Watchmen is one of the most popular and influential comic books ever, written in the 80s by English
wizard Alan Moore.
Watchmen is a superhero story that questions the idea of a hero – which is symbolised
by this bloody smiley face.
The smiley is the ultimate simplistic cartoon, representing the optimism of comic books where
good guys fight bad guys and no one ever really dies . Watchmen splashes that smiley with
blood, cause it adds flawed human characters, moral ambiguity, politics, philosophy, and
darkness that was unusual in comics at the time.
Of course now, everything’s a dark gritty reimagining of superheros – but Watchmen
did it before it was cool, and still holds up as a complex story about power, morality,
fantasy, and giant psychic squids.
So what happens in the original Watchmen, and what does it mean?
The story’s set in an alternate 80s America, where superheroes exist.
None of them have superpowers – they’re just vigilantes in costumes.
Except for Dr. Manhattan, who has like all the powers, except pants.
With Manhattan’s help, America won the Vietnam War, and Richard Nixon is still president
– he’s on his fifth term.
A hero called the Comedian does dirty work for the government, and it’s hinted that
he covered up the Watergate scandal, which in the real world ended Nixon’s presidency.
So superheroes change the course of history, and they also affect culture.
The hero Silk Spectre was a celebrity and sex symbol in the 40s , and Ozymandias built
a corporate empire selling action figures of himself . Because of all the real superheroes,
people lost interest in superhero comics, so comics about pirates are popular instead.
Thanks to Dr. Manhattan, technology’s more advanced – 80s New York has electric cars
and airships, and people eat genetically-modified four-legged chicken.
In the 70s, heroes were outlawed, so most of them retired – only Manhattan and the
Comedian are allowed to keep working for the government.
When the story starts, tension is rising in the Cold War between America and Russia – everyone
fears nuclear annihilation, the doomsday clock approaches midnight, and the Comedian is mysteriously
killed.
The murder’s investigated by Rorschach, a hero who refused to retire.
On the surface, Rorschach is like Batman – he lurks in the shadows, beats up criminals,
says edgy shit in a gravelly voice . But by day, Batman is Bruce Wayne, a sexy genius
billionaire.
While Rorschach is Walter Kovacs, a greasy loner weirdo who walks the streets with a
sign saying “The end is nigh”.
Cause realistically, the sort of person who dresses up and fights people at night isn’t
a functional person – he’s “a nutcase” . So Rorschach is an asocial violent psycho
with an extreme worldview.
He thinks all of society is filthy and sinful and doesn’t deserve mercy . Rorschach’s
black-and-white mask reflects his black-and-white morality – everything’s either good or
evil, and evil must be punished . He says he never compromises in his judgement , but
he’s often biased – he spares people punishment for personal reasons, and like, when he hears
the Comedian tried to rape Silk Spectre, he doesn’t care, cause he sees the Comedian
as a patriot , and Silk Spectre as a “whore” . Rorschach is psychologically disturbed by
sex . As a kid, his mother was abusive, and he saw her working as a prostitute – sexuality
reminds Rorschach of his hatred and disgust for his mother , and he expresses this anger
by fighting criminals . Rorschach became a vigilante when he heard about Kitty Genovese,
a real-world murder victim in the 60s . Rorschach was still a kind of “rational” person
back then , until he discovered the savage murder of a child.
Rorschach saw the darkest side of humanity, and it broke him, convinced him that the world
is random and godless and has “No meaning” – “save what we choose to impose”.
The only way Rorschach could save himself from despair and trauma was to impose his
brutal ideology, punishing evil no matter the cost.
Which often just causes more suffering . Like, he routinely gets information by breaking
random peoples’ fingers until he hears something useful . He terrorises a sick old man, and
breaks into peoples houses and eats all their beans.
Rorschach calls everyone else “parasites”, but he’s the one who lives off other people
. Rorschach calls everyone filth – but he’s the one who stinks . He says he never compromises,
but he often does.
And his obsession with punishing evil just leaves more bloody footprints behind him.
So Watchmen goes deep into the psychology of the masked avenger, and it doesn’t find
a cool hero like Batman – Rorschach is a gross, hypocritical sad broken man.
But Rorschach does help uncover a conspiracy that threatens millions of people…
Dr. Manhattan explores what it means to be superhuman.
He can effortlessly shape the world around him on an atomic scale , he can teleport , walk
on the sun, sees past present and future as one . He’s like a god , but he’s a really
shitty boyfriend.
Cause being superhuman makes it hard to relate with people , he doesn’t have human needs
or human fears, he’s cold and distant, and really bad at sex.
