Rorschach (character)

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	Excellent athlete; highly skilled boxer, gymnast, and streetfighter; ruthless, intuitive detective

Rorschach (Template:Pron-en 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 Steve Ditko's The Question, and Ditko's small press character Mr A.

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. Moore depicted Rorschach as being extremely right-wing, and morally uncompromising, a viewpoint that has alienated him from the rest of society. Politically, he is both anti-communist and anti-liberal (according to the definition of Liberalism commonly accepted in contemporary U.S. political parlance, which greatly differs from classical Liberal Democracy). He is described as being mentally ill by several characters.

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. 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." Rorschach was named the sixteenth greatest comic book character by Empire magazine and the sixth greatest by Wizard magazine.

Fictional character biography

Before Watchmen

Rorschach, born Walter Joseph Kovacs, is the son of Sylvia Kovacs, a prostitute, and "Charlie" (surname unknown). His mother was abusive and did not care for him. In July of 1951, at the age of 10, Kovacs became involved in a fight with two older bullies, in which he partly blinded one with a cigarette and took a large bite out of the other's cheek. He was removed from his mother's care and put in "The Lillian Charleton Home for Problem Children" in New Jersey until 1956, where he showed talent at English and Religious education, as well as gymnastics and amateur boxing.

After finishing school, Kovacs took a job as a garment worker in a dress shop; it was here he acquired the fabric that he later wore as Rorschach. The fabric, a new material created by Dr. Manhattan, contained heat-sensitive liquids between layers of latex that created a black-on-white shifting color. Kovacs recovered the material from a rejected dress that had been a special order by a young woman with an Italian name. Two years later in March of 1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered and raped, and when Kovacs read about the unresponsiveness of her neighbors, he became disgusted not only with crime, but the underlying selfishness inherent in all people. Inspired by Genovese's fate (he later told his prison psychologist "Woman who ordered dress. Kitty Genovese. I'm sure that was the woman's name."), he fashioned a mask from the dress's fabric and began fighting crime as the vigilante Rorschach. Initially, Kovacs let the criminals live and left them for the police to arrest. In the mid 1960s, he teamed up with the second Nite Owl, the partnership proving highly successful at battling organized crime.

In 1975, he investigated the kidnapping of a young girl named Blair Roche after promising her parents that he would return her alive and well. He was given the name of an abandoned dressmaker shop, where he finds a little girl's underwear in the stove and two dogs gnawing on a human bone. Believing that its occupant, a man named Gerald Grice, killed Roche, Kovacs kills the dogs and waits for his arrival. When Grice comes back, Kovacs handcuffs him to a stove and pours kerosene around him. He then hands Grice a hacksaw, implying that he will have to cut off his own hand to escape, before setting the building on fire, killing Grice.

In 1977, when the Keene Act outlaws vigilantes, Kovacs responds by killing a wanted multiple rapist and leaving his body outside police headquarters with a note saying only "NEVER!"

By 1985 and the events of Watchmen, Kovacs is the last active vigilante. The first character to appear in the series is a red-haired man carrying a sign reading "THE END IS NIGH". A police report describes him as a "prophet-of-doom sandwich-board man seen locally over the last several years". This character appears several times through the early chapters. It is not until Rorschach's arrest and unmasking that it is revealed that this is Kovacs.

Events of Watchmen

Rorschach is the only vigilante who remains active after the passage of the Keene Act outlawed masked vigilantes (aside from the Comedian and Dr. Manhattan, who both serve in the employ of the US government). 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 targeted with an assassination attempt.

Rorschach questions Moloch, a former supervillain who unexpectedly attends Blake's funeral, who tells him what little he knows. Later, after reading a note written by Moloch telling him to come over for more information, Rorschach visits him again, only to find him dead, shot through the head. The police, tipped off anonymously over the phone, surround the house and arrest Rorschach after a fight, in which Rorschach tries to escape by jumping through a window, but is unmasked.

Rorschach is sent to a prison, where many of its inmates are criminals he put away. During his incarceration, he is interviewed by the prison psychologist Dr. Malcolm Long, who believes he can help him better himself; instead, Rorschach's explanation of his justifications for his uncompromising worldview lead Long to question his own and wreaks havoc with his personal life. One day during lunch, one of the inmates attempts to stab Rorschach, and Rorschach throws a pot of boiling cooking oil at him in self-defense. After the 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 enter 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 realises that they may be no match for Veidt, finishes his journal, 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 he set his plan into motion before they arrived. Doctor Manhattan and Silk Spectre II arrive at the base after viewing the carnage Veidt's false alien has wrought on New York City. Despite their mutual horror, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre II and Doctor Manhattan all agree to keep quiet about the true nature of the events. Rorschach, however, refuses to cooperate and intends to fly back to America to have Ozymandias exposed. Dr. Manhattan follows and vaporizes Rorschach.

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.

Powers, abilities, and equipment

Like most characters in Watchmen, Rorschach has no obvious "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, during a confrontation at 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 (and once as a makeshift harpoon gun against a police officer), 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 shows the ability to beat multiple armed assailants with little difficulty. Rorschach is also relatively indifferent to physical pain and discomfort, shown when he walks through Antarctica in only a trench coat. Due to his time in juvenile detention facilities and group homes as a child he is as street savvy as any criminal. Rorschach also demonstrates 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.

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, he is asked if he has any final words, and Question remarks "Rorschach sucks."
• In issue #2 of the 1996 DC Comics miniseries Kingdom Come by Alex Ross and Mark Waid, Rorschach appears as a background character breaking Brother Power's fingers. He is also seen standing between the Question and Obsidian, 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 by Art Adams 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 miniseries.
• In the four-part "Deadpool" miniseries written by Mark Waid in 1994, Deadpool's mask is removed, at which point the character parrots Rorschach by saying, "My face! Give me back my face!"

In other media

Film

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Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach in the film adaptation of Watchmen.

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. Rorschach kills the kidnapper's dogs afterwards. In Hamm's script Rorschach does not die. 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.

Jackie Earle Haley portrays the character in the 2009 film adaptation.

Video games

The 2009 video game Watchmen: The End is Nigh and Watchmen: The End Is Nigh Part 2 features Rorschach and Nite Owl as partners. The game follows the two during their vigilante acts prior to the Watchmen movie.