James Revilla wrote: IF at the end it would have shown that the actions [Veidt] took weren't needed, I would be ok with the book. The fact Moore thinks it is ok to make a superhero story where the good guy kills most of a major city...is wrong to me. Completely wrong.

I am honestly quite surprised both that people think the story endorses Veidt as a "good guy" and that people actually see Veidt as a "good guy".  As I've noted above, I think the similarity of Veidt's story to that of the marooned sailor in the Black Freighter story and the mention of Veidt's dreams strongly suggest that we are to view Veidt as being parallel to the sailor, i.e. acting on his own unfounded fears.  Veidt clearly believes that he's a hero, but there is no reason for anybody else to take him seriously.  Indeed, his character chapter gives several reasons to be cautious of his tales.  The story itself doesn't present Veidt as a successful hero, what with Jon telling him that nothing ever ends, and Rorschach's diary sitting atop a pile waiting to be read.  I believe that the readers are meant to view Laurie and Dan as the most sympathetic characters in the story, although not necessarily as superheroes.

On a different topic, I don't really understand the harm in publishing Watchmen.  It was a mature readers book, published outside of any established universe, and available only in the direct market.  I agree that comics took an unfortunately nasty turn in the wake of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, but blame for that lies squarely on the people who wrote the other stories.

Okay, Emery, I've read "This Man, This Monster" before. No, I don't think that the character in it which you cite is a hero, because he sets the chain of events into motion which ultimately causes him to need to destroy himself to save the other people.

Then Rorschach's doing the right thing at the end does NOT qualify him as a superhero.

 If Rorschach was the one responsible for causing the carnage in New York which led him to need to go back to New York to tell people what happened (sounds stupid doesn't it?), then it would be a fair comparison.

No. The evil done in the past being tied to the right thing done at the last mintue is not the discriminator. Frankly the discriminator is that doing the right thing at the end either makes up for your past misdeeds and elevates you to superhero or it doesn't. Rorshach was in prison for murder and going above the law to enact his own twisted idea of justice. THAT is what seperates him from the superhero.

The only real difference in the "ends justify the means"  methods between Rorshach and Veidt is the scale and who the force is directed against. Both are "doing what it takes" to save the world. The key here is that one good act at the end does not absolve you of any former disgrace and (re)elevate you to a supposedly lost state of superheroism. Nor is Darth Vader suddenly a real Jedi redeemed at the end of Return of the Jedi excpet perhaps in the mind of Lucas. Sure he did the right thing. Did it make him a hero again? Not unless your concept of what a heroic life is has been heavily distorted. 

You might make an argument that after lots of adventures doing the right thing Rorshach might eventually make that transition(perhaps not convincingly but good enough for government work) like the Swordsman or Hawkeye  or Hank Pym in the Avengers but unfortunately he got fried by Doc Manhatten. So the experiment was never really carried out regarding his conversion to a superhero. He just got stuck at doing the right thing one last time for old time's sake. NOSTALGIA!

This sort of thing is also the problem with series like Civil War and Identity Crisis and Green Arrow. Having heroes do unforgivable things and then expecting us to root for them the way we did when they acted heroic is an untenable proposition. If we twist the rules of conduct to allow Rorshach to carry out his moral code consistently and base his superheroism on that consistency then could the scientist not be viewed as a superhero for attempting harm Reed Richards if such was an imperative instilled in him by a twisted (but consistently followed) moral code? Heck, he even cured Ben Grimm as an externality of his actions!

The mad scientist in FF 51 dies to rectify a mistake that he has made, Rorschach dies because he refuses to compromise on a matter which he considers wrong.

So Rorshach hasn't made a mistake following an insane moral code consistently even when it leads him into filth and brutality and ostracism (ever since his threshold trauma) ? And doing pretty much the same thing (opposing "evil" at all costs! Snarl!) somehow liberates him from the consequences of who and what he has become and gives him a ticket to the train that carries superheroes to glorious valhalla? Just because he happened to be opposing the other "superhero" whose moral code was subjectively correct but in conflict with Rorshach's own? Even though he had become insane along the way? Pfeh.

Fair enough. I can see that I may have made "strange hypothetical expectations..." Sorry. We see Rorschach doing the good thing and fighting the good fight until the death of Kitty Genovese sends him off of the deep end, I can see how you would see him as a violent kook after this (I do, too, for the most part), but I think he's redeemed and dies as a superhero when he can still recognize the right thing to do and dies doing it. I don't think he does it because he's crazy and Moore is equating the right thing to do in that situation with insanity; I think he does it because he, at the end, is acting the part of the hero.

