Characters of Watchmen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2009)

The six main characters of the 1986 comic book limited series Watchmen (from left to right): Ozymandias, Silk Spectre II, Doctor Manhattan, The Comedian (kneeling), Nite Owl II 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, Nite Owl II, Ozymandias, Rorschach, and Silk Spectre II. These characters are primarily based on 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.^[1]

[edit] Main characters

[edit] The Comedian (Edward Morgan Blake)

The Comedian is Edward Morgan Blake (which is a reference to Blake Edwards), who began his vigilante career in the 1940s as a teenager. Over the years, he became a patriotic hero for the United States. The Comedian was based 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".^[2]

Already deceased when the story begins, his murder is what 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.^[3] 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".^[3] He and Doctor Manhattan are the only two superheroes to be government-sanctioned after the Keene Act banning vigilantism is passed.

In the Watchmen film he is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

[edit] Doctor Manhattan (Dr. Jon Osterman)

Scientist Jonathan "Jon" Osterman was transformed into a blue-skinned superpowered being after he was caught and disintegrated in an "Intrinsic Field subtractor" in 1959. Afterwards, he became a superhero contracted by the United States government, who gave him the name Doctor Manhattan. He is the only character in the story who possesses real superpowers.^[4] As a result, the existence of Doctor Manhattan has given the U.S. a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union, which has increased tensions between the two nations at the start of the series.^[3]

Doctor Manhattan was based upon Charlton's Captain Atom, who in Moore's original proposal was surrounded by the shadow of nuclear threat. However, the writer found he could do more with Manhattan as a "kind of a quantum super-hero" than he ever could have with Captain Atom.^[2] Moore sought to delve into nuclear physics and quantum physics in constructing the character of Dr. Manhattan. The writer believed that a character living in a quantum universe would not perceive time with a linear perspective, which would influence the character's perception of human affairs. Moore also wanted to avoid creating an emotionless character like Spock from Star Trek, so he sought for Dr. Manhattan to retain "human habits" and to grow away from them and humanity in general.^[1] Gibbons had created the blue character Rogue Trooper, and explained he reused the blue skin motif for Doctor Manhattan as it resembles skin tonally, but has a different hue. Moore incorporated the color into the story, and Gibbons noted the rest of the comic's color scheme made Manhattan unique.^[5] Moore recalled that he was unsure if DC would allow the creators to depict the character as fully nude, which partially influenced how they portrayed the character.^[6] Gibbons wanted to tastefully depict Manhattan's nudity, selecting carefully when full frontal shots would occur and giving him "understated" genitals — like a classical sculpture — so the reader would not initially notice it.^[7]

In the Watchmen film Doctor Manhattan is played by Billy Crudup.

[edit] Nite Owl II (Daniel Dreiberg)

Nite Owl II is Daniel Dreiberg. He is a retired superhero who utilizes owl-themed gadgets, in a manner which led Dave Gibbons to consider him "an obsessive hobbyist... a comics fan, a fanboy."^[8] Nite Owl was based on the Ted Kord version of the Charlton 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.^[2] 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.^[7] 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.^[9] According to Geoff Klock, his civilian form "visually suggests an impotent, middle-aged Clark Kent."^[10]

In the Watchmen film (2009) he is played by Patrick Wilson.

[edit] Ozymandias (Adrian Veidt)

Adrian Veidt was formerly the superhero Ozymandias, drawing inspiration from his hero Alexander the Great and the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, for whom he is named. At the start of Watchmen he has retired to devote his attention to the running of his own enterprises. 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.^[2] Veidt is believed to be the smartest man on the planet, although Veidt has said that he has "some over enthusiastic PR men". 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.^[11] Gibbons noted "One of the worst of his sins [is] kind of looking down on the rest of humanity, scorning the rest of humanity."^[12] In 2008, he was ranked number 10 on the Forbes Fictional 15.^[13] Wizard Magazine also ranked Ozymandias as 25th greatest villian of all time and IGN ranked him as 21st Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time.^[14]

In the Watchmen film he is played by Matthew Goode.

[edit] Rorschach (Walter Kovacs)

A vigilante who wears a white mask that contains constantly shifting ink blots, Rorschach continues to fight crime in spite of his outlaw status. Born Walter Kovacs, his mother was a prostitute. He was raised in a home for troubled youth and worked in the garment industry. By the time the story begins, he is seen walking around New York carrying a "The End Is Nigh" notice. In 1975, after a failed attempt to find and rescue a young kidnapped girl before she was murdered after vowing to her parents that he would be successful, he loses his sanity, viewing Rorschach as his real identity and Kovacs as his "disguise."

Moore based Rorschach on the Steve Ditko creation 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".^[15] 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.^[2] 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'".^[16] 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.^[1]

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

[edit] Silk Spectre II (Laurie Juspeczyk)

Laurie Juspeczyk, the second Silk Spectre, 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.^[2]

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. In a 2003 draft script of Watchmen by David Hayter, which was reviewed by IGN, Laurie has the family name Jupiter and the alter ego name "Slingshot."^[17]

In the Watchmen film she is played by Malin Akerman.

[edit] Supporting 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."^[18] Moore and Gibbons deliberately wanted all their characters "to have a place in this vast organic mechanism that we call the world."^[18] 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."^[19] Moore adds that it is possible to see the story as being as much about the supporting as the main characters:

• Hollis Mason: The first Nite Owl (retired, 1962) and author of the autobiography "Under the Hood" which appears in excerpts throughout the story. On Halloween the Knot-Tops, led by Derf, assaults Hollis in retaliation for the release of Rorschach, which was caused by Nite Owl II (Daniel Dreiberg) and Silk Spectre II (Laurie Juspeczyk); Derf hits Hollis on the head with Hollis's Nite Owl trophy, killing the former superhero (this event is only depicted in the director's cut version of the film). He is roughly based on Dan Garret/The Blue Beetle from, at different times, Fox Feature Syndicate, Holyoke Publications, and Charlton Comics.^{[citation needed]} In the film, he is played by Stephen McHattie.

