Watchmen is a 1986 graphic novel written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons.
The title is a reference to the Latin phrase "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes", a quotation from Juvenal's Satire VI Against Women, often translated as "Who watches the watchmen?". The original context reads: "I hear all this time the advice of my old friends—Put on a lock and keep your wife guarded behind doors. Yes, but who will watch the watchmen? The wife arranges accordingly and begins sleeping with them."
The story takes place in an alternate history in which superheroes exist. Alan Moore explores their impact on this society and postulates a situation where unaccountable supermen arrange the lives of common people.
As of November 2004, Paul Greengrass has decided to direct a movie based on the series for Paramount Pictures, with a script by David Hayter. No actors have yet been cast, although Jude Law has long maintained interest in such a project. The movie will be released in 2006.
Setting of the story, not containing spoilers
The story opens in the mid 1980s with a vigilante, Rorschach, in the process of investigating the murder of Edward Blake, who had a secret identity as the costumed adventurer Comedian. Blake had been a longstanding operative for the American government and was involved with the Vietnam War. News of the Comedian's death ripples outward through the community of current and former adventurers and the major characters are introduced, including Nite Owl, Ozymandias, the Silk Spectre and Dr. Manhattan, while Rorschach investigates further, motivated by his nihilism, his obsession with crime, and his far right wing political views. Rorschach tracks down and interviews his former associates, whom he comes to believe are being targeted by an enemy who is out to eliminate the masked adventurers.
The reader discovers that in this alternate reality Nixon is serving a fourth term as President and the Vietnam War was won by the United States, largely due to the superhuman abilities of Dr. Manhattan. Tensions between the superpowers have been increasing, and only the vast powers of Dr. Manhattan keep the Soviet Union from launching a major war. As the clock ticks relentlessly toward Armageddon, the plot weaves through as series of related strands including the history of costumed adventurers, comic books, and the personal stories of the characters involved.
The 12 chapters describe the original appearance of costumed adventurers in the 1930s, the "new era" of "superheroes" that begins in the 1960s and concludes with their being banned by the "Keene Act" in 1977, and the present day.
Origin of the Watchmen and its reception
In the early 1980s DC Comics, who had acquired a number of existing characters from Charlton Comics, commissioned a treatment from Moore for a mini-series about them. The resulting story, recast with new heroes to avoid continuity problems with DC's mainstream comics, was often hailed as a breakthrough in comic book writing and, along with Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, sparked an interest in comics amongst a wider adult audience than traditionally associated with them.
The principal cast and the Charlton Comics characters that inspired them:
Plot Summary
Rorschach's investigation into the murder of Edward Blake reveals that the Comedian had told an old adversary, Moloch, of a plot—one which shattered the Comedian's philosophical armor and brought him to a nervous breakdown. Rorschach confronts Dr. Manhattan with his theory of a conspiracy to murder former superheroes. This meeting ends abruptly and Silk Spectre II, who's been in a long term relationship with Dr. Manhattan, decides to get out for a bit to clear the air by spending some time with Nite Owl II.
This meeting indicates there is attraction between her and Nite Owl. Silk Spectre II has grown increasingly detached from "Jon"—that is, Jon Osterman, Dr. Manhattan's civilian name. The reader finds out that Superheroes have been banned for the last decade apart from those working for the government: Dr. Manhattan, who is regarded as a national defense asset, and The Comedian, who is a covert operative for the government.
Appearing at a television interview, Dr. Manhattan is ambushed by the media and told that a number of his close associates have died of cancer. Manhattan responds in anger by teleporting the audience and crew out of the building. He then travels to the Los Alamos facility where, as a young scientist, he had been caught in the nuclear accident that led to his transformation to Dr. Manhattan. This episode also gives Manhattan an opportunity to reflect on his relationship with the Comedian: they served together in Vietnam, and Dr. Manhattan did not intervene when the Comedian murdered his pregnant Vietnamese lover. Dr. Manhattan teleports himself to Mars and causes the U.S. government to panic. Silk Spectre II, having no one else to turn to, seeks out Nite Owl II and they become lovers. They decide to leave retirement to break Rorschach, who had been captured by the police and examined by a criminal psychologist, out of jail.