Then back this up. I can't take your opinion of Moore's intentions without some persuasive evidence. Rorshach dies not compromising just like does through the whole book. How is Rorshach in prison any different than Rorshach pulling off his mask and ranting and getting blasted? He sent the diary containing his theories BEFORE his supposed moment of grace and clarity and his getting roasted.

You ask me how heroism and superheroism are both objective terms.

Subjective.

I mean that what you consider heroism might not be what I consider heroism. The fact that you and I are having this debate about whether or not Rorschach is heroic indicates that it's subjective, because I don't think we're both ignorant or oblivious about what a dictionary says the word means.

If you and I had a debate about whether Gorbachev is a robot or not would his robot/not robot status really be subjective? The same applies to a large body of precedent such as the traditional superhero comic. Sure we can run back to the old defintion of hero "an extraordinary history changing man of destiny" with next to no real moral dimension and cite some bloodthristy guy like Sigfried or some cold as ice mechanistic follower of God's will like Arjuna but that's not solving the problem in any meanignful way. It's just ignoring context to lend a false sense of validity to a desire to chuck a defintion.

The problem here is not subjectivity but a desire to take a fairly solid and obvious defintion and soften it to a cypher tha can be cheerfully hung about the neck of almost anything thus rendering the term almost meaningless.

Not to dredge things up or make unfair examples, but there was that debate on this message board about whether or not Christopher Reeves was a hero. Some said yes and some said no. In my opinion, both sides were right. If someone is a hero to you, they are a hero, but you can't expect people to be in 100% consensus over what person is a hero or which person isn't.

Fine. Pete Rose is a hero. Because I have made it so by openly declaring that he fills my heart with warm fuzzies. If anyone else would like to be subjectively made a hero...or hell...a space-pope even then send me $1.75 processing fee in vintage neehi bottle caps and I will lift you on high so to speak. And remember...it's all subjective so noone can take it away so long as I vouch for you! 100% concensus? Can we knock things back to uncertainty and soften defintions just because there is dissent or rumor of dissent about their meaning? Again, Pfeh.

Regardless of what came before, Kovacs knowingly went to his death because he couldn't live with himself unless he tried to report what happened. That to me is heroism.   

He had already reported it. By mail.

I can see your line of thinking, Emery: Rorschach is no hero because one decent act, likely caused by his paranoia and insanity, does not make up for his vicious vigilantism and, furthermore, he is never presented by Moore as a hero but rather, deliberately as a laughably ugly and short man. Here's my line of thinking: It is amazing that Rorschach, the psychotic character and least typically "heroic" of the characters is the one that tries to do the right thing, and, when he has a moment of clarity (the stripping away of his mask revealing himself crying [a very un-crazy recognition of the effect his actions are likely to have or an expression of pity for those killed or both]) and dies going back to America, he dies a hero.  

A hero to you. Not a hero to me. Since we are arguing qualifications of herosims that you have moved to conveniently reduce to subjectivity. And your defintion of "amazing" seems perilously close to my definition of bleak nihilistic tragedy. You can't even decide what his tears REALLY signify here but you WANT to interpret it as clarity and heroism so you do. And why not? If heroism is subjective why not "clarity" and "recognition"?

++++++++++

"Rorshach is intended as a "take" on Ditko's Mr. A and Question characters. He is supposed to show how such characters are unheroic and instead obssessed, insane, bloodthirtsy, cruel and vindictive rather than truly just or decent."

**********

Emery, you can call me a smart ass, my line of thinking bullshit, and question my ability to read a comic, but unless you have an interview where Moore says that he deliberately made Rorschach to malign and mock characters like the Question (one might exist and you might be right, in which case I apologize),

It's already been posted. 2nd post above yours. Moore describes the Question as "There was a guy with a hat and a mac, that was the Question, who was also very similar to Steve Ditko's far more right-wing character, Mister A, that was too right-wing to put in mainstream comics but which Ditko had published some strips about in independent comics at the time. Mister A was an absolute insane fascist but done absolutely straight."

Plus he made him a dirty insane character who spouts similar lines to Mr.A/The Question only in a scary insane voice. What purpose does all that serve if not to malign that character and show it as a false and easily broken concept? C'mon dude. Did you really think it was just for variety or to provide a "slice of life" bit of color to the book? Why do YOU think that Rorsach is protrayed as what he is? Coincidence? An attempt to offset a parallel design somewhat? (As in "No! Our patriotic guy with a shield is a cyborg!" ) DO you think Moore intended to improve the Question by showing what a mess a guy like that would really be?

than you're acting as a mind reader or claiming that your interpretation is the only valid one. 

