and the world is on the brink of nuclear disaster, Watchmen tells the story of a group of past and present superheroes as they deal with the murder of one of their own. Unlike other superhero comics, Watchmen treats its characters like realistic people, focusing on their weaknesses and failings rather than their strengths. In fact with a few exceptions none of the superheroes depicted in Watchmen even has super-powers, they are instead ordinary human beings driven by some deeply rooted, hidden compulsion to dress in costumes and fight crime. In 1938, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman. A short time later, superheroes seemed to spill right off the comic book page into the real world with the appearance of Hooded Justice, the world’s first costumed adventurer. Shortly thereafter a kind of fad is born and Hooded Justice is joined by a variety of costumed vigilantes including Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, Captain Metropolis, Mothman, Dollar Bill, Silhouette and the Comedian. Together these vigilantes form the Minutemen with the intent of coordinating crime fighting efforts. For a brief golden age beginning in 1939, the Minutemen manage to do just that, however, time, circumstances, and human foibles take their toll and by 1949 the group is no more. The downfall of these costumed heroes is blamed on several factors including the increased cynicism of the post war world, the advancing age of the heroes, and even the lack of proper villains. Perhaps the greatest blow to costumed adventurers comes from the appearance of Jon Osterman, better known as Dr. Manhattan. Jon Osterman was a nuclear scientist at a government test facility in New Mexico in the 1950s. After a bizarre accident, he was transformed into a creature of pure energy and later introduced to the world as a government sanctioned superhero known as Dr. Manhattan after the project that created the atomic bomb. Dr. Manhattan not only ushered in a new era of superheroes, he also completely transformed the world. As a hero he was touted as a deterrent to aggression by the Soviet Union and was used as a weapon during the Vietnam War, in Watchmen’s alternate history it is implied that his actions helped the US win the war. As a scientist he managed to develop a variety of practical applications for nuclear physics including advanced batteries for electric vehicles. As a man Dr. Manhattan is as troubled as any of the other characters. Nothing in his life has been his own decision. His father pushed him to study science. The government told him what projects to pursue and after his accident decided he should be a superhero. He lives on a military base and his life is closely monitored and tightly regimented. As he grows more powerful, he also grows more detached from humanity as shown by a variety of failed relationships and his penchant for not wearing clothes unless forced to do so by circumstances such as appearing on television or attending social events. Eventually, he grows so distant from humanity he departs for the stars becoming a god-like being intent on creating life on another world. Other super-heroes introduced into the Watchmen universe in the fifties and sixties include Nite Owl II, a man obsessed with birds and flight who has taken up the mantle of the previous Nite Owl; Silk Spectre II a young woman pushed into costumed adventuring by her mother, the original Silk Spectre; the Egyptian themed Ozymandias, a intellectual elitist and utilitarian who is depicted as willing to cause the death of millions in order to save billions more; Rorschach, a vigilante who hides his face behind a mask made of a material designed by Dr. Manhattan which shifts through a wide variety of ink blot style designs from the Rorschach Test; and the Comedian who began his career with the Minutemen as a teenager and sees the world as a vast practical joke. Individually and as a team known as the Crime Busters, these new heroes set out to pick up where the Minutemen left off. They soon come into the same problem, when all the costumed villains are either dead, in prison, retired, or working behind the scenes as ordinary mobsters, who really needs costumed heroes? After all is it really feasible to go after drug dealers and muggers with a hovercraft the shape of an owl’s head and other hi-tech gadgetry? The superheroes’ efforts are further hampered by a public increasingly dissatisfied with violent vigilante justice and police who see the superheroes as a nuisance and hindrance rather than an aid. With public pressure mounting, the government passes federal legislation banning costumed vigilantes not sanctioned by the government and with the exception of Ozymandias who has become a celebrity, the Comedian who has become a government agent, Rorschach who recognizes no authority other than his own, and Dr. Manhattan who is more or less owned by the government, the superheroes go into retirement. The audience sees the story from several perspectives. Alan Moore switches between omniscient narration to first person accounts by