Manhattan can see the universe, from the dance of atoms, to ancient Martian geology, so humans
are like ants to him – their lives so small and short . The people around him age and
die, but he never changes.
When he starts relationships, he already sees the future when they’ll break up . Through
the medium of comics, we get to see the time as Manhattan does – with past present and
future all visible at once, a story with a predetermined end.
Manhattan says that free will is illusion – that “We’re all puppets”, he’s
“just a puppet who can see the strings” . So in a way, the most powerful being in
the universe is powerless – he can’t change the future, cause to him, it’s already happened.
Manhattan’s superhuman perspective makes him not human.
And without human feelings, he has no desire to be a superhero and save the world.
So, Manhattan is a deconstruction of characters like Superman – suggesting that a superhuman
would actually not be a great protector of humans.
There’s something existentially terrifying about a being so powerful – he makes regular
humans irrelevant, obsolete, like Neanderthals replaced by sapiens . Manhattan gets falsely
accused of giving people cancer, and his girlfriend Laurie leaves him for an owl man.
So Manhattan fucks off to Mars and builds a sandcastle.
Eventually, Laurie convinces Manhattan that human life does have value, because of its
sheer miraculous improbability.
And that, by the way, is a real actual smiley face on Mars.
So Manhattan returns to Earth to try to prevent apocalypse.
Nite Owl is a retired hero.
Back in the day, he dressed like an owl and used gadgets to fight crime.
But now, he finds that stuff embarrassing.
He realised that punching criminals doesn’t actually make the world better – and all
the costumes and gadgets were a “childish” “fantasy” . So now Nite Owl is just Dan
Dreiberg.
He’s in his forties, he gained weight, like Batman with fupa, and he’s not happy.
Rorschach warns him of a conspiracy, and the threat of war, but Dan feels powerless to
face these dangers.
He feels lonely and useless and “impotent” . He wants to be with Laurie, but he’s awkward
and unconfident . When they try to have sex, Dan can’t get it up – there’s something
missing from his life, until Dan and Laurie rediscover the excitement of being heroes.
They get back into costume, and spring Rorschach from jail.
The power and danger and fun of it sparks magic in their relationship – and being
an owl really gets Dan’s dick hard . So superheroes are silly and childish, but there’s
still meaning there.
Dan writes an essay about ornithology, the scientific study of birds.
He says sometimes science loses the beauty and poetry of nature, and there’s no point
in life if you’re all sensible and rational all the time.
We need wonder and romance and silliness because it’s fun, and it brings people together.
Dan and Laurie fall in love, and embrace their heroic identities, and face the looming threat
of nuclear war.
Laurie is the most normal person among the superheroes, probably because she never really
wanted to be a superhero.
Her mother Sally was the original Silk Spectre, and she pushed Laurie into being Silk Spectre
II, making her train for her hero career, like one of those beauty pageant moms.
Laurie hates the Comedian, because he once tried to rape her mother Sally.
But Laurie discovers that that later on, Sally loved the Comedian anyway, and they had a
child together – turns out the Comedian, the most despicable character in Watchmen,
is Laurie’s father . So Laurie smashes a bottle of Nostalgia brand perfume, her childhood
snow globe smashes, Manhattan’s Martian castle smashes, Laurie’s whole idea of who
she is collapses, becomes something messier and darker . Cause she later plans to change
her costume to something similar to the Comedian’s, as though she partly embraces his legacy – in
the upcoming Watchmen TV show, Laurie takes the Comedian’s surname, Blake.
So this revelation is a loss of innocence, for Laurie and for superheroes, which is what
Watchmen’s bloody smiley represents.
Overall though, Laurie’s character isn’t explored as deeply as the other characters.
She and her mother are largely defined by their sexuality and relationships with men.
So depictions of women is one comics trope that Watchmen does little to subvert.
In the end, Laurie, Dan, Manhattan and Rorschach discover a conspiracy masterminded by Ozymandias.
Ozymandias is Adrian Veidt, another retired hero, said to be the “smartest man on Earth”
. Veidt is a super ambitious super rich super arrogant dude who wants to be like Alexander
the Great, and the Egyptian pharaohs . His dream is to unite the world – under his
design . Veidt realised that superheroes couldn’t save the world from nuclear war . So instead,
he hatched a crazy plan.
He put a bunch of scientists and artists on a secret island and genetically engineered
a giant psychic squid monster.
He kills the Comedian when the Comedian finds out his plan, and he uses a cancer hoax to
get rid of Manhattan , and frames Rorschach to get him jailed, and he hires an assassin
on himself to throw off suspicion, and finally he teleports the squid into New York, killing
three million people, to make it look like aliens attacked, to scare the world into ending
the Cold War, uniting humanity, and bringing peace on Earth . It’s a crazy supervillain
plan, and it actually succeeds.
