List of ''Watchmen'' characters

The six main characters of the 1986 comic book limited series Watchmen (from left to right): Ozymandias, the second Silk Spectre, Doctor Manhattan, the Comedian (kneeling), the second Nite Owl and Rorschach

Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series created by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and John Higgins, published by DC Comics in 1986 and 1987. Watchmen focuses on six main characters: the Comedian, Doctor Manhattan, the Nite Owl, Ozymandias, Rorschach, and the Silk Spectre. These characters were originally based on the Mighty Crusaders[1] and then reworked in an unsolicited proposal to fit superhero properties DC had acquired from Charlton Comics in the early 1980s. Series writer Alan Moore created the main characters to present six "radically opposing ways" to perceive the world, and to give readers of the story the privilege of determining which one was most morally comprehensible.[2]

Main characters

The Comedian

The Comedian is a vigilante from the comic miniseries Watchmen. His real name is Edward Morgan Blake. The Comedian was initially based on the Shield and then on the Charlton Comics character Peacemaker, with elements of the Marvel Comics spy character Nick Fury added. Moore and Gibbons saw The Comedian as "a kind of Gordon Liddy character, only a much bigger, tougher guy".[3] Gibbons went with a Groucho Marx-style appearance (mustache and cigar) for the Comedian in his design, deciding that the "clown" look had already been appropriated by the DC Comics supervillain the Joker.[4] His costume itself was noted by Gibbons as being particularly problematic; he was initially designed with a more militaristic costume which was later dropped for a black leather outfit with a "rapist mask".[4] He believes that humans are savage in nature, and that civilization can never be more than an idea. He therefore chooses to become a mockery of society, fighting and killing without reservation.

Blake's murder, which takes place shortly before the story begins in 1985, sets the plot of Watchmen in motion. The character appears throughout the story in flashbacks and aspects of his personality are revealed by other characters.[5] Richard Reynolds described The Comedian as "ruthless, cynical, and nihilistic, and yet capable of deeper insights than the others into the role of the costumed hero".[5] Nicholas Michael Grant said the Comedian is "the only character in the Watchmen universe who is almost totally unlikeable."[6]

In Before Watchmen: The Minutemen #1, additional details are revealed about Comedian while material from the main story is somewhat retconned. It is revealed that the Comedian got his start as a costumed adventurer at the young age of sixteen and had a prior criminal record for assault. Unlike the rest of the costumed heroes of the Minutemen, he is shown to be driven by greed and an inherent love for violence. In particular, he assaults a bartender after breaking up a bar fight and steals liquor and money from the cash register. The issue also implies Blake may have been a victim of severe child abuse as he claims that a "caseworker" told him what he suffered was the cause of his violent outbursts, though Blake's status as an unreliable narrator makes the claim uncertain.[7]

The Comedian's badge in the 2009 film

Before Watchmen: Comedian #1 rewrites the character's back-story further. It is revealed that Blake was close personal friends with Robert Kennedy and John F. Kennedy as well as Jackie Kennedy. This contradicts the main Watchmen series, which cast Edward Blake as a close personal friend of Richard Nixon (for whom he had worked as an assassin). The mini-series reveals that Blake was responsible for the murder of Marilyn Monroe (ordered by Jackie Kennedy, behind her husband's back) as well as revealing that, despite strong innuendo from both Blake and Ozymandias,[8] that he did not kill John Kennedy and was attempting to confront Moloch when he found the villain watching the live coverage of the assassination, including Kennedy's death, which caused the two foes to commiserate in their grief.[9]

The Comedian wears a yellow smiley-face button, which becomes stained with a drop of his blood when he is murdered. Rorschach later finds the button on the ground outside the Comedian's apartment building as he investigates the crime scene.

In the Watchmen film, he is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The film also places him as John F. Kennedy's assassin, as shown in the opening montage.

Doctor Manhattan

Dr. Jonathan "Jon" Osterman is a vigilante and the only character with superpowers,[10] with the arguable exception of Ozymandias, who could possibly possess superhuman speed. He was originally a physicist who was transformed into a blue, irradiated powerful being after he was disintegrated in an Intrinsic Field Subtractor in 1959. He had returned to the chamber to retrieve his girlfriend's watch (which he had repaired), and was accidentally locked inside when the Subtractor started automatically. Osterman was blown into atoms, with nothing left of his body. Within a few months, his disembodied consciousness managed to reconstruct a physical body for itself, after several hideous partial reconstructions. Following his reanimation, he is immediately pressed into service by the United States government, which gives him the name Doctor Manhattan, after the Manhattan Project. Though he dabbles briefly in crime-fighting, his greatest influence is to grant the U.S. a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union during the Cold War, with his most significant action taking place after he is personally asked by President Richard Nixon to intervene in the Vietnam War, leading to an unqualified victory for the U.S. with the defeat of North Vietnam and the Vietcong, preventing the collapse of the Saigon government. Since he works for the U.S. government, he is exempt from the provisions of the Keene Act, but spends much of his time doing advanced technology research and development, and physics research. He is single-handedly responsible for the shift to electric-powered vehicles (by synthesizing the needed elements and chemicals himself) and Veidt credits him with causing a huge leap forward in myriad areas of science and technology. As a result, the technology of the alternative 1985 of the Watchmen universe is far more advanced. After the death of his father in 1969, he does not conceal his birth name and is referenced as "Jon" or "Dr. Osterman".