various characters most notably the paranoid vigilante Rorschach, the godlike Dr. Manhattan who can see the past, present, and future all at once as a continuous narrative, and even Rorschach’s prison psychologist who never truly understands the superhero mind. The story also makes extensive use of flashbacks, frequently cutting between events in 1985 and those in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s that inform the present story. Moore also frequently makes use of a newsstand owner’s running commentary on events unfolding in the story as kind of Greek chorus reflecting the view of the ordinary man on the street and the storyline of the comic within a comic, Tales of the Black Freighter as kind of parallel to the events of the main story. The story is further supplemented by various fictional primary documents appended to the end of each chapter except the finale. These documents such as the autobiography of Nite Owl I and an explanation of the science of Dr. Manhattan’s powers are presented as works published within the Watchmen’s universe and serve as insights into characters, their motivations, and their world. The story opens with and is often told through excerpts from Rorschach’s journal. His mind is an unpleasant place to be. Besides the sadistic, nihilistic, and amoral Comedian, Rorschach is perhaps the least sympathetic of the superheroes. He is paranoid, a believer in moral absolutes, a follower of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy, a reactionary, and an ultra-nationalist. In his world, good and evil are clearly defined and evil must be punished as harshly as possible. Unlike a hero such as Batman, Rorschach will kill and does so quite often throughout the series. His hard right philosophical stance and violent approach has alienated him from society morally, ethically, philosophically and even physically – a running joke in the series is the comments by other characters about how much he stinks. Much of the early portion of the story is narrated from his point of view, from his journals. Sifting through his paranoia and philosophy is a strain but as unappealing as it is, it does provide interesting insight into the mind of the superhero – especially when he refers to his mask as his real face. Later, when he is arrested for the one crime he didn’t commit, Rorschach refuses to answer to Walter Kovacs, his real name. In fact he separates his life into three major periods: there’s the period when as a boy he was the subject of abuse by his mother, a prostitute; there’s his young adulthood when Kovacs first put on his mask and sometimes pretended to be Rorschach; and finally there’s the period after he took particularly gruesome revenge on a child killer and he became Rorschach who sometimes pretended to be Kovacs. There is a certain power in masks. They are nearly as old as humanity itself and are found in every culture in the world. Masks give their wearer anonymity and allow him or her to become something other than themselves – from sacred healers in the case of the False Face Society of the Iroquois nation to the gods and heroes depicted on the Greek stage; when worn by the costumed superhero they unleash the hero’s alternate personality, the tormented Walter Kovacs becomes the vengeful Rorschach, the timid ornithologist Dan Dreiberg becomes the Batman-esque Nite Owl II. It can be argued that the mask represents the superhero’s true self. Dan Dreiberg for instance feels morally and physically impotent without his mask and costume but feels in control and sexually virile while wearing it. Appropriately, while investigating the death of Eddie Blake, Rorshach refers to the plot to kill masks, not the plot to kill superheroes or costumed adventurers. Curiously, there is no real villain in Watchmen, only people doing the best they can in a bad situation – even Ozymandias carries out his sinister plan because he believes in the “greater good”. For all intents and purposes it is Alan Moore himself who functions as the story’s antagonist, the shadow as Car Jung would say. By using his story to deconstruct the superheroes and show us their faults, he shows why we still need superheroes why they are still relevant to us. The superhero like every other mythic figure reflects our ideals and our flaws. He is a framework from which we can hang our anxieties and fears our dreams and hopes. By putting on the mask and costume the superhero becomes something greater than himself, he or she summons great courage, fights for what’s right, punishes what is wrong. By reading stories we see that we too posses a well of strength deep within, it only takes the right motivation to tap into it. It’s not necessary to put on a mask and cape to fight crime but there are crises in the world that need our attention. They may seem overwhelming, but when many of us tap into that hidden well of strength and work together, problems such as hunger, global warming, terrorism and war can be addressed.

Interview “Strange Things Are Happening” vol. 1, no. 2 Interview blather.net October, 2000