Watchmen remains one of DC Comics’s most iconic intellectual properties. It’s seen its share of television and film adaptations, sometimes to polarizing degrees. DC even brought the series to retcon its superhero universe with the crossover event, Doomsday Clock.
Needless to say, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s participation in the superhero medium has been widely profitable. I still remember the hype fans had before going into Zack Snyder’s 2008 film adaptation. There’s a lot of love for this story of a broken-up team in a volatile world.
It’s since been classified as an outstanding work in comic book history, so much so that it’s been lauded by literary crowds. Many often consider it the moment “when comic books grew up.” While Chris Claremont told mature stories with the X-Men in the early 1980s and other comics would periodically touch on serious subjects, Watchmen was a turning point.
Stories in the pulp panels of comics began to feature tales of the surreal, the gritty, and the nuanced. Gone were the hard-instilled notions of good and evil. Here was a world where characters were a darker reflection of us and society.
But why does this 1985 event stand the test of time? How does it fare today?
Well, that’s what I’d like to discuss. Join me as I ramble my takes on one of my favorite graphic novels of all time.
The story as we know it
The death of a comedian. The exile of a superman. The martyrdom of a vigilante. Sacrifice in the face of Armageddon. A world where Richard Nixon was still the United States President in 1985 as nuclear tensions between the United States and Russia continued to reach a boiling point. The world is rotting and decaying, and what such thing in existence could save it?
When readers first glance at the world of Watchmen, they see that the people who could come close to saving the day have largely moved on. They had no choice but to, thanks to the fictional Keene Act. The most down-to-earth characters, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre are seemingly content with life without a costume. Yet their souls secretly yearn to suit up and battle evildoers.
Doctor Manhattan, the only member with true superpowers, works for the U.S. government with scientific advancements and wartime atrocities. Ozymandias has turned his intelligence into a wealthy enterprise.
Rorschach still dons his discernable ink-blot mask as an outlaw who longs to continue doing good. His mission for any semblance of do-goodery is wrought with the rough upbringing he had has been well documented, with Jeffrey Wu’s Boston University article The Greater Good: Analyzing Morality in Watchmen being an enjoyable example. The vigilante’s views and morals are skewed, and the notion of vigilantism traipses far from what the masses used to adore it for. What the world once thought of superheroes has long since been rent asunder.
Then there’s The Comedian. His story begins this unraveling race against time to save the world when his fate is stamped in the early panels. He saw the true face of what was about to transpire and it came back to laugh in his face. Everything about him bled cynical, to the last drop, and in the end, it was all a joke. The world is a dying animal feasting upon its innards, and he understood his responsibility for these transgressions.
Subversion of expectations
Readers opening the pages of Watchmen for the first time go into it expecting a nostalgic love letter to what comic books represented from the days of yore. The days as we knew them. The further the page turns, however, these rose-tinted glasses are fogged and smudged by the real story where superheroes and social commentary are but the backdrop.
That classic smiley face with a droplet of blood sliding down initially inspires curiosity, and with story context, it stuck with me. In 2019, I read Alex Abad-Santos’s editorial from Vox, "Watchmen's enduring appeal, explained”, where he pointed out how Gibbons and Moore’s intentions were meant to mirror the innocence of infancy bathed in yellow, juxtaposed with the horrors of adulthood painted in blood. After returning to it in subsequent reads, its visage instills a sense of lost innocence.
The parallels between the superheroes we know coalesce with how actual people would act in similar situations, thus eschewing what comic readers came to expect of their pulp stories. Gibbons’s art is a prime example, as he pays homage to an older style, contradicted by Moore’s writing, yet it works superfluously.
Moreover, Watchmen takes the way readers and in-universe people revere DC’s gallery of heroes and the relatability of Marvel characters to take that hero worship and taint it with that familiarity. What results is a dark reflection of who we are.
We are people, but so are those we’re meant to look up to. Humans long for something to aspire to, to hold on to as some beacon of hope. A parasocial relationship develops, as every success and heartbreak idols face resonates. But when these shiny golden gods show a hint of a crack or rust, they’re the worst of us. Sometimes deservedly so.
The more society spends with icons and celebrities, the more discernable a lens is cast. People are held to an impossible standard. They grow with us. Live with us, die with us, and fail with us. But they can’t… they’re what we always wanted to be. Why would they cast it away?
It’s this heartwrenching, mind-boggling cycle with an answer that eludes these questions.
That answer? Our heroes may be monsters and ghosts, yet to be discovered.
The characters as they are
Watchmen’s cast isn’t inherently bad. No one truly is good or evil. Few are ever meant to stay consistent in their principles. Everyone sways one way or another. We are only stereotyped by our genetics, environment, and experiences.
One such person I’d like to point out is Ozymandias, known as Adrian Veidt. He’s arrogant, yet he also carries this unnecessary burden. Through various panels, it’s as though he’s contemplating some grander scheme, as though he accepted a responsibility that he feels only he’s equipped to take.
He has the best intentions but he thinks it all rests on him. The weight of the world waits on him. That’s his vanity. Throughout the story, as his machinations come to light, he hopes to end division and bring unity. All of this effort to shift the world one way. But nothing ever really ends.