After a successful jailbreak, Dr. Manhattan arrives and teleports Silk Spectre II to Mars. Through flashbacks, it is revealed that the Comedian was Silk Spectre II's father. Silk Spectre breaks down because she'd always hated the Comedian who had beaten and nearly raped her mother, the original Silk Spectre. During their debate, it became clear Dr. Manhattan had little concern for humanity but the details of her birth shows him how low are the probabilities of any particular person being born are as to constitute a statistical miracle. This convinces him that life is worth saving and to return to Earth to intervene.
Rorschach and Nite Owl II interrogate minor criminals and piece together clues together to implicate Ozymandias as the only person capable of organizing the plot to kill off the masked adventurers. Rorschach and Nite Owl II track Ozymadias to his Antarctic base while Dr. Manhattan and the Silk Spectre II go there directly.
When confronted, Ozymandias reveals that he killed the Comedian in order to hide a much larger global conspiracy. By pure luck, the Comedian had found an island where Ozymandias was creating a genetic experiment. The genetic experiment was the construction of a giant squid-like mutant with great telepathic abilities. The mutant would be teleported into New York City to send a psychic shockwave which would kill several thousand innocent people. His logic was that the apparent threat of an alien invasion will convince the world powers to unite. This is his solution to stop global warfare.
Knowing that Rorschach and others would investigate the murder of the Comedian, Ozymandias started a smaller falsehood of a serial killer murdering masked heroes in order to hide the true reason for the Comedian's death and the forced exile of Dr. Manhattan, the two key elements to his plan which he could not easily cover. The heroes ask him to stop his plot but Ozymandias tells them that they are too late; he'd teleported the creature to New York City before they arrived. After a confrontation with Dr. Manhattan and hearing news of a ceasefire, Ozymandias advises the others not to reveal his conspiracy as to do so would restart the global crisis that would have triggered nuclear war. Reluctantly, the majority of his opponents agree to keep silent. Only Rorschach disagrees and wants to disclose the plot to the world. In order to keep these secrets, Dr. Manhattan kills Rorschach. Dr. Manhattan leaves the Earth for the last time, warning Ozymandias that "nothing ever ends" and saying that he has gained an interest in human life, and intends to create some.
Ozymandias's ploy to peacefully unite the world has worked but as a coda we see that Rorschach has sent his private journal detailing the fraud to a far right-wing newspaper that has been supportive of costumed adventurers, The New Frontiersman. The book ends with the flunky assistant editor being given a chance to publish something from the "crank file" and reaching for Rorschach's journal.
Much of the series is spent detailing information from the past, including the origins of Nite Owl I, Rorschach, and Dr. Manhattan, it also describes many cultural details which only turn out to be relevant at the end of the book, for example, the writer of a famous series of pirate comics is one of the people hired by Ozymandias to create his monster. It also spends a great deal of time detailing the everyday comings and goings of the people around a small newstand in New York City, which turns out to be ground zero for the monster to be teleported into.
The Keene Act
The Keene Act is a fictional law that was proposed by the fictional Senator Keene and passed in 1977 outlawing the activities of vigilantes and costumed heroes. The act was instrumental in ending the adventuring careers of many of the characters in the story. The act was passed as an emergency measure because the police had gone on strike in protest to the unaccountable adventurers, and the citizens were rioting against them as well. The only heroes allowed to continue working were the Comedian and Dr. Manhattan, both under government supervision and control. Other heroes revealed their identities and retired or cashed in on their personae, while some refused to quit and continued working illegally.
Critical concerns in Watchmen
Visual symbolism
One of the aspects of the Watchmen that immediately attracted notice was the consistency of the symbolism used in art work: for example the circle, either a clock or a human face, with some form of break, smear or slash across it at critical moments of transition, such as death, revelation or failure to make critical connections.
Another pervasive theme is the armageddon symbolism, particularly potent because of the fears of the era from which the book comes: including such details as "Meltdown" candies, "Nostalgia" cosmetics, the spray painting of silhouttes of lovers on walls, clocks and, of course, the slogan "Who Watches the Watchmen?", which references both the clock and the main characters and is a translation of the latin "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?".
Another aspect, one that perhaps created early speculation that it was destined to be a film, is the very storyboard style of the panels and the importance of creating shading and relief by obvious ink work such as cross hatching.
