List of Watchmen characters

Characters from the 1986 comic book limited series Watchmen. Clockwise from top: Doctor Manhattan, the Comedian, Ozymandias, the second Nite Owl, Rorschach, Captain Metropolis, and the second Silk Spectre.

This is a character guide for the DC Comics 1986 twelve-issue comic book limited series Watchmen. Based on characters DC had acquired from Charlton Comics in the early 1980s, Watchmen writer Alan Moore created the main character to present four or five "radically opposing ways" to perceive the world and to give readers of the story the privilege of determining which one was most morally comprehensible.

Main characters

The Comedian

The Comedian is Edward Blake, who began his vigilante career in the 1940s as a young man. 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".

Already deceased when the story begins, his murder is what sets the plot in motion. The character appears throughout the story in flashbacks and aspects of his personality are revealed by other characters. 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". He and Dr. Manhattan are the only two government-sanctioned superheroes after the Keene Act banning superheroes is passed. Although he attempted to rape the first Silk Spectre in the 1940s, issue eight reveals that years later he fathered her daughter Laurie.

Doctor Manhattan

After an accident as a scientist, Jon Osterman was transformed into something non-human, and the only character in Watchmen with superhuman powers (except for possibly those characters whose psychic ability is alluded to). Throughout the series, he becomes increasingly detached from humanity as a whole. As the story progresses, he disavows any interest in human affairs and rejects the validity of any notion of morality. For example he gradually abandons clothes. His ability to see the world outside of time leads him to embrace determinism. Doctor Manhattan is identified as something of a God-figure as Watchmen progresses; after dying and resurrecting himself, he gains near omniscient knowledge and almost omnipotent powers, and in his final scene walks on water and leaves to create human life somewhere else. For all his god-like power, he is as flawed and human as the rest, having difficulties with relationships. He personifies intellect over emotion. His existence has, to no small extent, shaped the entire history and society of the world since he was brought into existence. Because of his aloofness and somewhat nihilist philosophy, he is vilified by several characters throughout Watchmen.

The character of Doctor Manhattan is primarily inspired by Captain Atom.

Nite Owl (Dan Dreiberg)

Something of a recluse, Dan Dreiberg has a strong interest in ornithology which manifests itself in some of his inventions, which relate to owls in some way. Detached from his parents, he struggles to find purpose with his life, thus glamorizing the notion of being a costumed crimefighter. He admits to idolizing the exploits of the original Nite Owl and also being quite taken with childhood notions of nobility and adventure. However, he does not have a resolute purpose, such as that of Rorschach, and is quite contingent, often relying on others to tell him what to do rather than following his own desires. Dreiberg seems out of all the heroes to represent the everyman, the pragmatist driven by a waxing and waning standard of ethics that seeks ultimate good but is willing to compromise on specifics. Additionally, his crimefighting pursuits reflect most clearly the ineffectiveness of the costumed heroes of his world, as he spends immense amounts of funding to craft vehicles and specialized garments ready for missile warfare, sub-zero temperatures, radar invisibility, etc. to catch what he dismisses as "hookers" and "purse snatchers". But when he, Silk Spectre, and Rorschach (especially he and Rorschach) begin uncovering the mastermind behind recent events, all his inventions suddenly become integral to their pursuit. He also becomes romantically involved with Laurie Juspeczyk, the second Silk Spectre.

The character of Nite Owl (Dan Dreiberg) is inspired primarily by the Blue Beetle with a few similarities to Batman.

Ozymandias

Adrian Veidt was formely the superhero Ozymandias, drawing inspiration from his hero Alexander the Great. 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. Veidt is believed to be one of the smartest men on the planet, and is often accompanied by his genetically-engineered pet 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. Gibbons noted "One of the worst of his sins [is] kind of looking down on the rest of humanity, scorning the rest of humanity." He was recently placed at #10 Forbes Fictional 15.

Rorschach

Main article: Rorschach (comics)

An extreme example of moral absolutism, Rorschach (Walter Kovacs) is uncompromising in his answer to evil: it must be punished, whatever the cost - though he admits to his psychiatrist that masked men "do what we have to do." However, he says that there is no meaning or moral absolutes imposed from beyond, that they are all created in the minds of the individual. His staunch opposition to crime is equaled by his total lack of empathy for criminals, whom he treats as non-human; his disdain for conventional law, government, and the police causes him to become a vigilante, as, in his belief, the law does not do enough to combat crime. He shows little reverence for "conventional morality," willing to take drastic measures to achieve his goals, such as the execution, or even the torture, of criminals. His "law and order" attitude, coupled with his readership of the right-wing extremist publication The New Frontiersman, make clear he values like-minded strongly-held and strongly-expressed views of the moral deterioration of society in general; however, the punishment of crime is the only thing relevant to his personal crusade, and is thus the only thing he expresses interest in. Rorschach is determined not to spend his life as a bystander, thus, like Batman, crime has driven him to become a crusader.

