Rorschach (comics)

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Rorschach
Rorschach. Art by Dave Gibbons.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	Watchmen #1 (1986)
Created by	Alan Moore (story) and Dave Gibbons (art), based on The Question and Mr. A created by Steve Ditko
In-story information
Alter ego	Walter Joseph Kovacs
Abilities	Peak human ability, master martial-artist

Rorschach (pronounced /ˈrɔrʃɑːk/ ROR-shahk) is a fictional comic book superhero featured in the acclaimed 1986 DC Comics miniseries Watchmen. Rorschach was created by Watchmen writer Alan Moore with artist Dave Gibbons, but as with most of the central characters in the series, he was an analog for a Charlton Comics character, in this case The Question and Mr A, characters created by Steve Ditko, whose work Moore admired.

His mask displays a constantly morphing inkblot that is based on the ambiguous designs used in Rorschach inkblot tests. Rorschach considers the mask his true "face". He continues his one-man battle against crime long after superheroes have become both detested and illegal. Rorschach’s actions and journal writings display a belief in moral absolutism and moral objectivism, where good and evil are clearly defined and evil must be violently punished. He has alienated himself from the rest of society to achieve these aims. Politically, he is both anti-communist and anti-liberal. Rorschach is described by Alan Moore as an extremely right-wing character.^[1]

Moore has said that the character's real name, Walter Kovacs, was inspired by Ditko's tendency to give his characters names beginning with the letter K.^[1] In an interview for the BBC's Comics Britannia, Moore stated that Rorschach was created as a way of exploring how an archetypical Batman-type character—a driven, vengeance-fueled vigilante—would be like in the real world. He concluded that the short answer was "a nutcase."^[2] Rorschach was named the sixteenth greatest comic book character by Empire magazine^[3] and the sixth greatest by Wizard magazine.^[4]

Contents 1 Fictional character history 1.1 Childhood 1.2 Life before Watchmen 1.3 Events of Watchmen 2 Abilities and equipment 3 Beliefs and worldview 4 References in other comics 5 Other media 5.1 Film 5.2 Video games 6 Notes

Fictional character history

Childhood

Rorschach, born Walter Joseph Kovacs, is the son of Sylvia Kovacs, a prostitute, and "Charlie" (surname unknown). He was born March 21, 1940. His mother was physically and emotionally abusive towards him, once telling him that she wished she had aborted him. After defending himself from bullies at age 10 (biting the face of one boy and using a lit cigarette to partially blind the other), Child Services placed him in a special home. Kovacs never saw his mother again. When informed of her death at the hands of her pimp, his only response was "Good."^[5] Kovac's prison psychiatrist, however, Dr. Malcolm Long, would later interpret Kovac's decision to become Rorschach as misdirected aggression toward his hated mother, and the stated inspiration of Kitty Genovese [see below] as a cover for this.^[5]

Life before Watchmen

After leaving school, Kovacs took a job as an unskilled tailor. The prospect of handling women's clothing caused him discomfort, and he later commented that the job was "bearable but unpleasant". A few weeks before her murder in front of an apartment, a woman with an Italian name ordered a dress from him, made of a fabric created by Doctor Manhattan that used two pressure and heat-sensitive liquids suspended between two layers of latex to create black-on-white shifting color patterns, "always changing, never mixing into grey". When the dress was completed, the customer was unsatisfied with the design, and she refused to pay for it. Kovacs took it home for himself, fascinated with the fabric. Upon reading of Kitty Genovese's murder in the newspaper, he claims he became disgusted with the amount of crime in New York City and, creating a mask from the dress, became the vigilante Rorschach. He believed the dress was originally made for Kitty Genovese.

