Who doesn't watch the Watchmen?

Me. But I read it again.

I think I posted them here once before, but here's what I thought the

Moore and Gibbon’s Watchmen is a classic, in every sense of the word.  There are no graphic novels that are as influential, as respected, nor, arguably, as brilliant.  And because it is a classic, a lot is said about it, and it has come to project a certain image into both the literary and popular consciousness.  Most importantly, it is often mentioned in the same breath as Frank Miller’s the Dark Knight Returns, and, like that work, talked of in terms of its effects on the superhero genre.  This is a somewhat false image, however, as Watchmen has almost nothing to do with superheroes.  It is, in fact, better compared to Maus, wherein the imagery of anthropomorphic animals is used to introduce the reader into a far more serious story.  In a very real sense, Watchmen is only about superheroes so it would appeal to the comic book audience.    Unlike Dark Knight Returns, or works like Kingdom Come or Ellis’ Planetary, where the aim of the work is to examine, explore and twist the superhero genre to reveal new insights, Watchmen uses them as purely a storytelling device, a metaphor for personal responsibility, with as much relevance to the central themes of the story as, say, the use of animals in Animal Farm.

 

What it shares with Dark Knight Returns is that it is very much a book about nuclear war.  Indeed, Watchmen is easily one of the greatest and most telling works about the period in the early eighties when the “doomsday clock” was at five to twelve, when nuclear Armageddon seemed inevitable and the world waited for the bombs to fall.  The images of this world are sewn into the fabric of Watchmen – the fallout shelters, the nuclear waste symbols, the image of “pushing the button” and above all, the ticking clock, getting ever closer to midnight.  The other key icon of the series is of course the blood-stained smiley face, which is the most savage irony: taking the “Have A Nice Day” symbol, so ubiquitous at the time, and staining it with the image of perhaps an equally ubiquitous sense of death.

 

However, this is not to say – as is often implied – that Watchmen is fatalistic in theme.  Indeed, it is the exact opposite: a severe attack on fatalism, almost to the point of accusing fatalism to be to blame for the desperate countdown the world found itself in at that time.  It is indeed the attitudes and beliefs of the world that are under examination here, both those that brought about the situation of perpending nuclear annihilation, and those that arise under that particular sword of Damocles.  And indeed, the fatalistic ending is avoided: although at a horrible price, the world is not destroyed, and the Gordian knot, whether cut or untied, is dismissed as ultimately unimportant compared to the light of Prometheus.

 

Each of the main superheroes in the story represents a different approach to the knot that cannot be untied, to the sword that must fall, and every one of them is a product of fatalism or rather, of pre-determination.  The most obvious example of this is Dr Manhattan, who can in fact see the future to some extent.  He is, quite literally as well as metaphorically, the nuclear age made flesh, and his resignation to the outcomes of his existence mirrors the idea that technology is to blame for our situation, and there is nothing that can be done against such forces.  When Manhattan sees the destructive power of technology in giving his friends cancer, he turns his back on life, seeing the two as antithetical.  Although he has the power to save the world, he refuses to play watchmaker, blinding himself to human concerns and thinking only of scientific eventualities.

 

But Manhattan is a fatalist long before his accident.  It is father who pushes him into his chosen field of expertise, who throws away his cogs when Hiroshima is destroyed.  As Jon Osterman says when he meets Janey: “Other people seem to make all my moves for me.”  This pattern of life being pre-determined continues across all the heroes: Dreiberg took on the role of Nite Owl because of his idolization of Hollis Mason, the previous Nite Owl.  Silk Spectre 2 was forced into the role by her mother.  Ozymandias idolizes dead kings and Rorschach is driven to hunt because of his anger towards his mother.  Most importantly, all of them are still over-shadowed by these figures: the young Silk Spectre resents her mother, Dreiberg can never believe he is good enough to meet Hollis’ prior performance, and Manhattan spends an entire chapter debating who is to “blame” for his life.  Who, he asks, makes the world?  The fat man who broke Janey’s watch?  His father for throwing out the cogs?  Him, for forgetting his jacket?  Who?