In the Watchmen film, Doctor Manhattan is a CGI character whose body is modeled after fitness model Greg Plitt, with voice, motion capture, and facial performance provided by Billy Crudup (who also plays Osterman prior to his transformation).

Nite Owl

Nite Owl II (Daniel Dreiberg) is a superhero who uses owl-themed gadgets, in a manner which led Dave Gibbons to consider him "an obsessive hobbyist... a comics fan, a fanboy."[11] Nite Owl was partly based on the Ted Kord version of the DC Comics superhero Blue Beetle. Just as Ted Kord had a predecessor, Moore also incorporated an earlier adventurer who used the name "Nite Owl" (the retired crime fighter Hollis Mason) into Watchmen.[3] While Moore devised character notes for Gibbons to work from, the artist provided a name and a costume design for Hollis Mason he had created when he was twelve.[12] Richard Reynolds noted in Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology that despite the character's Charlton roots, Nite Owl's modus operandi has more in common with the DC Comics character Batman.[13] According to Geoff Klock, his civilian form "visually suggests an impotent, middle-aged Clark Kent."[14] The second Nite Owl is another vigilante who has not revealed his identity in the post-Keene Act era throughout the novel.

"Before Watchmen: Nite Owl #1" establishes that Dan Dreiberg's mother was physically abused by his father. Dreiberg's obsession with the original Nite Owl led him to plant a remote microphone device on Hollis' vehicle in order to track him down.[15] It also establishes the events of how he was taken in as his apprentice: His father dies of an apparent heart attack while beating Dan's mother (Dan and his mother hold off calling for an ambulance) At the funeral, Hollis, having since discovered Dan's abusive childhood via police reports, confronts Dan and agrees to take him on as his sidekick. However, after training him, Hollis announces his retirement and informs Dan that he is giving him the Nite Owl identity rather than creating a sidekick persona for him. It is also revealed that Rorschach met Nite Owl on Dan's very first patrol and offered his assistance as a partner to the young rookie hero.[15]

In the Watchmen film, he is played by Patrick Wilson, who put on 25 pounds (11 kg)[16] in between the filming of his flashback scenes and the 1985 scenes, showing the physical decline of his character.

Ozymandias

Ozymandias (Adrian Veidt) was a former superhero who draws inspiration from his hero Alexander the Great and the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, for whom he is named. A child prodigy, he graduated from high school and college before he was 18 and learned the art of lying as he hid the full scope of his brilliance for most of his childhood after being accused of cheating. When he inherited his family's fortune upon his parents' death in a car accident, Adrian gave it away to see if he could be a success by himself. Veidt traced Alexander the Great's path across the globe and ultimately returned to the United States, where he became a successful businessman. However, when his business partner and would-be love interest overdosed on drugs (purchased with funds given to her by Adrian as a gift to allow her to have fun in New York City one night), Veidt decided to avenge her death as a superhero. His costume was conceived as a Halloween costume but he quickly developed a name for himself as a hero.[17] Two years before the Keene Act passed, Veidt went public with his secret identity and began merchandising his alter ego as he became one of the most important businessmen in the USA. However, his fear of a nuclear war between the USSR and the USA, plus a rivalry with the Comedian (who unknowingly planted the idea of stopping the inevitable nuclear holocaust into Veidt's head), led to him engaging in the vast conspiracy at the heart of the Watchmen series.