Rorschach's life as a "masked adventurer" involved fighting gang warfare and masked villains such as Moloch the Mystic. His greatest victory was taking down a large chain of gangs with his partner Nite Owl II, events mentioned in the graphic novel. At this point, he did not yet kill, and only beat criminals unconscious for the police to arrest. This went on until 1975, when he investigated the kidnapping of Blair Roche, a young girl. His investigations brought him to an abandoned dressmaker's shop. After finding the remains of a young child's blanket in the shop, a heavily used cutting board, and noticing two guard dogs chewing on a human bone, he realized to his profound horror what had happened: the kidnapper, Grice, had murdered the girl, dismembered her body, and fed the pieces to his dogs. He claims that "It was Kovacs who closed his eyes. It was Rorschach who opened them again". He takes justice into his own hands and kills the dogs, and then sets the house on fire with Grice handcuffed to a pipe and still alive inside, leaving him with a hacksaw. The hacksaw was not strong enough to cut through the handcuffs in the little time Rorschach would give him, but would allow Grice to amputate his handcuffed left hand to escape. Grice perished in the ensuing fire.^[5]

Events of Watchmen

In the beginning of the graphic novel, Rorschach is characterized as the only vigilante who remains active after the passage of the Keene Act outlawed them. He is seen as 'paranoid' and 'crazy', even by his former vigilante partner Nite Owl. Rorschach investigates the murder of a man named Edward Blake, discovering that he is the Comedian, one of only two government-sponsored heroes. He believes that someone is picking off costumed superheroes, a view that strengthens when Doctor Manhattan is forced into exile and when Adrian Veidt, the former vigilante Ozymandias, is the victim of an attempted assassination.

Rorschach questions Moloch, a former villain, who tells him what little he knows. Later, having received an offer for more information apparently from Moloch, Rorschach visits him again, only to find him dead, shot through the head. The police, tipped off anonymously over the phone by Veidt, have the place surrounded and arrest him after a fight. A psychiatrist named Malcolm Long is assigned to talk to him, and his origin is revealed to the reader.

The jail is full of criminals who hate Rorschach, since he was responsible for putting them behind bars. He is threatened with beatings and death, but Rorschach is never intimidated, answering only "None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with you... you're locked up in here with me." During lunch, Rorschach throws a pot full of hot fat at one prisoner who intended to stab him with a screwdriver. After that man dies, the prison breaks out in a riot. Three men try to kill Rorschach, but he outwits and kills them. Nite Owl and Silk Spectre II, two other vigilantes, begin to take his 'mask killer' theory seriously, and break him out of jail.

Doctor Manhattan comes back from his exile to transport Silk Spectre II to Mars. Rorschach and Nite Owl retrieve Rorschach's spare costume hidden in his apartment and then go into underworld bars to find out who ordered the assassination attempt on Veidt. They obtain a name, a company called Pyramid Deliveries, and then break into Veidt's office. Nite Owl correctly deduces Veidt's password and finds that he ran Pyramid Deliveries. Rorschach, who has been keeping a journal throughout the duration of the novel, finishes it, stating that "whatever nature of the conspiracy, Adrian Veidt is responsible", before dropping it into a mailbox.

Nite Owl and Rorschach fly out to Antarctica. There they learn the true nature of the conspiracy and Veidt's motivations – to unite the world against a perceived alien threat and stop the possibility of a nuclear holocaust. Veidt then reveals that the two heroes are too late to stop his plan, which he has triggered, thirty-five minutes earlier. Doctor Manhattan and Silk Spectre II arrive at the base after viewing the catastrophic damage Veidt's psychic monster has inflicted on New York City. Despite their mutual horror, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre II and Dr. Manhattan all agree to keep quiet about the true nature of the alien. Rorschach, however, refuses to cooperate and says "Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise." Doctor Manhattan follows him outside and vaporizes him after Rorschach yells, "Do it!"

In the final scenes of the comic, Rorschach's journal has made it to the offices of the New Frontiersman, a right-wing newspaper. Outraged by the new accord between the Soviet Union and the United States, the editor pulls a two-page column. He leaves it to his assistant to decide how to fill that space, and the assistant is seen reaching for the 'Crank File', which contains the journal. The outcome is left to the reader's imagination.

Abilities and equipment

Like most characters in Watchmen, Rorschach has no "super powers". He merely has his will and technical abilities. Rorschach uses any and all weapons that are available at the time, such as pepper to blind a police officer and the use of hairspray in combination with a match to set fire to another police officer, as well as Moloch's house. During the series he uses cooking fat, a toilet bowl, a cigarette, a fork and his jacket all as weapons. He owns a gas-powered grappling gun, which he uses to climb buildings, as seen in Chapter 1, which was designed and built by Nite Owl II.