Hey man, you've already told me what you thought was shown to be going on in Rorshach's mind when he died and then quickly disagreed with yourself.

I can see why you make that claim about why Rorschach goes crazy-- in fact, it's very convincing and well thought out--I just choose to disagree with it.

And that matters to me because? I'm all out of cookies.

So what's your counter argument then smart ass? And how will you support it? How is Rorshach a real superhero? Where does his craziness go away? What pannel?

**********

Rorschach is a real superhero because he dies doing the right thing, even though he knows that the very attempt will kill him and it is unlikely he will succeed.

We've sort of been over this already. By this measure of things suicide bombers are superheroes. The Mad Scientist who tried to kill Reed Richards and then changed his mind is a superhero.(Right thing? yep. Knew he would die? Check. Thought he was unlikely to suceed? Yep. He even says that he "thinks" he remembers the direction he came in..nonetheless it's Reed's only chance! Probably Vader is a superhero too by this yardstick.)

His craziness goes away when we see that he is crying under his mask .

Crazy people never cry? Crying is a sign of the end of mental illness? Can watching 'Ol Yeller cure mental illness? This is a silly bit of evidence.

 That's the panel. Again, it demonstrates that he is sane enough to either comprehend what will happen to him for going against Veidt, that he feels pity for those who have died, or, likely, both. Is that acceptable? 

So being a stinky murdering nut job haunting alleyways isn't evidence of Moore taking the piss out of the Question/Mr. A, but Rorshach crying after an asswhupping and a defeat and being about to die after he's already mailed the diary is a sign that he's sane and spiritually right and a super hero? Really? it's not frustration or anger? It's the mythical tears that precede the return of reason and whole mind?

++++++++++

Aren't you going to expound on the subjectivity of "the world's smartest man" or even if the name "Adrian Veidt" is really the characters name?  

***********
Nope.

Why not? No motivation? Has some phantom evidence of objectivity suddenly surfaced when it suits your view of things?

[M]aybe you could actually make and support an actual argument instead of just asking nebulous (and often absurd) "what if" and " isn't that subjective?" type questions.

If you can't see the transparent intent of Watchmen and the pall it casts on the concept of super heroes ....

Either Moore is a sucky writer (who in your version seems to have INADVERTENTLY or ARBITRAILY AND PERHIPHERALLY made Rorshach look more a creature of obssession than morality via his appearence and history and habits...just for variety)  or you are just a reader who feels the need  to subjectively handwave Rorshach into being a superhero because you want it to be true. 

***********
The transparent intent?

Yeah. Rorshach is a dirty sweaty stinky unhealthy vicious nut. For a reason. Drieberg is a bored aging rich kid who got pulled out of his owlmobile too early so he gained some pounds and sighs a lot. Silk Spectre is pursuing her mom's career as the team's clingy but unfaithful hootchy only unlike her she's ready to step away from the bad boy who doesn't get her and move on to a nerdy passive guy who was a bit more confident in better days. We have the "kills for peace" guy who isn't above raping somebody every now and then who eats pavement at terminal velocity to get the ball rolling. Veidt is the "always right" elitist manipulator with a Utopian dream to shove down humanity's throat for their own good and strange preoccupation with reincarnation and absolute authority. Dr Manhatten is a genie who forgot to "remember thou art mortal" and is slowly going all Gary Mitchell. They are all based on Charlton heroes only funked up (except for Silk Spectre unless she's supposed to be somwhow connected to Nightshade...to me she reads as a depowered Black Canary)

C'mon dude. You have to ignore a  LOTof pattern there to support a "there is no evidence that Moore is being deconstuctionist" attitude. So what's your explanation for just about EVERYONE in the book being a flawed screwed up non-inspriing and contemptable prick who LOSE, change sides, get killed, and just move on and live with it?

Again, I can see why my crying subjectivity and presenting what if scenarios pissed you off, but now you're just ignorantly and self-righteously imposing your intepretation of the comic book as the only one.

So what? I've provided a good bit of evidence to support my views! So support your view with more than the usual drizzle of uncertainty, composing strange exceptions to your own conclusions(Rorsahch becomes a Superhero by doing the right thing at the end but Mad Scientist does not...maybe he should have cried a little instead of sitting on a rock facing his end with dignity and acknowledging his responisbility.).