 

This of course is a parallel for thinking about the nuclear war.  By the eighties, the sword was already hanging, the Gordian knot so complex it seemed impossible to ever undo, the clock impossible to turn back.  In the face of this, our heroes have different reactions, but all look to the past – Manhattan retreats into endless questioning about how the knot was tied, Spectre retreats into anger at the past, blaming her predecessors, and Nite Owl, like so many, retreats into nostalgia (and, indeed, into Nostalgia).

 

The Comedian, noticeably, has no past or parents, no background at all before he joins the Minutemen.  The Comedian stands apart from the beginning as someone without pretension or delusion: although he does the dirty work of governments, he is more his own man than any of the others, owing nothing to the past nor to any deluded sense of nobility or tradition.  Rorschach says he is a man “who doesn’t care if other people like him”.  Manhattan says that the Comedian sees the true horror of humanity, and doesn’t care.  Rather, he embraces it, and that moral courage is what makes him a heroic figure in this tale, even, eventually, a likeable one.  He is a luciferian figure, the classic honest bastard.  Of course, his ability to see clearly is also why he is a threat – he sees, so he must be eliminated by Ozymandias.  Manhattan also sees much of the horror of humanity, so he must be compromised.

 

Rorschach also is an uncompromising figure, a man defiant against destiny.  When the Keene Act is made law, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre retire, Ozymandias had already retired and the Comedian and Dr Manhattan go work for the government, leaving only Rorschach to go on as before.  His statement to the police is “NEVER”, a phrase he echoes at the end in the showdown with Ozymandias: “No.  Never compromise.  Not even in the face of Armageddon.”  Rorschach has also seen what the Comedian has seen – in his very first panel, he declares “I have seen [the city’s] true face”.  He sees it, yet he does not shy away like his fellows.  He continues to fight, in the face of any odds, even in the very face of the apocalypse.

 

Ozymandias is another man not content to sit idly by and let the end of the world come.  He too sees the darkness of humanity, but unlike the Comedian, who surrenders to it, Ozymandias has another conceit – that he can conquer it.  This is a conceit as equally destructive as the Comedian’s surrender, equally amoral and, it is implied, equally as flawed.  While his actions allow him to conquer the world and to bring it back to peace, much like Alexander before him, we know it cannot last.  Ozymandias thought he could defeat war forever, but as Manhattan leaves, we see him plagued by doubts, and he asks if he did the right thing, in the end.  Manhattan replies, in the ultimate denouncement of fatalism: “Nothing ends, Adrian.  Nothing ever ends”.   Ozymandias tries to tip the scales into moral righteousness as if, at that moment, the world will be judged.  But no judgement comes.   Earlier, Ozymandias criticises those who are so fed up with trying to understand the world and make it a better place that they are wishing for the apocalypse, as a sort of final judgment.  But this is simply a reflection of Ozymandias’ same mistake: looking for a judgement that does not come.  Although at first we think the lost sailor in the pirate comic is Rorschach, a strong survivor type doing whatever it takes to save the world, the sailor is in fact Ozymandias, becoming a monster in order to save the greater good.

 

In the end, it is only Rorschach who remains uncompromising, and he dies for his beliefs.  But his journal may yet be published, the truth may yet be known.  And in that, Ozymandias’ fatalistic fait accompli is completely defeated.  Despite Ozymandias claiming victory, it is Rorschach who wins, from beyond the grave, because he saw the truth.  And he didn’t look away.  He didn’t lose himself to questioning like Manhattan, or lose himself to anger like Spectre, or nostalgia like Nite Owl, nor to the vanity of surrender, like the Comedian, nor to the vanity of judgement, like Ozymandias.  He even forgives his mother, and at the last, removes his mask.  His victory is complete: the victory of self-determination, of seeing the world as it truly as and not trying to see it otherwise, and of being unwilling to retreat, or surrender or compromise in the face of that.

 

If there is any doubt in Rorschach’s victory, it is removed by the running of Robert Redford for president, shown in the newspaper headlines as RR – which was also Rorschach’s fearfully symmetrical calling card. 