Rorschach is well versed in street combat, gymnastics, and boxing. In the course of the limited series he showed the ability to best multiple armed assailants with little difficulty. At one point it is implied that he held down the entire Lower East side of Manhattan from rioters. Rorschach is also relatively indifferent to physical pain and discomfort, shown when he walks through Antarctica in only a trenchcoat. Due to his time in juvenile detention facilities and group homes as a child he is as street savvy as any criminal. Rorschach also demonstrated the ability to break into a variety of locked buildings and homes, suggesting the expertise of a master thief. He is also shown to be extremely strong. This is demonstrated when he shatters a toilet bowl by kicking it once, and easily breaking through a lock that gave an entire team of police officers more trouble.

Despite his mental instability, Rorschach was described as "tactically brilliant, and unpredictable" by Nite Owl, and possesses surprisingly good detective skills. During his childhood he was described as bright, and excelled in literature and religious education.

Beliefs and worldview

Rorschach is noted among other comic book characters for having a distinct moral absolutist life philosophy. Comics historian Bradford W. Wright described the character's world view "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'". Rorschach is a very right wing character, and has shown beliefs in economic liberalism, militarism, nationalism, and social conservatism. His nationalism is shown when he ignores The Comedian's many faults, describing his rape of Sally Jupiter as a "moral lapse", since he was a war hero and patriot.

References in other comics

• The Question, on whom Rorschach was partly based, actually read a copy of the Watchmen trade paperback in Question #17 (1988). Question is briefly inspired by the comic and the character of Rorschach, leading him to take a more physically aggressive style of crime fighting. At the end of the issue, having been overpowered in hand-to-hand combat by a pair of villains, Question remarks "Rorschach sucks" when asked if he had any final words, just before being rescued by the Green Arrow.^[6]
• Rorschach has an easter egg appearance in the limited DC Comics series Kingdom Come by Alex Ross and Mark Waid. He appears in issue two, as a background character standing next to the Question, during a scene in which Superman visits a metahuman bar.
• In Astonishing X-Men vol. 3 #6, Rorschach makes another cameo appearance in one of the riot scenes, running across the panel.
• Rorschach was featured in promo artwork for the Countdown to Final Crisis: Arena mini-series, where he is being beaten by Batman from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. However, DC opted to omit Rorschach and the "Dark Knight Returns" Batman from the actual "Countdown to the Final Crisis: Arena" mini-series.

Other media

Film

In the 1989 Sam Hamm film draft script, Rorschach emits a trademark hiss. Blair Roche is called a "little Franco girl" and Rorschach kills the kidnapper using a different method; he stuffs raw meat in the kidnapper's mouth, douses him with steer blood, and cajoles the dogs into eating him (mirroring what Marv did to Kevin in Sin City). Rorschach kills the kidnapper's dogs afterwards. In Hamm's script Rorschach does not die.^[7] In the 2003 David Hayter film draft script, Rorschach is described as a "homeless man" who has greasy hair that obscures his face. In the script, the movie is set in 2005, with the Blair Roche incident occurring in 1995.^[8] The final film follows the original comic very closely, retaining the 1980s time period and his signature mask.

Jackie Earle Haley portrays the character in the 2009 film adaptation.^[9] Prior to Haley's casting, Jude Law, who is a fan of the comic, had expressed great interest in portraying Rorschach (or Nite-Owl) if a film version was made. When Paul Greengrass was slated to direct the film in 2001, Simon Pegg and Daniel Craig met with producers about taking the part. Doug Hutchison had also expressed interest in playing the character.

Video games

The 2009 video game Watchmen: The End is Nigh features Rorschach and Nite Owl as partners, the game follows the two during their vigilante acts prior to the Watchmen movie.

Notes

v • d • e Watchmen Works Comic book • Film • Video game • Soundtrack • Score  • Motion comic Creators Alan Moore • Dave Gibbons Characters Characters of Watchmen • Rorschach See also Saturday Morning Watchmen • Watchmensch