Integration of outside material
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
Watchmen uses fictional documents in a centrally important way; much of the story is told or illustrated with journals, invented news reports, articles on the world of the Watchmen, and particularly the diary of anti-hero Rorschach. The verisimilitude with which these documents are presented is important, as it works in opposition to the potentially-cartoonish origins of the material. While the work is not entirely composed of fictional documents, the documents that are used have a central thematic and technical role in the drama, especially Rorschach's psychiatric history, and the EC Comics-style pirate comic book which counterpoints to the larger narrative. The fictitious far right-wing magazine, The New Frontiersman, which runs crypto-racist cartoons in addition to anti-Soviet and anti-drug diatribes, also proves important to the plotline.
Themes
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
The story presents some mature philosophical and ethical themes. Some of the characters portray these themes:
- The Comedian, is a cynic and nihilist in his beliefs of how individuals can't affect the geo-political realities of the possibility of global nuclear warfare. Over the years, he becomes more and more immoral with his participation in various atrocities that happen during wartime.
- Rorschach combines a nihilist viewpoint with moral absolutism. He believes that all moral and legal infractions, no matter how small, must be severely dealt with, without regard to what the greater consequences would be.
- Ozymandias believes in Utilitarianism, especially in that the ends justifies the means.
- Dr. Manhattan is totally amoral, in that he has placed himself outside of human interactions and concerns.
Watchmen is concerned with levels of authenticity and the contrast between objective and subjective perspectives. Is Rorschach the 'hero', because of his intense personal conviction, or is he merely an emotionally-damaged liability, overshadowed by the superficially less complex Nite Owl, who dedicates equivalent levels of capital to more and more elaborate toys and masks?
The book is also concerned with props, masks and a general investigation of the "realness" and "perfection" of costumed crimefighters, all but one of which are ordinary human beings encased in physical, spiritual, and mental masks. It inspects the depth and literality of Übermenschen in a naturalistic setting. The evolution of superheroes is presented as an arms race of authenticity, starting with a masked wrestler, then a masked cop, then techno-dilettantes and madmen and vigilantes, finally culminating in the genuinely superhuman Doctor Manhattan—the hero that is so "real" that he not only makes the costumed crimefighters and their catchings obsolete (he disregards his superhero uniform more and more as time goes on, until he is finally perpetually nude), he makes all of mankind irrelevant.
Another important issue is outsider or outcast status, and the role of prejudice in decisions, including prejudice associated with politics or sexual orientation. The Keene Act is presented in the context of outlawing difference, for example, even as a The New Frontiersman, an assertively pro-superhero tabloid is also racist and anti-Russian as well as anti-Soviet in its outlook. Of the costumed adventurers, two, and perhaps three, are homosexual, and one is made an outcast because of it and murdered soon afterwards. The tension between power and sexuality surfaces repeatedly, for example when Sally Jupiter, the Silk Spectre I, tells her daughter, "the only difference between Jon (Dr. Manhattan) and the h-bomb is they don't need to get the h-bomb laid."
Plot and background issues in the work
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
The Watchmen presents numerous mysteries, some of which are not neatly wrapped up for the reader. The mysteries range from the personal to the global:
- The hidden relationship between the Comedian and the original Silk Spectre.
- What happened to the Hooded Justice—spy murdered by the Soviets, killed by the Comedian in revenge?
- The hidden atrocities of the Vietnam War which removes any humanity left in the Comedian.
- The plot by the U.S. government to only allow those super heroes under their direct control to operate.
- The plot to kill the super heroes.
- The plot to remove Dr. Manhattan.
- The conspiracy to save the planet from global war.
- Suggestions that John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the Comedian on orders from Nixon and that the Comedian also killed Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Related products
In 1987, Mayfair Games produced two adventure modules based on Watchmen for its DC Heroes role-playing game. These modules, entitled "Who Watches the Watchmen?" and "Taking out the Trash", included background information about the fictional Watchmen universe, approved by Alan Moore. His approval made these publications valuable to fans as the only outside source of supplemental information about the characters in the story (especially minor characters, such as the Minutemen and Moloch).
In 1988 British Acid House music act Bomb the Bass used the blood stained smiley badge on the cover of the "Beat Dis" single release. This influenced the adoption of the Smiley Badge as a feature of rave culture.
External links
Last updated: 05-21-2005 23:48:18
