Killing the Mask: the Death of the Superhero in Watchmen
The superhero is a fixture of American culture; its connotation evokes images of incorruptible figures that operate inside of worlds in which their morality and purity is seldom brought into question. These characters are born out of the morally dominant virtues of the time of their inception: Superman stands tall and unshakable, ready to defeat Lex Luthor, the evil personification of corporate capitalism; Captain America embodies patriotism as he punches Hitler in the face and wins World War Two for the Allies; Batman battles psychopaths and petty criminals, escaping his own tragic upbringing. However, in his graphic novel Watchmen, Alan Moore offers a different, darker interpretation of this archetypical dynamic. In the dystopic New York of Watchmen, heroes arise that represent the cultural concerns of 1986, defamiliarizing what it means to be a “superhero;” instead of attaining the traditional messianic role expected of them, they become avatars of fear and death, inadvertently causing the destruction of the society that they are supposed to protect.
In the alternate history of Watchmen, due to actions by several masked vigilantes and the superhuman John Osterman, America is able to win the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon enters his fourth term as president, and energy breakthroughs lead to electric cars and an abundant source of clean energy. The Cold War continues, and the world cowers in fear the destructive potential of Osterman’s ability to reshape matter. The Keene Act of 1977 outlaws vigilantism after growing tensions between the general populace and the “masks,” and the titular vigilante group, the Watchmen, are disbanded. The team, consisting of Edward Blake, Adrian Veidt, John Osterman, Walter Kovacs, Dan Dreiberg, and Laurie Juspeczyk, is rendered inactive with the exception of three members. Blake and Osterman, known as the Comedian and Dr. Manhattan, are contracted to work for the United States government; Kovacs, alias Rorschach, continues to operate independently in direct violation of the law. When a mysterious killer begins to target members of the team, Rorschach begins to unravel a plot that culminates in an Antarctic standoff that, through the sacrifice of three million lives in a terror attack orchestrated by Veidt, results in the nuclear powers uniting against what is perceived as an extraterrestrial threat, creating an arbitrary world peace.
Whereas Superman’s broad chest, strong posture, chiseled jaw, and strong moral compass represent the heroic ideal of his native 1930s, Dr. Manhattan’s appearance embodies the fears of the Cold War Era: he glows a radioactive blue, his eyes are completely white, lacking any visible pupils or irises, and emblazoned on his forehead is a menacing diagram of the hydrogen atom. While the former uses his godlike abilities to fight crime and solve moral dilemmas, the latter becomes increasingly distant from humanity, eventually dissociating from his human name and deciding that the best course of action to ensure the survival of the species is to ostracize himself to a different galaxy. Instead of echoing the virtue-defending drives of Superman, Dr. Manhattan’s decision shows that there “comes a perspective that reveals the abdication of responsibility as the most moral option” (Cates 841). As his existence sets into motion the events that destroy half of downtown New York City’s populace, his disappearance closes the power gap between the America and the Soviet Union. Therefore, in order to save the world, the superhuman must no longer exist within its borders.
This reveals the primary crux of Moore’s argument within the text; specifically, that the creation of superheroes necessitates and perpetuates problems for them to solve, villains for them to fight against, and societal changes based upon the knowledge that these individuals operate on a level of morality that is considered to be above that of the masses. For traditional heroes such as Superman, Batman, and Captain America, this doesn’t raise any particular issues; products of the Golden Age of Comics, they originate from “a time when readers were searching for methods of escape from a failing economy and the dangers of war” (Hughes 546). By portraying certain heroic ideals, writers of the time were able to assuage the concerns of their cultural era, creating heroes to reinforce hegemonic ideals and provide a form of heroic escapism for their readers. The inherent otherness of the archetypal superhero “[positions] them outside of ideology” (Hughes 546). They are unaffected by cultural factors such as religion, politics, race, gender, and sexuality, allowing their readers to momentarily exist within a fantasy world in which heroes are consistently tolerant and accepting. Watchmen shuns this, firmly entrenching its characters within these ideological power constructs, allowing warring belief systems to twist, mutate, and warp the actions and beliefs of the heroes. Due to Moore’s depiction of the team lacking any actual superpowers, with the exception of Dr. Manhattan, it becomes clear that the Watchmen are little more than “individuals caught up in and ideology” (Hughes 550). Their values, views, and opinions compel them to dress in costume and descend in the night to bring judgement and retribution to the immoral populace by any means necessary.