• Sally Jupiter: The first Silk Spectre (real name Sally Juspeczyk): Domineering mother of Laurie Juspeczyk, and founding member of the Minutemen, now retired. She married her manager, Laurence Schexnayder, shortly after retiring. She narrowly avoided being sexually assaulted by The Comedian, although she later forgave him, and ultimately bore his child (Laurie, however, believed her father to be Hooded Justice, with whom her mother had been pretending to have a relationship). Sally adores the attention she receives from fans of "Silk Spectre." In the film, she is played by Carla Gugino.

• Captain Metropolis (real name Nelson Gardner): Gardner is an ex-Marine Lieutenant and one of the more active members of the Minutemen, a group of superheroes formed in the 1940s; he suggested that a collaboration of forces would be the most effective way to fight crime. In the 1960s, he also unsuccessfully attempted to recruit the second generation of superheroes into a new group called the Crimebusters. He is briefly mentioned as having been decapitated in a car accident in 1974. Allusions were made to a relationship with Hooded Justice, which Moore tacitly confirmed in 1988, saying "I wanted to approximate real life as much as possible and that meant giving each of the characters a sexual identity."^[20] He was played by Daryl Scheelar.

• Hooded Justice: The first masked vigilante, his real identity is never conclusively revealed but is strongly suggested to be circus strongman Rolf Müller. Involved in a phony relationship with Sally Jupiter to hide his homosexual involvement with Captain Metropolis, Hooded Justice disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the early 1950s, presumably murdered by The Comedian, in retaliation for Hooded Justice preventing his former teammate from raping Sally Jupiter years earlier.^[21] He was played by Glenn Ennis in the film.

• Moloch the Mystic (real name Edgar William Jacobi): A former super-villain, Moloch was jailed for a time during the 1970s. He is dying of cancer, received from Adrian Veidt, who later murders him, and frames Rorschach. In the film, he is played by Matt Frewer.

• Dollar Bill (real name Bill Brady as stated in the role playing sourcebook): A bank sponsored member of the Minutemen who died during a bank robbery in 1946. His cloak was caught in the bank's revolving doors and Dollar Bill was shot at point-blank range. In the film, he is portrayed by Dan Payne.

• Mothman (real name Byron Lewis): A former member of the Minutemen who suffered from alcoholism and mental illness later in life. He is forcibly brought to a mental asylum, but was briefly released for the Minutemen's reunion. In the film, he is portrayed by Niall Matter.

• Silhouette (real name Ursula Zandt): A former member of the Minutemen who was forced into retirement in 1946 after her status as a lesbian became public knowledge. She and her partner were murdered six weeks thereafter. She is portrayed by Apollonia Vanova in the film.

• Detective Steven Fine: The policeman that investigates Edward Blake's murder, and captures Rorschach. He deduces that Dan Dreiberg is Nite Owl II, and hints at this to Dreiberg in an effort to warn him away from further activity. Fine dies when Veidt's monster appears in New York. He is portrayed by Jerry Wasserman in the film.

• Detective Joe Bourquin: The partner to Detective Steven Fine. Bourquin dies when Veidt's monster appears in New York. In the film, he is Detective Gallagher and is portrayed by Don Thompson.

• Janey Slater: Janey is the first girlfriend of Dr. Jon Osterman. She leaves him in 1966 after she perceives a relationship building between Osterman and Laurie. Veidt gives Janey cancer as part of his scheme to exile Dr. Manhattan; Janey erroneously believes that Jon Osterman gave it to her. In the film she is played by Laura Mennell.

• Bernard: Bernard is a news vendor who appears periodically on the central New York street corner. Bernard is amongst the many characters who dies when Veidt's monster appears in New York, and he dies trying to protect his young namesake. Moore has stated that he "is in some ways every man, because he's a complete pratt [sic] and doesn't know what's going on... [h]e is like a lot of people, he is a function of the news... [regurgitating news headlines] think[ing] that's an opinion."^[22]

• Dr. Malcolm Long: the psychiatrist who is assigned to evaluate Rorschach after he is apprehended. He is initially very hopeful of "curing" Rorschach, even though his utter lack of emotion makes Long's psychiatric evaluation techniques useless. Rorschach's unveiling of events that shaped his uncompromising mindset greatly affect Dr. Long's own outlook and marriage. Malcolm dies when Veidt's monster appears in New York.

• Seymour: Seymour is a junior worker at the New Frontiersman magazine offices, designed by Moore to be "the ordinary common slob".^[18] He is the final character in Watchmen, playing a pivotal role in the final pages, whom Moore describes as "the most low-life, worthless, nerdish sort of character in the entire book who finally has the fate of the world resting in his pudging fingers".^[18] In the film, Seymour is played by Chris Gauthier; in the theatrical cut his sole appearance is in the film's finale. In the last panel, he gets sauce on his smiley face shirt, mimicking the blood on the Comedian's button.

[edit] References

• Klock, Geoff. How to Read Superhero Comics and Why. Continuum, 2002. ISBN 0-8264-1419-2
• Reynolds, Richard. Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology. B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1992. ISBN 0-7134-6560-3
• Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. Johns Hopkins, 2001. ISBN 0-8018-7450-5
• Gibbons, Dave. "Watching the Watchmen: The Definitive Companion to the Graphic Novel". Titan Books, 2008. ISBN 978-1848560413

[edit] Notes