Your claim of "ignorance" here is not really well supported at this point. You tell me what Rorshachs tears mean as evidence and yet you yourself have two explanations for them! Self Righteously? How so? I am not claiming to be a saint here. You seem to be a bit selfrighteous to me as well with your assumption that I am wrong "because I am" and your desire to subjectivize your way out of the argument without giving any ground even when shown to be mistaken or spinning your wheels with endless " what ifs" and "how can you be sures?". So far all I can discern is that you want Watchmen to be a superhero book because you don't much care what you call a super hero(powers and costumes!) and you like it as a comic book. So you compose a lot of ad hoc defintions and then defend them by crying subjectivity. You ignore major themes in the book when they don't suit your conclusion and offer some of the most goassamer-like explanations of them and expect them to not be undermined because "it's subjective".

 I don't think I need to subjectively hardwire Rorschach for it to be true,

huh?

 I think I made it clear why I consider Rorschach heroic, and only in the last few minutes of his life.

Yeah. It's because you read his mind and he cried. Crazy people don't cry and superheroes do! It's a sure sign of clarity rather than stubborness, or obssession, or frustration, or rage, or...whatever you want to see at any given moment.

 I also think that you're completely incapable or unwilling to try and understand anyone who has a different viewpoint from you.

What makes you insist that I don't understand you? Hubris? You want Watchmen to be a super hero book so you modify the defintion of superhero until it fits. Then you defend your modification with claims of it being authorized by the dubious principle that subjectivity inherent in the definition of any non-empirical thing. Why? "Because it just is," "Because people argue about it" and that somehow proves that it's uncertain and protean. "Because there is no 100% concensus". You ask myriad non-questions like "can anyone really be certain of Moore's intent here? " "Can my interpretation really be wrong since after all everything is subjective anyway and we are doomed to unceratinty?" Then you go on to lecture me about Moore's intent at Rorschach's death scene. You apply your subjectivity very arbitrarily so long as you feel it advances your apologetics of Watchmen. I think I understand you pretty well. But that doesn't make your case at all persuasive.

Emery, you're so fantastically bias that you don't even know what you're reading.

Bull. 

You're faulting Rorschach for breaking under a psychological time bomb implanted in him as a child, which culminates in his wanton murder of the pedophile?

Did Moore make him a drity vicious mercilles nut or didn't he? Did he admit to basing him on Mr. A/The QUestion or didn't he?

I'm not faulting Roshach in any real sense because he isn't real. He doesn't make decisions and his neurons don't fire and he doesnt really process sense impressions into memories and thoughts a lah David Hume's developmental theory of humanity. He is essentially Moore with a puppet on his wrist trying to tell a story as Mr. Rogers or Senor Wenches would. He is an artificial, designed and constructed, pseudo-being created to entertain. He did not organically arise from some combination of proteins and stimuli.

Even if he were real you you can pity someone and still find them repulsive and horrific. And you can determine that the character is repulsive because the author wanted to show the reader the underlying repulsiveness of the model his own satire was based on. (Ditko's objectivist detectives).

How is this not the logical pejorative of a character who is, essentially, existential, whose very face is symbolic and, as the mask, is all there is after Kovacs "dies"?

It's logical in the sense that Rorshach is REALLY a borrowed and tweaked previously existing design that was tweaked to be less attractive and not really acceptable as a superhero due to his conduct and madness. He corrupts what he borrows on the grounds that what it borrowed from does not exist in the real world and the "next closest thing" would be abhorent if it did.

What I find amusing is that some people look at Rorshach and like his namesake see whatever they want to see. They find superheroism or redemption or clarity or some hot-tub therapeutic view of the traumatized.

This doesn't deviate from Ditko's views, except in Moore's postulation of the "mask" in Moore's alternate future, and the fate of a character like Rorschach who lives and breathes and saturates himself with the filth of a degraded society is logical.

Ditko said that he was like Mr. A except HE WAS CRAZY. It certainly does deviate from Ditko's views. It would seem that it does NOT deviate much from Moore's views of Ditko's views however.

Since Moore was writing about masks in the actual reality we live in, only forever changed by their presence, then this story and the characters was one way of doing that.

And by the very nature of the project they are not superheroes unless you want to redefine that word into anything with a uniform/costume/strange appearence and or powers. :)

The other point about Rorschach: existing in his own fugue state, Rorschach snaps after the Keene Act which outlaws the masks. Facing his own extinction, for the mask is what he truly is, Rorschach's Ditko Objectionism alters to become a life raft for his own identity.

