One of the most important and influential works in the field of comic books and graphic novels of the late 1980s,
Watchmen has the distinction of being one of the very first to bring the term "graphic novel" into the mainstream, even though its writer professes to dislike the term. I can see where he's coming from: it's like people who don't want to be accused of reading comics are able to sniff and say “
Comic? No no no. This is a
graphic novel!” as if that makes a difference. Of course, there is something that distinguishes what we think of as comics from graphic novels. Firstly, and most importantly, they do follow the format of a novel in that there is a complete story within their pages, whereas comics will tend to continue the story or stories in other issues, and the story or stories could run for weeks, months or even longer. Secondly, geenrally they're in a hardback or semi-hardback format and usually all pages are in colour, as opposed to some comic books where maybe only the cover and the middle pages are in colour.
Graphic novels can be written specifically for that format, but often they have been previously published in a series and this series is then collected within the pages of what becomes a graphic novel. This is in fact what happened with
Watchmen, along with
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and
V for Vendetta: intrinsically just a way of appealing I guess to comics collectors and squeezing more money out of them, but it's how I came into contact with
Watchmen, through my younger brother.
Written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, two men who had made their name working for
2000AD indeed in the seventies,
Watchmen imagines an alternative future in which the USA won the Vietnam War very quickly with the aid of superheroes sanctioned by the government. As the novel opens however it is a much different time, and tensions are building between the US and the USSR on a scale not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis of the sixties. It is here we begin our tale.
Chapter I: “At midnight, all the agents...”
(A quote from Bob Dylan:
At midnight all the agents and superhuman crew go out and round up all those who know more than they do.)
We open on an extract from the journal of one of the principal characters, one who goes only by the name of Rorschach (yeah, like the psychology test) which plays out as cops investigate what appears to be a murder. A guy called Blake has been hurled from the top window of his apartment; the cops can see the door, which was chained up, has been broken, as has the window through which the unfortunate Blake made his last exit. The cops become interested though when they see a photograph of the deceased shaking hands with Vice President Ford, and realise he must have been someone important. They're prepared to let it lie however, alluding to the unwanted interference of “masked avengers” and “vigilantes”, and mentioning the name Rorschach for the first time. They remember that the object of their conversation is wanted for two counts of murder and has gone into hiding somewhere, but fear the worst if he should surface and get involved in this with “his other buddies”.
Once the cops have gone out of sight, a shadowy figure emerges, hunkers down and picks up a “happy face” badge that was on the pavement, near the blood that is all that remains to mark the passing of the man known as Edward Blake. The badge has just about missed being taken down the nearby drain by the pool of blood washing over the sidewalk, and is just on the edge. The figure, wearing a trenchcoat, hat and a mask that makes him look like the inkblot test, notes that the badge is stained with a splash of blood. He then uses a grapple hook to scale the side of the building and enters the room through the broken window from which the previous occupant so fatally exited. He quickly sets about searching the place, methodically, as if he is looking for something specific, something he knows he will find, something that must be there. We note that he is careful, using a straightened clothes hanger to push open the door, as if he expects a booby trap to be set. Having located what he has been looking for, a small push button on the side of one of the walls of the wardrobe, he pushes it and reveals a hidden panel.
Behind the panel is a suit of some sort, a costume as well as weapons, and, looking a little further, an old photograph of what appears to be some friends, all dressed in costumes of some sort, looking very happy. The scene switches to a garage, where two people, one old and one not so old, are reminiscing over old times. Each appear to be the alter-ego of someone or thing called Nite Owl, as the younger advises the older he was the better of the two, but when the younger one, who is named as Danny, leaves and heads back to his own apartment he finds he has an uninvited visitor. It is the man we saw climb into the apartment of the dead man earlier, he with the odd mask on his face. He is sitting eating a can of beans and seems to know Danny, as he addresses him without turning around. We now learn this man is called Rorschach, the same one whose journal was quoted at the beginning and whom the police are hunting for murder.
Now details begin to get filled in a little. Rorschach hands Danny the smiley face badge he picked up off the ground, and tells him it belongs to someone called “The Comedian”. It seems this person's identity was, up to now, a secret, as Rorschach tells him without real interest that it seems Edward Blake was the Comedian. On hearing that the guy is dead --- Danny says “THE Comedian?” so he obviously at least knows of him --- he leads Rorschach down into the basement where they can talk more privately. Rorschach reveals --- to us anyway; it's unclear as to whether or not Danny knows --- that the Comedian had been working for the government for the last ten years or so, helping to effect regime change where the US wanted it effected, and he points out too that Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl, wrote a book in which he said some unkind things about the Comedian. Danny does not like the implication that his friend, Hollis Mason, teh original Nite Owl might have been involved in the Comedian's murder, but Rorschach shrugs and says he's not implying anything, just making an observation.
As they talk, it becomes clear that Rorschach and Danny (Nite Owl) were once heroes or vigilantes of some sort, as was the Comedian. They obviously partnered up at some point, as when Danny asks what happened to those days, Rorschach snaps “You quit”. It's pretty clear that he, at any rate, is still continuing on in his own special way as some sort of vigilante, even if not one sanctioned by the government, and the final panel before he leaves Danny in the tunnel depicts a man ashamed of himself, and alone.
Having failed to get any information on Blake's death via his usual sources --- breaking a man's fingers (a man he doesn't even know and certainly doesn't care about) in a local seedy dive he frequents --- Rorschach goes to see Adrian Veidt, a super billionaire technology tycoon and said to the the most intelligent man in the world. Veidt theorises that the killing may have been politically motivated --- as has already been established, the Comedian was working for the government and had surely stacked up a lot of enemies ---- but Rorschach discounts this, saying the US has “Doctor Manhattan” and the Soviets are scared of that. Is this a reference, perhaps, to the atomic bomb? Has that really not been used yet in this world? Rorschach seems to think the “Reds” are terrified of it anyway. Rorschach's own theory is that they have a “mask killer” on their hands. He doesn't say what that is, but we can take a guess.