Ozymandias was directly based on Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, whom Moore had admired for using his full brain capacity as well as possessing full physical and mental control.[3] Veidt is believed to be the smartest man on the planet, even capable of outsmarting Dr Manhattan. His combination of intelligence and highly advanced fighting skills makes him perhaps the most feared and dangerous of the mortal vigilantes. He was even able to catch a bullet fired at him (Chapter XII, page 15). He is often accompanied by his genetically-engineered lynx, Bubastis. Richard Reynolds noted that by taking initiative to "help the world", Veidt displays a trait normally attributed to villains in superhero stories, and in a sense he is the "villain" of the series; however, he purposely acts for an objective greater good, thus avoiding the traditional "villain" classification, which is typically self-serving, delusional or evil.[18] Gibbons noted "One of the worst of his sins [is] kind of looking down on the rest of humanity, scorning the rest of humanity."[19] In 2008, he was ranked number 10 on the Forbes Fictional 15.[20] Wizard magazine also ranked Ozymandias as 25th Greatest Villain of All Time and IGN ranked him as 21st Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time.[21]

In the Watchmen film, Veidt is played by Matthew Goode. His costume was designed to parody the rubber suits featuring nipples in the film Batman & Robin. This incarnation of Veidt uses a German accent when speaking with friends and an American accent when speaking publicly. Instead of breeding a giant monster and placing it in New York to massacre half the city as in the comics, Veidt destroys New York, along with many major cities across the globe, with energy blasts designed to look as though Doctor Manhattan had caused it, bringing world peace.

Rorschach

Rorschach is a noir private detective-themed vigilante who wears a white mask with constantly shifting ink blots. Rorschach continues to fight crime in spite of his outlaw status, eventually making the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. He was born Walter Joseph Kovacs, the son of an abusive prostitute by a man whose last name his mother never bothered to learn, and spent much of his childhood in a home for troubled youth, after which he began working in a garment factory. After reading about the murder of Kitty Genovese and the reported complete indifference of the witnesses of the crime, he modified a special fabric that she had ordered, according to him, to create a mask and became a vigilante, eventually forming a productive partnership with Nite Owl II. In 1975, after failing to rescue a young girl, he lost all faith in humanity and began to embrace extremist right-wing ideology.

When the story begins, a man is seen walking around New York carrying a sign that reads, "The End Is Nigh," but it is not until several chapters later that the reader learns that this man is Kovacs/Rorschach.

Moore based Rorschach on the Steve Ditko creations The Question and Mr. A. Moore said he was trying to "come up with this quintessential Steve Ditko character someone who's got a funny name, whose surname begins with a 'K,' who's got an oddly designed mask".[22] As a result, Rorschach's real name is given as Walter Kovacs. Ditko's Charlton character The Question also served as a template for creating Rorschach.[3] Comics historian Bradford W. Wright described the character's world view as "a set of black-and-white values that take many shapes but never mix into shades of gray, similar to the ink blot tests of his namesake". Rorschach sees existence as random and, according to Wright, this viewpoint leaves the character "free to 'scrawl [his] own design' on a 'morally blank world'".[23] Moore said he did not foresee the death of Rorschach until the fourth issue when he realized that his refusal to compromise would result in him not surviving the story.[2]

Rorschach is close friends with the second Nite Owl. He is the first hero Rorschach meets with when Comedian is killed[24] and Nite Owl organizes a rescue mission to free Rorschach from jail when he is arrested.[25] Before Watchmen: Nite Owl reveals that Rorschach was active as a hero before Nite Owl made his debut and on the latter's first night out as a hero, Rorschach sneaks into his owl ship and offers his services to Nite Owl as a partner.[15]

In the Watchmen film, he is played by Jackie Earle Haley.

Silk Spectre

Laurel Jane 'Laurie' Juspeczyk (Silk Spectre II) is the daughter of Sally Jupiter, the first Silk Spectre. Laurie's mother apparently wanted her to follow in her footsteps and so she fought crime for ten years before the Keene Act banned vigilantes. Unlike the other protagonists, Silk Spectre was not based on a particular Charlton character, although her relationship with Dr. Manhattan is similar to that between Captain Atom and the heroine Nightshade. Moore felt he needed a female hero in the cast and drew inspiration from comic book heroines such as Black Canary and Phantom Lady.[3]

Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre #1 revealed that Laurie got her start as a super-hero being trained by her mother to continue the family legacy, before running away from home at the age of 16[26] and relocating to San Francisco with her boyfriend.[27]

Laurie is kept on retainer by the government because of her relationship with Doctor Manhattan and lives on a government base at the beginning of the comic. When Doctor Manhattan leaves Earth, the government has her removed from the base and suspends her expense account, forcing her to move in with Dan, with whom she starts a romantic relationship. At the end of the eighth issue, Doctor Manhattan appears and takes her to Mars because he knows she wants to convince him to save the world. On Mars, she realizes that The Comedian was her biological father. After the final encounter with Veidt at the end of the series, she assumes the identity of Sandra Hollis and continues her relationship with Dan. An offhand comment to Dan, in which she claims to want a better costume, with leather and a sidearm, implies she's thinking about taking over her late father's identity, thus becoming the second Comedian.