Traditional superheroes answer only to themselves and their own senses of justice and virtue; the Watchmen, however, answer to the various cultural constructs that created them. Rorschach is created out of the violence of the streets, and is thus the most angry and ruthless member of the team; Dr. Manhattan is born from a nuclear accident and proceeds to follow the study of subatomic molecules and time until he transcends his human nature; Veidt’s drive to perfect himself manifests itself in his monopolizing company and plan to create a utopian society. These characters remain firmly within the cultural frameworks that create them, and their mentalities and methods are shaped accordingly. As their actions become steadily less heroic as the novel progress, the connection between the signified, being themselves, and the signifier, the term “superhero,” begins to decompose, until the sign itself is transmogrified. At the text’s conclusion, the characters’ identification as superheroes becomes little more than a farce; time and time again, Moore displays that these men and women don their costumes out of misguided senses of duty and justice, harbor various discriminatory viewpoints, and transform the society that they live in into a dystopia, damning it to destruction instead of ensuring its safety.
Adrian Veidt best demonstrates this disconnection between the messianic drives of the superhero and the inherently flawed nature of their existence. Realizing the monetary potential of his image, he retires, goes public with his identity, and creates a corporation to cash in on the brand that he has created. As the self-proclaimed “world’s smartest man” (Moore XII 18), only he and Dr. Manhattan possess the knowledge of humanity’s rapidly approaching destruction in atomic fire. However, while Osterman does not intervene, letting time run its allotted course, Veidt decides to act, developing a complicated plan of alienation, betrayal, and sacrifice in order to bring about world peace. Veidt is a completely self-made hero; all of his abilities stem from his own determination to emulate the great rulers Alexander and Ramses, going so far as to adopt the moniker ‘Ozymandias,’ cloak himself in Egyptian iconography, and apply the conqueror’s mindset to the issue of humanity’s protection. By murdering the Comedian, alienating Osterman, thus completing his dehumanization and total shift to the persona of Dr. Manhattan, and staging a mock alien invasion of New York, he achieves this goal; however, the subsequent explosion of his extraterrestrial hoax instantaneously immolates three million citizens in the heart of downtown Manhattan.
Upon seeing the first images of the aftermath of his victory, he does not weep at the loss of life; instead, he cries tears of joy, raising his arms and shouting “I did it! I saved Earth from Hell. Next, I’ll help her towards utopia” (Moore XII 19–20). However, in a moment alone with Dr. Manhattan, his calm, smug facade of the victorious and self-assured hero wavers for a moment, and he asks the superhuman if what he did was right, in the end, to which Osterman replies “Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends” (Moore XII 27) before leaving for a new galaxy. The last frame in which Ozymandias is present shows him looking over his shoulder, his countenance melancholy and troubled. Veidt then must acknowledge that the peace that he manufactured on a foundation of lies and corpses cannot stand; sooner or later, it will slip and humanity will once again dance along the brink of annihilation. Whatever moral superiority that Ozymandias may have held therefore becomes null and void and he is stripped of his status as a superhero, becoming just another psychopathic mass murderer in Earth’s long, sad history.
Rorschach occupies the opposite end of the messianic spectrum: unquestioning, uncompromising, and unstable, he inverts the comic book tradition of tragic upbringings resulting in pure heroes. Raised by a prostitute, bullied, and exposed to the corrupted moral core of his world, the young Walter Kovacs recedes within his own mind, brooding and developing a disgust with sexual conduct in any form along with a staunch, hyper-right wing belief system. He then begins moonlighting as the vigilante Rorschach to fight back against the moral decay that he sees in society. However, while investigating the brutal murder of a young girl, the man finally tips and breaks; as he says to his prison-appointed psychiatrist, “it was Kovacs who closed his eyes. It was Rorschach who opened them again” (Moore VI 21). Throughout the course of the novel, he is referenced by other characters as damaged, psychotic, disturbing, and murderous. Despite this, Moore depicts him as the most morally driven member of the Watchmen; black and white though his moral compass may be, and as vicious as his methods are, he nonetheless acts out of disillusionment with the moral integrity of his world, a classic comic trope.