America and Russia are so freaked out by the supposed alien that they make a peace deal.
And Rorschach and Manhattan and Dan and Laurie fail to stop Ozymandias from killing millions
of people – so much for superheroes.
Ozymandias saves the world not by punching anyone, and not with superhuman powers, but
by science and determination and a psychopathic willingness to kill three million people.
He saves the world at a terrible cost – so is he a hero, or a villain?
Throughout Watchmen, there’s a comic book within the comic book, a tale of the Black
Freighter.
It’s a story about a sailor who tries to save his town from an apocalyptic pirate ship,
but he ends up killing innocent people, and becoming just as evil as what he tried to
prevent – “Noble intentions” led him to “to atrocity” – just like Ozymandias’
plan.
At the end of Watchmen, Ozymandias has a dream of the Black Freighter , and his last panel
shows him alone, separate from the world.
Like the sailor, he is “marooned from the rest of humanity” because of the evil he
did . But Ozymandias says that “someone had to take the weight of that awful, necessary
crime” . This pose looks kinda like the crucifixion of Christ.
And we later see an ad for the Tarkovsky movie The Sacrifice, in which a man sacrifices everything
he loves to prevent war.
Maybe you can see Ozymandias’ plan as a heroic self-sacrifice – he did the terrible
necessary crime so no one else had to.
Or you can say he’s a delusional egomaniacal mass-murdering psychopath, and a criticism
of rich assholes having way too much power in the world in the first place.
Does Ozymandias really care about saving people, or is her serving his pride and ambition.
Philosophically, Ozymandias’ plan is utilitarian – he kills three million people to save
the entire world, so the good outweighs the evil.
But Rorschach doesn’t believe in moral grey area – he sees just black and white.
So he wants to reveal the truth of Ozymandias’ crimes, to punish him – even though revealing
the truth of his alien hoax would destroy the new world peace.
Rorschach says he will “Never compromise”, “Not even in the face of Armageddon” . So
Manhattan kills Rorschach to keep the secret.
In his final moment, Rorschach takes off his mask, and dies as Walter Kovacs, showing his
humanity and vulnerability in the end, cause deep down, under the anger, Rorschach’s
just a broken lonely man who’s craved death from the start .Rorschach’s inflexible morals
can’t survive in a morally complex world, so it seems that his black-and-white morality
fails.
But – we see earlier, that Rorschach wrote notes about Ozymandias’ conspiracy, and
sent them to a journalist, who may or may not reveal the truth to the world.
The last line of Watchmen is “I leave it entirely in your hands” . So when you close
the comic book in your hands, you decide what the ending means.
Maybe Ozymandias’ hoax is revealed – maybe Rorschach was right, and Ozy deserves punishment,
even if it risks nuclear war.
Or maybe you believe in Ozymandias’ brave new world, even though it’s built on murder
and lies.
Or maybe you feel like Dr. Manhattan.
He decides that humans are too annoying and complicated, so he leaves the galaxy, to create
life elsewhere – there’s no place for a superhuman among humans, in the end.
Or maybe you relate to Dan and Laurie.
They don’t save the world , or die for a cause.
But they do get a happy ending – they fall in love, take new identities, and start a
life together, planning to continue being superheroes.
They know that being heroes doesn’t achieve much.
They know it’s childish and dangerous.
But they embrace the fun and romance of it.
Watchmen is a criticism of the fantasy of the superhero, showing that reality is darker
and more complicated than we like to admit.
But despite that, Dan and Laurie’s story reminds us that for all fantasy’s flaws,
it brings joy and meaning to peoples’ lives . The smiley is bloodied, the snow globe broke,
the perfume smashed, millions died.
We grew up.
But we can still have nostalgia for simpler times.
In the end, Watchmen is a Rorschach test.
Everyone has a different interpretation of the story, depending on which characters and
ideas resonate with you – it’s entirely in your hands.
Comment below if you want more Watchmen content on Alt Shift X – there is a Watchmen TV
show coming out soon.
There are also adaptations of His Dark Materials, Dune and Lord of the Rings coming, and we’ll
make videos about some of these series.
So now’s a good time to listen to these audiobooks.
You can get any of these for free right now by signing up for a trial with Audible.
Members get an audiobook each month, and if you cancel, you keep the audiobooks.
You can listen in the car or the gym or in your Antarctic base with your genetically-engineered
cat.
All of these are classics and you won’t regret checking them out.
So sign up at audible.com/asx.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks to Patrons Esther, Earl, andrew Bronfman, Nastulas, Maiza, @cavefish2, and Arthur Dayne.
Cheers.