In the Watchmen film, she is played by Malin Åkerman. In a 2003 draft script by David Hayter, which was reviewed by IGN, Laurie uses the name Jupiter, and the alter ego name "Slingshot".[28] The former detail seems to have been retained in the final version of the film (though the Nite Owl's goggles gave her last name as her mother's maiden name, Juspeczyk). The film gives her date of birth as December 2, 1949. Silk Spectre was ranked 24th in Comics Buyer's Guide's 100 Sexiest Women in Comics list.[29]

Minor characters

Key to the success of Watchmen is the wide range of characters it features beyond the 'main' stars. Moore stated in 1988 that, in Watchmen, "we spend a good deal of time with the people on the street. We wanted to spend as much time detailing these characters and making them believable as we did the main characters."[30] Moore and Gibbons deliberately wanted all their characters "to have a place in this vast organic mechanism that we call the world."[30] The fleshing-out of the world was, in Moore's words, to demonstrate that "all the way through the entire series human life is going on with all of its petty entanglements and minor difficulties and all the rest of it."[31] Moore adds that it is possible to see the story as being as much about the supporting as the main characters:

What Nixon does and what Dr. Manhattan does and what Veidt does — it affects the people on the street corner but only peripherally, indirectly... And yet, in some ways, those people on the street corner, it's their story. They're the people we're concerned about.[31]

Minutemen

Adversaries

Other characters

References

Notes

  1. Khoury, George (December 2008). The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore (Indispensable ed.). TwoMorrows. p. 109.
  2. 1 2 Eno, Vincent; El Csawza. "Vincent Eno and El Csawza meet comics megastar Alan Moore". Strange Things Are Happening. May/June 1988.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Cooke, Jon B. "Alan Moore discusses the Charlton-Watchmen Connection". Comic Book Artist. August 2000. Retrieved on October 8, 2008.
  4. 1 2 Gibbons, Dave; John Higgons (2008). Watching the Watchmen. United States: DC Comics. p. 26. ISBN 978-1-84856-041-3.
  5. 1 2 Reynolds, p. 106
  6. Paige MacGregor (August 14, 2008). "Fatal Attraction: Hating to Love Watchmen’s Comedian". Hating to Love Watchmen's Comedian. Fandomania. Retrieved 21 November 2009.
  7. Before Watchmen: The Minutemen #1
  8. Watchmen #10, 12
  9. Before Watchmen: The Comedian #1
  10. Wright, p. 272
  11. Gibbons, "Watchmen Round Table: Moore & Gibbons" in David Anthony Kraft's Comics Interview (1988), p. 47
  12. Kallies, Christy. "Under the Hood: Dave Gibbons". SequentialTart.com. July 1999. Retrieved on October 12, 2008
  13. Reynolds, p. 32
  14. Klock, p. 66
  15. 1 2 3 Before Watchmen: Nite Owl #1
  16. Amsden, David (1 March 2009). "Patrick Wilson, Superstar". New Yorker. Retrieved 14 April 2009.
  17. Watchmen #11 and Before Watchmen: Ozymandias #1
  18. Reynolds, p. 110
  19. "Talking With Dave Gibbons". WatchmenComicMovie.com. October 16, 2008. Retrieved on October 28, 2008.
  20. Ewalt, David M. "The Forbes Fictional 15 No. 10 Veidt, Adrian". Forbes.com. December 18, 2008. Retrieved on January 17, 2009.
  21. Ozymandias is number 21 Archived 2012-06-16 at the Wayback Machine., IGN.
  22. Stewart, Bhob. "Synchronicity and Symmetry". The Comics Journal. July 1987.
  23. Wright, p. 272–73
  24. Watchmen #1
  25. Watchmen #10
  26. Moore, Alan, and Dave Gibbons. "Chapter 9: The Darkness of Mere Being." Watchmen. New York: DC Comics, 1987. 14. Print.
  27. Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre #1
  28. Stax. "The Stax Report: Script Review of Watchmen." IGN. September 9, 2004. Retrieved on March 5, 2009.
  29. Frankenhoff, Brent (2011). Comics Buyer's Guide Presents: 100 Sexiest Women in Comics. Krause Publications. p. 23. ISBN 1-4402-2988-0.
  30. 1 2 3 4 Christopher Sharrett, "(Interview with) Alan Moore," in David Anthony Kraft's Comics Interview #65 (1988), p. 7
  31. 1 2 Moore, "Watchmen Round Table: Moore & Gibbons," in David Anthony Kraft's Comics Interview #65 (1988), p. 37
  32. Moore in Comics Interview #65 (1988), p. 41
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