In Rorschach's case, it was the murder of Kitty Genovese (and the inaction of her neighbors) that inspired him to fight crime. Kovacs fashioned a mask out of a section of a dress he chooses to believe belonged to Genovese, its unique shifting white-and-black pattern originating from a special material created by Dr. Manhattan. The clear division between black and white in the mask mirrors Rorschach's absolutist outlook: things are either right or wrong, black or white; there is no middle ground, no "grey area," probably a reference to Steve Ditko's comic book hero, Mr. A., whose calling card is divided into equal parts of black and white.

However, Rorschach was just another masked adventurer, content to leave punishment to the legal system, until one of his investigations led him to discover the brutal murder of an innocent and very young girl. The girl was butchered and fed to two German shepherds by her kidnapper. This heinous act sent Rorschach into a rage; no longer satisfied with merely stopping crimes, Rorschach decided that he would also dictate the punishment, though he was previously content to simply leave perpetrators of crimes bound and gagged for the police to find. This event is described by Rorschach himself as the point where Walter Kovacs died, and Rorschach was born. Laws no longer mattered to Rorschach, and he was the only masked adventurer to continue to operate without government sanction after the ratification of the Keene Act. His stance toward the Keene Act was epitomized in his killing of a notorious serial rapist: he subsequently deposited the body in front of a police station with a note attached to it, saying "NEVER!"

The character of Rorschach is primarily inspired by The Question and Mr. A, both characters created by Steve Ditko.

Silk Spectre (Laurie Juspeczyk)

Laurie Juspeczyk, the second Silk Spectre, is the daughter of the Comedian and Sally Jupiter, the first Silk Spectre. She says that her mother wanted her to follow in her footsteps and 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. Moore felt he needed a female hero in the cast and drew inspiration from comic book heroines such as Black Canary and Phantom Lady.

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 kicks her off the base and suspends her expense account. At the end of the eighth issue, Doctor Manhattan appears and takes her to Mars to convince him to save the world. On Mars, she realizes that the Comedian was her father. After the final encounter with Veidt at the end of the series, she assumes the identity of Mrs. Hollis.

Supporting characters

• Hollis Mason: the first Nite Owl, now retired.
• Sally Juspeczyk: the first Silk Spectre and mother of Laurie Juspeczyk, who changed her name to Sally Jupiter. Now retired.
• Captain Metropolis: an ex-Marine Lieutenant and one of the more active proponents 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.
• Hooded Justice: the world's first masked vigilante, who disappered under mysterious circumstances
• Moloch the Mystic: a former supervillain who was jailed for a time. He is dying of cancer. Rorschach is later framed for his murder.
• Dollar Bill: a member of the Minutemen who died during a bank robbery in the 1940s.
• Mothman: a former member of the Minutes who suffered from alcoholism and mental illness later in life.
• Silhouette: a former member of the Minutemen who retired after her status as a lesbian became public knowledge. Was murdered by one of her enemies.
• Detective Steven Fine: the policeman that investigates Edward Blake's murder, and captures Rorschach. He knows Dan Dreiberg is Nite Owl II, and implies that knowledge to Dreiberg, in an effort to warn him away from further activity.
• Detective Joe Bourquin: the partner to Detective Steven Fine.
• Janey Slater: the first girlfriend of Jon Osterman. She leaves him after she perceives a relationship building between Osterman and Laurie.
• Laurence Schexnayder: the ex-agent of and husband to Sally Jupiter.
• Bernard: a news vendor who appears recurringly.
• Bernie: a kid who reads Tales of the Black Freighter by Bernard's newsstand.
• Dr. Malcolm Long: the psychiatrist who is assigned to evaluate Rorschach after he is is apprehended. He is initially very hopeful of "curing" Rorschach, even though his utter lack of emotion makes Long's psychiatric evaluation techniques useless. When Rorschach reveals the exact details of his past to him, Long is profoundly affected.
• Gloria Long: wife of Malcolm.
• Big Figure: underworld leader brought down by Rorschach and the second Nite-Owl. Attempts to gain revenge on Rorschach in prison. It is implied (but not shown) that Rorschach drowns him in a men's room toilet.

Reference

• Reynolds, Richard. Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology. B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1992. ISBN 0-7134-6560-3