Through the 70s to the 80s, DC Comics was surfing over a wave of success, with brilliant, experimentative, bold entries like Green Arrow/Green Lantern, The Dark Knight Rises, a new volume of Suicide Squad, and Justice League International, etc. These and a number of other titles revolutionized the very nature of artistic expression in comic-book literature, taking a stance more geopolitically conscious, socially topical, and more realism-oriented than ever before. This new wave culminated in the creation of Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, arguably the most important piece of work in the history of comic-book literature, which condensed the postmodern disillusionment, fright of the cold war, failing social structure, and loss of faith—all the tell-tale signifiers of the 80s—into an intricate tale that tests the scope of morality, individualism, and the notion of heroism itself with caped avengers as the key players.
At the same time, Watchmen was more than a product of its time; it was a visionary, prophetic story created by the legendary creator duo who, while crafting a tale with reimagined Charlton Comics characters, reshaped their spin on superhero fiction as borderline nihilistic fantasy. Alan Moore’s deconstructive take, combined with the pulpy, awe-inspiring art of Dave Gibbons, has finally gotten its most faithful replication in the recently released animated movie Watchmen: Chapter 1, which comes really close in its attempt to translate the pages and panels to the screen.
Spoilers Ahead
The Murder of Comedian: Rorschach’s Investigation
Watchmen is set in a reality where costumed crimefighters had started appearing across the world since the 1940s, and their presence had a major impact on the geopolitical scenario. The Minutemen, the first notable group of costumed vigilantes, were active during the Second World War and later on passed the baton to a younger generation of heroes, collectively known as Crimebusters. As a part of this altered timeline, the United States had won the Vietnam War due to having Dr. Manhattan, a nigh omnipotent superhero, by their side, Nixon remained in the White House, and the Red Scare became more prevalent than ever as the intensity of the Cold War rose to an all-time high. The world now fears imminent nuclear armageddon, as Russia and the United States have begun a new dispute over the United States’ occupation of Afghanistan. Public outcry against unrestrained interventions of superheroes led to the creation of the Keen Act in 1977, which effectively banned every form of vigilantism, leaving only Comedian and Dr. Manhattan as active heroes under the United States government’s control.
As a panel-by-panel adaptation of the original graphic novel, Watchmen: Chapter 1 begins in 1985 with Rorschach’s journal entry, which gives us an insight into the character’s broken psyche. Rorschach, aka Walter Kovacs, was part of the Crimebusters hero group, and like the inkblot mask he wears to hide his face, his idea of morality is part of the black-and-white binary. Lamenting the moral decadence and shifting ideologies in changing times, the jaded vigilante, who considers beating random taggers into bloody pulp a moral responsibility, believes in an absolute and extreme form of justice. Early on in the movie, Rorschach investigates the brutal murder of a certain Edward Blake and learns that he was the sadistic, brutal, xenophobic hero Comedian in disguise. Comedian and Rorschach both reveled in causing violence and pain and had an absolutely degenerate worldview, with the only difference being Rorschach actually believes he is on the right path, while Comedian accepts his own amoral, psychopathic tendencies with pleasure. The discovery of Blake’s murder triggers Kovacs’s paranoia, and he starts to meet with members of the Crimebusters one by one. Rorschach takes Comedian’s iconic smiley badge with blood stain, memorabilia of his fallen comrade.
God Leaves The Stage, And Mystery Intensifies
The first person Rorschach decides to go to is his former vigilante partner, Daniel Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl II, a mild-mannered tech based hero who has made peace with the past and is trying to live a normal life. Daniel is surprised after learning about Comedian’s death, and remembering the vicious, callous streak of the vigilante, sums up that it might have been a simple burglary or political revenge-motivated crime. Rorschach obviously isn’t satisfied with the answer and goes to meet Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias, the smartest man alive—who, going with the hyper-consumerist flow of the contemporary era, has made himself a brand of sorts by commercializing his hero career after retiring from his crimefighting days. Veidt remembers Comedian differently, as a hard-boiled cynic who laughed at the face of creating a team like Crimebusters in a changing time when costumed heroes have become irrelevant. Disgusted by Veidt’s liberal sensibilities, Rorschach leaves him to pursue the final two on his warning list: Laurie Jupiter, aka Silk Spectre II, and Jonathan Osterman, aka Dr. Manhattan, the most powerful being alive.