Unlike similar characters, however, such as Batman, Rorschach is unflinching in his delivery of justice. He possesses no qualms about the use of violence, nor any personal code regarding its implementation. His victims suffer fates including multiple broken fingers, electrocution, drowning, being burned alive, and being dropped down an elevator shaft. To Rorschach, these are necessary and just actions; as he says, “there is good and there is evil, and evil must be punished” (Moore I 24). Because of this, he is the most traditional vigilante presented in Watchmen, but he is also the most damaged. Instead of being reformed by his prison psychiatrist, his toxic philosophy distorts the man’s view of the world until it resembles his own nihilistic beliefs. In Rorschach’s mind, the majority of humanity is made up of degenerates, profligates, and others deserving of retribution delivered by his hand. It is the murder of the Comedian, a man that he admires to the point of dismissing his rape of Sally Jupiter as nothing more than “a moral lapse” (Moore I 21), that drives him throughout the novel. Only the killing of someone that he considers to be one of the few remaining good men compels him to move on from simply punishing street thugs and back into the realm of what mostly resembles heroic action.
While this seems cliche enough within the medium, Moore’s decision to use the sadistic Comedian as the sacrificial hero for the novel’s impetus further elucidates the defamiliarization of the superhero through the destruction of various tropes. Eddie Blake is no Uncle Ben, Alfred, or the Kent family; his morals are drastically skewed. The Comedian is a patriot, working for the government as an assassin for hire. He believes in police action, the military-industrial agenda, and quick, brutal responses to protest. He is an agent of the American establishment; like Captain America, he fights both foreign and domestic issues. Unlike the latter, however, he does so with a nihilistic mocking smile, often acting “deliberately amoral” (Moore IV 19), as opposed to Steve Rogers’s strict American positivity and unshakable heroic morality. The Captain fights because he feels that his country must be protected; someone must act as the shield of democracy and the masses. The Comedian fights because he has seen the same pointlessness that Rorschach has; however, instead of swearing to destroy it, Blake realizes that it is an inescapable aspect of the human condition, and chooses to view the charade of civilized existence as one big joke. Therein lies the primary difference between the Rogers and the Comedian: while the former fights against the darkness, the latter readies a gun, adjusts his smiley-face pendant, and turns out the lights.
Moore’s work challenges the comic medium in a variety of ways, attacking origin stories, morality, mental stability, and villainy as they are traditionally displayed. By replacing the virtue creative matrix archetypical of the genre with one of fear, he inverts the very essence of the superhero’s existence. In Watchmen, their birth from phobias drives them along darker paths, abandoning the clean, morally simplistic characters of other works. Moore twists the escapist fiction into a mirror, showing society that even the greatest amongst its shuffling multitudes are, at their core, inherently flawed human beings. Watchmen is not at all like other comics; the heroes live and breath the decay of their world, inundated with the corruption that their existence wrought. The text shows that the heroic ideal cannot exist in the real world; humanity’s own masochistic penchant for self-destruction would only morph these stalwart protectors into cynical, disillusioned husks, with naught but cold ashes behind their masks where the fires of justice and morality once burned bright.
Works Cited
Cates, I. “On the Literary Use of Superheroes; Or, Batman and Superman Fistfight in Heaven.”
American Literature (2012): 831–57. Print.
Crutcher, Paul A. “Complexity in the Comic and Graphic Novel Medium: Inquiry Through
Bestselling Batman Stories.” The Journal of Popular Culture: 53–72. Print.
Dubose, Mike S. “Holding Out for a Hero: Reaganism, Comic Book Vigilantes, and Captain
America.” The Journal of Popular Culture: 915–35. Print.
Hughes, Jamie A. “”Who Watches the Watchmen?”: Ideology and “Real World” Superheroes.”
The Journal of Popular Culture: 546–57. Print.
Moore, Alan, and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen. Book Club ed. New York: DC Comics, 1987.
Print.
Prince, Michael J. “Alan Moore’s America: The Liberal Individual and American Identities in
Watchmen.” The Journal of Popular Culture: 815–30. Print.
Ryan, Jennifer. “Truth Made Visible: Crises of Cultural Expression in Truth: Red, White, and
Black.” College Literature: 66–96. Print.