Against Walter Kovac’s hopeful, classic outlook befitting of a DC superhero, is the Steve Ditko-esque Rorschach. The right-wing, misogynist character with a rough upbringing stands against what Veidt posits. Under the mask is Walter Kovacs, a nihilistic man, a conspiracy theorist, and the subject of child abuse from poor neighborhoods.
His cause for still fighting crime, however violently, is because creating a better world is a hope he’s always subscribed to. Except now, he’s bitter. He’d rather let people die in a gutter and beg for help and forgiveness. The same man who’d battle some creep in an alleyway to right a wrong is the same man who killed the pet dogs of a horrid man, seeing them as heirs of their owner’s sins.
In the middle of their views is Doctor Manhattan. This unfeeling masculine presentation of ambivalence. He’s more cynical than hopeful or nihilistic. As Jon Osterman, he was but a scientist seeking to push the needle of human ingenuity. But through a tragic accident that transformed him, he sees things differently.
All of the time and universe expanded in his milky white eyes. Matter itself bends to his every whim. A seemingly all-knowing god, Manhattan grows weary and uncaring. When the love of his life in Silk Spectre leaves him, he lets her go. When informed that his atomic and nuclear presence may have caused cancer in multiple people close to him, he’s initially indifferent, then annoyed. He questions his place, and if he wants to be in their world. After a catastrophic event late in the graphic novel, he only shrugs and… leaves.
The Comedian himself saw all of it differently. Everything matters but it’s all jumbled and a mess. Madness, at the hands of the powerful, for the weak are unwilling to fight. And he dealt a great hand in it. He attacked protestors, killed political figures, and battled in foreign affairs. His only place now is a world of violence.
As Edward Blake, he’s no saint either. He knows it. His sins and crimes are innumerable. What’s worse is that though he’s still held in such high regard, is that he’s been a callous predator of women. Blake harms them in abhorrent ways. Silk Spectre is a byproduct of such heinous acts. Despite that, he doesn’t face punishment for that. It only comes about due to his espionage against a greater machination of evil.
Watchmen tells us that darkness is in every corner. Beneath the lights of the powerful and the darkest crevices of the powerless.
Adrian Veidt’s vision is false
The hidden perpetrator of all of the events of the story exposes Ozymandias. Adrian Veidt is the ultimate mastermind. The Comedian’s fate, the self-imposed exile of Manhattan, and the martyrdom of Rorschach were of his design. Everyone had to be out of the way to create an incident that would unite the world.
To pull experience from my own life, I remember in 2001 after September 11, and what came from it. Hand-in-hand, Americans and parts of the world came together in the face of a seeming Armageddon. Left and right-wing united in hopes of a better tomorrow.
But it was temporary. Everyone returned to blaming each other. Nothing was getting solved and dissension grew over time. For every “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” by Toby Keith was an “American Idiot” by Green Day. Unity, while a beautiful concept, is but a fleeting visitor. So is tragedy. These things come and go.
Nothing ever ends, Adrian.
What I find powerful about the ending is Moore and Gibbons’s choice to add ambiguity to whether Veidt was right or not in the end. We see the small, supporting human characters untethered to the superhero drama. But we don’t know what comes of this new dream, only rubble and despair. At least from this creative team’s vision.
Readers are left to ponder this and everything that has happened. Sure, it’d be easy to look at a future where the world of Watchmen recovers, as nations unite as brothers. But likely, the cycle would repeat. Everyone would help but then return to the same game of King of the Hill.
Of course, goodness remains in those who have it engrained within their essence. For example, there’s a street corner throughout the story where very minor characters traverse, recurring throughout the chapters. One such character is the suspended officer, Detective Steve Fine, who convinces his partner to pull over to break up an assault— “I’m still me, Joe.” In this set piece, I’m reminded of Andrew Firestone’s Screen Rant article “The Point of WATCHMEN That Everyone Seems To Miss”, as all sorts of little revelations of the little lives of these characters as they converge.
Keep in mind, that this is near the end of the story, closing the stories of people who’ve had to do shifty things to get by or let their innermost sides out because they’re incredibly human. One of the most haunting images closed by this scuffle is the apocalyptic scene summoned by Ozymandias. A newsstand owner and an adolescent reader embrace as they’re enveloped in white. Love doesn’t always win, but it can be comfort when death carries you off.
That doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way. Grime can be wiped off for a gleaming slate. Ideas will grow and blossom into better tomorrows, just as much as those ideas can be co-opted to be corruptible. Tomorrow’s grime that the tomorrow after’s washcloth can clean.
Conclusion
Top to bottom, Watchmen’s story took what comic fans love about superhero stories and added it to what literature fans love about the deeper layers written on pages without pictures. Reject all we might, humans will never be infallible.
Everyone is flawed, but some will be held to standards and on podiums different from others. Conflict remains eternal.
We can’t impose our experiences on each other. We are not universal. And nothing ever ends.
No matter what DC and Warner Bros do to adapt this story or bring it forward, the original story depends on what we take from it.
That’s what Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons meant to impart to us. And they left it entirely in our hands.