Created in a freak accident after he got caught up in an intrinsic field generator, Dr. Osterman disintegrated right up to his very atoms and eventually gained godlike powers including controlling matter and moving through time and space, among many others. It seems the accident took away the good doctor’s soul as well, as the more he got in sync with his omnipotence, the more apathetic, amoral, and distant he became. Osterman helped the United States win the Vietnam War singlehandedly, prompting the government to consider him as a valuable asset—who is kept in a secured laboratory with his girlfriend, Laurie Jupiter—Dr. Manhattan’s only tether to the world of mortals. Laurie abhors the Comedian, who, during his tenure as a member of Minutemen, tried to sexually assault his fellow team member, Sally Jupiter, aka the first Silk Spectre, Laurie’s mother. She is equally disgusted by Kovacs’ presence, which prompts Osterman to teleport Rorschach out of the facility—but in his mind, he started reminiscing about the war days—when the amoral, disgruntled Comedian had held up a mirror to him to highlight his growing disenchantment with humanity. Manhattan had witnessed Comedian killing a Vietnamese woman, who was pregnant with Blake’s child, in cold blood, and despite having all the powers to stop him with a mere thought, the good doctor refrained from doing anything. Laurie goes to visit her mother and gets surprised to learn that Sally actually laments Blake’s demise, as she misses the bygone era of the Minutemen. The Crimebusters attend the funeral of Comedian, where Rorschach notices the old villain of the team, Moloch, as well. Kovacs later pays him a visit to squeeze information about the murder mystery out of him and learns that, months before his death, Blake had met Moloch in a drunken state and blabbered details about knowing of something despicable, even by his standards, which involved an island with artists, and writers as its denizens.
Dr. Manhattan’s growing god complex creates a distance between him and Laurie, prompting her to seek the company of Daniel. As Manhattan attends a press conference, one of the reporters insinuates that his presence is causing cancer among people close to him, which results in the good doctor having an uncontrollable meltdown, transporting the audience somewhere else. This incident increases Dr.Manhattan’s disenchantment further, and he decides to get away from these earthly tribulations by venturing to Mars.
Saga of Black Freighter: Who Watches the Watchmen?
The son of a watchmaker, Osterman always wanted to take up his father’s profession, but as the atomic age made its presence felt, the worth of timekeeping became gradually meaningless, precisely how Manhattan now perceives time in his reality. Witnessing past, present, and future all at once, Manhattan has moved beyond the considerations and limitations of mortals and seems to be content in observing the cosmic marvels in the void of space. Parallel to the main storyline, a seafaring adventure comic strip, Tales of the Black Freighter, is weaved into the narrative, which acts as active foreshadowing to the events of the main story. In the form of a story within the story, Black Freighter chronicles the doomed journey of a shipwrecked sailor who desperately tries to protect his home from the dreaded Black Freighter and becomes a deranged, psychotic figure in his quest to survive and overcome odds to reach his home. At the end, he himself becomes the monster he had feared as he takes the lives of his loved ones in derangement and finds his place amidst the crew of the Black Freighter instead.
Within a couple of days, Comedian has been murdered and Manhattan has left earth; the clues are strong enough to send Kovacs to put the squeeze on Moloch once again in search of information, to no avail. Meanwhile, Veidt survives an assassination attempt but fails to apprehend the assailant, who has already bitten cyanide to evade capture. Rorschach’s suspicion about someone targeting the capes proves to be true, and he goes to visit Moloch a third time to get intel—only to find him murdered at his home. The scenario turns out to be a set-up, as the police arrive at the scene, corner Rorschach, and arrest him after an initial struggle.
In Watchmen: Chapter 1’s ending, Veidt gazes out of his penthouse window; the incessant rain will not be able to wash away the sins, like Kovacs had opined earlier. The end credits feature a radio recording of the first Nite Owl, Hollis Mason’s autobiography, “Under the Hood,” detailing a time where uncertainty of a bleak future wiped away the simplicity of the past, and the timer to the doomsday clock rings tick tock, tick tock.