Annotated Bibliography
Cates, I. “On the Literary Use of Superheroes; Or, Batman and Superman Fistfight in Heaven.”
I used this article to further my understanding of the nature of Superman and the deconstruction present in Watchmen. Cates states that
“Comics writers, too, have capitalized on
the symbolic or archetypal power of particular characters, and some of
the best of the current generation of graphic-novel artists have written
strong, compelling reflections on the figure of the superhero and its
place in the psychology of our contemporary culture.”
He analyzes numerous graphic novels in a variety of frameworks; for Superman, he employs New Historicism, looking at the character’s cultural implication. In his discussion of Watchmen, he uses structuralism and deconstructionism by presenting the various ideological drives of Moore’s heroes.
Crutcher, Paul A. “Complexity in the Comic and Graphic Novel Medium: Inquiry Through
Bestselling Batman Stories.”
I used this article to further my understanding of the marginalization of the comic and graphic novel medium. Crutcher states that
“Arguments from these and other scholars and writers
suggest that significant graphic novels about the Batman, one of the
most popular and iconic characters ever produced — including Frank
Miller, Klaus Janson, and Lynn Varley’s Dark Knight Returns, Grant
Morrison and Dave McKean’s Arkham Asylum, and Alan Moore and
Brian Bolland’s Killing Joke — can provide unique complexity not found
in prose-based novels and traditional films.”
He uses cultural criticism to blend the line between the literary canon and the comic and graphic novel medium through the analysis of the Batman.
Dubose, Mike S. “Holding Out for a Hero: Reaganism, Comic Book Vigilantes, and Captain
America.”
I used this article for a cultural backdrop on the eighties, employing it to better understand the climate to which Watchmen was released. Dubose writes that
“This article, then, will analyze superheroes in eighties comic books
to find out how heroship in popular culture actually worked.”
He uses New Historicism to demonstrate the American need for hero figures in a questionable decade and the culture’s subsequent disillusionment with authority figures, explaining the ideological concerns of Watchmen’s political heroes.
Hughes, Jamie A. “”Who Watches the Watchmen?”: Ideology and “Real World” Superheroes.”
I employed this article to explain the controlling ideological constructs present in the primary text. As Hughes writes,
“These superheroes, unlike those of fantastic worlds and abilities, are
completely caught up in ideology. Superman, Batman, Green Lantern,
and the rest of the traditional good guys become superheroes for some
intrinsic responsibility, but the brood in Watchmen choose to do it for
much more mundane reasons — money, power, fame, or to promote
their own ideology.”
He studies the text through the critical lens of structuralism, analyzing the methods in which power structures shape the characters in various ways.
Prince, Michael J. “Alan Moore’s America: The Liberal Individual and American Identities in
Watchmen.”
I based the nature of my summary on this work, as well as the mention of certain symbols, most notably the Comedian’s smiley face pin and Dr. Manhattan’s atom brand. Prince theorizes that
“Moore’s work performs this task in two ways, firstly, by presenting a group of diverse ideologically contingent American figures in the individual characters, and secondly, by highlighting a sacrosanct element of America’s image of itself, the primacy of the “liberal individual” not just as an American type but as the naturalized core of the national ethos.”
He examines the various team members through both representative and semiotic lenses. By analyzing the visuals of the various heroes along with their actions, he served as the impetus for my own choice of theoretical frameworks and analytical style.
Ryan, Jennifer. “Truth Made Visible: Crises of Cultural Expression in Truth: Red, White, and
Black.”
I used Ryan’s article to better comprehend the current treatment of Captain America, a comic series that I am largely unfamiliar with. She states that
“While Steve Rogers personifies familiar
notions of the twentieth-century American superhero, Isaiah Bradley exists as the frame’s visual center through the very unfamiliarity of his physical signifiers within conventional narratives of superheroics. Here Morales and Baker argue that the unacknowledged blackness underlying American mythologies will inevitably resurface to challenge mainstream accounts of political responsibility and cultural identity even as the public’s willful amnesia about white exploitation of black culture continues to obscure historical truth.”
She analyzes the comic through the critical framework of cultural criticism, analyzing the marginalization of African Americans in the comic medium and America writ large.