Given that at least three of the people we've met so far (four, including the late Comedian, five if you assume Veidt was also involved) have spoken of heroic deeds, villains and the old days, I think we can put it together. We've already heard of Nite Owl, and Rorschach appears to be another superhero, perhaps part of an “Avengers” or “X-Men”-style group who defended America against crime in maybe the forties or fifties. Most appear to be retired (or dead) now, but it looks like Rorschach is still operating, if independently and alone. He seems disgusted that his former comrades have all given up, and determined to carry on a personal, solo fight against the tide of crime and corruption, as revealed in scathing prose through the entries in his diary.
He goes to see Doctor Manhattan, whom we find out is a person, if such a thing can be said of a blue giant who stands about forty feet high and has no pupils in his eyes. He is in the company of Laurie Jupiter, who does not shed a tear when she hears of the Comedian's death. She tells Rorschach hotly that he tried to rape her mother, back when Blake and she were both Minutemen. Seems this is the older equivalent of the superhero that Rorschach, Nite Owl and Veidt became; their earlier ancestors, so to speak. Rorschach is not impressed with Jupiter's histrionics; the idea of rape does not seem to impact upon him the way it does us. Doctor Manhattan tells Rorschach that he was informed of the death of the Comedian, as now he is the only agent left working for the government. It's hard to see though, how anyone could even hurt the blue giant, let alone kill him!
The meeting does not go as planned though. When Rorschach shrugs off the idea that Blake raped Laurie's mother --- he does not necessarily deny it, but makes it clear he does not care about the event --- Doctor Manhattan tells him to go. When he refuses, he finds himself teleported out of the building. One of the many powers of the titan we will come to learn about. Laurie, chafing in her role of being the one to keep Doctor Manhattan happy, as she tells Danny when she meets him later for dinner, reminisces about the old days and wonders what happened to them. The final line is perfect: she says “There don't seem to be so many laughs around these days” and Danny replies sombrely “What do you expect? The Comedian is dead.”
QUOTES
Rorschach (from his journal): “Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over all the vermin will drown. The accumulated flith of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicans will look up and shout “Save us!” And I'll look down and whisper “No”.”
Cop 1: “I saw the body and he looked beefy enough to protect himself. For a guy his age he was in terrific shape.”
Cop 2: “What, you mean apart from being dead?”
Hollis: “So there I was in the supermarket buying dogfood for ol' Phantom here. I turn the corner of the aisle and wham! I bump into the Screaming Skull! You remember him?”
Danny: “I think I heard you mention him..”
Hollis: “I put him away a dozen times in the forties. But he reformed and turned to Jesus since then. Married, got two kids. We traded addresses. Nice guy.”
Nite Owl: “That little stain, is that bean juice?”
Rorschach: “That's right. Human bean juice!”
(I can't believe that for years --- literally, years --- I didn't get the double meaning here. I thought Rorschach was just likening bean juice to blood because of its colour and the fact that it's kind of the life fluid of a bean. It took me a long time to realise he was making a double entendre here, referring to “human bean juice” but meaning “human being juice”!)
Rorschach (from his journal): “This city is dying of rabies. Is the best I can do to wipe random flecks of foam from its lips?”
Rorschach (to Veidt): “He (the Comedian) stood up for his country, Veidt. Never let anyone retire him . Never cashed in on his reputation. Never set up a company selling posters and diet books and toy soldiers based on himself. Never became a prostitute.”
Rorschach (from his journal): “Meeting with Veidt left bad taste in mouth. He is shallow, pampered, decadent, betraying even his own liberal affectations. Possibly homosexual? Must remember to investigate further. Why are so few of us left active, healthy and without personality disorders?”
(This is a very telling passage: first, it shows that as we could see, Rorschach has little time for Veidt but it also hints that he has serious problems with homosexuals, and if Veidt is one then he plans to find out. More importantly though, he deplores the fact that so few of his comrades are left without personality disorders. He obviously includes himself as one who does not have a problem, while refusing to recognise that if anyone has a serious personality disorder, it is him. To Rorschach, everyone else is sick and he is the only sane man in the asylum. This speaks volumes to how he sees the world, and how he deals with it, and also explains to a degree why he is such a cold, unfeeling, uncaring person and yet fights for what he believes to be right.)
Rorschach (from his journal): “I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.”
Rorschach: “I'm not here to speculate upon the moral lapses of men who died in their country's service. I came to warn...”
Laurie: “Moral lapses! Rape is a moral lapse? You know he broke her ribs? You know he almost choked her?”
Rorschach (from his journal): “Nobody cares. Nobody but me. Are they right? Is it futile? Soon there will be war. Millions will burn. Millions will perish in sickness and misery. What does one death matter against so many? Because there is good and there is evil, and evil must be punished. Even in the face of armageddon, I shall not compromise in this. But there are so many deserving of retribution, and there is so little time.”
(This speech totally encapsulates Rorschach's view of the world. No matter the cost, no matter the mitigating factors, he sees evil as an absolute and there is only one way to deal with it. Like his mask, like his name, like his very soul, the world for Rorschach is black and white, and there are no grey areas. This is what he holds on to, what sustains him in the terrible times to come. This is also what will prove to be his undoing, and will impact massively upon the storyline, to the end and beyond.)