And this makes him a superhero how? As you said..."HE SNAPS!"

In that, the damage to his psyche is evident, and his responses grow more extreme. Rorschach's torture and debasement of "scum" is the truly harsh indictment of the character as a raving psychotic?

Yeah! It is! That and his raving and psychotic behavior!

Rorschach turns out to be right in his brutality...the world in which they live is so far gone that it responds to nothing else.

Bull. He is what he hates.

Even the smartest man in the world realizes that fact.

In the story his motives are not so noble as he proclaims nor is his supposed suffering at the deaths of his loyal assistants terribly convincing. He is exercising power rather than following a code. He is imposing his own Platonic vision on the world through deception. To call what he does necessary and proper is frankly strange. He is elevating himself above moral concerns for the claim of having a greater one. He enthusistically calims the authroity of kings to decide who lives and dies for the greater good. Moore leaves many clues that he is really about taking over the world (for it;s own good!). That and getting revenge on a guy who beat him up once.

Alexander cutting the Giordian Knot, which the entire culture, "our" culture and society, has become, is emblematic of the disease that Rorschach suffers from. Not madness, but meaninglessness.

Nope. Madness. And the "heroes" are meaningless because the point that Moore tries to make is that in the real world they would be "fascists" who want to absolve you of responsibilty and save you and control your destiny though whatever means they happen to deem appropriate depending on their mood and temperament. The inherent message is that you should not glorify such beings nor follow them, nor trust them with power. They are ubermensch who would rise above you if given opportunity. Ask them to save you from nuclear war and they just might though you might not like their methods. 

It's clearly indicated that Rorschach, and all the Watchmen, become complacent and bored, as the public is bored BY them, leading to their being eventually outlawed, and directly influenced by the disappearance of the "super-villain".

Well Comedian and Manhatten are NOT outlawed. Veidt finds his ways around that with money and the power that comes with it. Drieberg is the bored one and Juspeczyk never much wanted to fight crime anyway and she knew that Manhatten was outgrowing her and getting "off".  Rorshach goes on just like he did before only more brutally and out of plain sight.

Moore is even smart enough to realize that, at DC in particular, the villains are often fairly underpowered in comparison to the heroes. In the "real" sense, how many villains would want to stick it out, battling futilely against the masks and losing again and again. Even the superheroes are bored by the clockwork mechanism of their duty as superheroes. Dr. Manhattan's "real" super powers make all of the masks moot anyway, as well as Vietnam, and the final nail is driven by the unionized police.

Which again really does nothing to establish these flawed and neurotic dangerous people as real super heroes.

Rorschach's world view is heat-warped after the watchdog scene. Before it, he is merely eccentric. Moore suggests the loss of innocence, of the "silver age" that is the Minutemen, and uses the contrast of the Crimebusters/Watchmen whom SOCIETY (governmental and cultural) demands to exist.

The Minutemen were the Golden Age. The second gen of Minutemen where the silver age, the sucessors who had their direct roots in the Charlton creations. the whole point was that Richard Nixon became president for life and the silver age ended and the "heroes" were all muddling through a decade or so after the aftermath either as government agents or businessmen or minor celebrities.

So the Comedian becomes a government assassin, Rorschach a vigilante, but they are the extremes. And that's really what the story presents as logical within its context.

The context is that superheroes aren't and can't be real. They only occur in the exotic imaginary conditions of funnybook space where the rules are suspended to allow them. You put them into real life or a facsimile of it and they decay into bastards, weak willed fops, dangerous power movers who hawk "Nostalgia!", gods, government black ops thugs, aging sex symbols, and savage vigilantes.

The extremes are the only hope for a world begging for death.

No. The extremes will take over the world on the grounds that it is begging for death and needs their tender ministrations. They have too much power. If they choose to exercise it then who will stop them? If they ever eleminate their dessenters, or reach a concensus then they cannot be depended on to restrain each other even when they seem tamed and humbled and bound up in institutional structure. They will eventually escape and impose their own order on those they "protect". Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  Who watches the watchmen?

I mean calling people smart ass and the such pretty much blows any chance of polite conversation

Really? Next time you're talking to Alan Moore can you ask him if Veidt was really supposed to be the smartest man in the world? Apparently he tells you what his intent is so maybe you can have him settle this debate James and I having going.

Polite or not, the above was more than smart assed(and dismissive ) enough to merit my use of the label in situ with no feelings of guilt on my part.