 

Where, then, does that leave the rest of us?  While not all of us can be as strong as Rorschach (and hopefully also not as insane), for the rest of us, there is discovery.  As the apocalypse approaches, there is an awareness among all the characters of what matters, and, at the same time, a shattering of preconceptions.  When we first meet the newsvendor, he believes only in nuking everybody, and chastises the young comic reader.  Later, he complains that the common man has no choice in things.  But finally, in the penultimate instalment, he comes to a revelation: “That’s what’s wrong with this world: no incentive to be nice: you try to help, you wind up in trouble.”  And so he reaches out, embracing the comic reader in their last moments of life.  Because life’s too short not to.  Likewise, the psychiatrist can no longer hide himself in his comfortable middle-class marriage – he cannot ignore the world, he has to go help.  The humans flock to help the Promethean cab driver, while the Gordian Knot locksmith doesn’t give a damn.

 

The heroes of the tale go through similar discoveries.  Spectre discovers the true value of life, and is even able to convince Manhattan of it.  Life – that thermodynamic miracle – is so very precious, that it alone should be celebrated.  In her final realisation, she declares: “It’s sweet.  Being alive is so damn sweet” and then “I want you to love me because we’re not dead.  I want to see you and taste you and smell you, just because I can.”  She drops the beautiful glass ball and finds it only full of water – but discovers that the water is beautiful enough on its own. 

 

She also discovers the truth about her father, and in so doing, forgives her mother and stops living in her shadow.  In accepting her father, she accepts his heritage, both physically and emotionally, wanting a leather uniform, and maybe a gun.  Nite Owl remains in the shadow of his predecessor, but he also comes to a great revelation.  He realises that his confusion and impotence stem from his cowardice, that the costume – through its romance (just like the romantic notions of the owl on the shoulder of Pallas) - allowed him to be who he really should be, and do what he needs to do.  Where Spectre gives up anger and turns to love, Nite Owl gives up fear and turns to determination. 

 

Manhattan, of course, comes to believe in the thermodynamic miracle that is life, and love as well.  And as they all come to see, they also come to act.  To choose.  First, they open their eyes to the world, and then, they begin to do things to change it.  To make it better. 

 

There is of course a lot of irony in that had they arrived an hour earlier, they might have caused a nuclear Armageddon far worse than the devastation of New York City.  Nite Owl says “we are damned if we stay quiet, Earth is damned if we speak out”.   This is the fatalistic aspect of Watchmen – that in the end, we have to capitulate to save the world, to damn ourselves, and the only one who defies this – Rorschach – is killed, and seems to almost welcome death in the face of this.  But in no way does this ironic catastrophe devalue the realisation of our heroes, or their struggles.  They are better people for having fought, and the world is a better place regardless of the outcome.  This is not fatalism, it is stoicism, the philosophy that despite our assured doom, it is the fight that matters.  To fight despite the assuredness of defeat, to live despite the assuredness of death, to love despite the assuredness of pain.   And most importantly, to act, not simply observe; to see, and not turn away.

 

It is no accident, of course, that all the major revelations of the book are accompanied with breaking glass.  The book begins with The Comedian being thrown through a window, as he realises the truth.  Spectre breaks the snow-dome as she hears about her father.  Manhattan’s glass fortress shatters when he changes his mind on life.  It is Spectre who rubs off the dust on Nite Owl’s goggles, letting him see for the first time, and then, much later, takes them off altogether.  And it is this breaking of glass, of removing of goggles, that is most central to Watchmen’s message. 

 

Like the newsvendor, we see all the headlines.  Like Ozymandias, we hear all the sound-bytes.  But we don’t look any deeper.  Or worse, we see, and then we look away, or pretend we see something else.  And we do nothing but watch.  Things are as they are, we say, because that’s how they are – nuclear Armageddon is here because this is the age we live in.  The past is to blame.  The rulers are to blame.  It’s inevitable, it’s destiny, it can’t be helped.  It’s just human nature.  There is no untying of this Gordian Knot, so why bother trying?  We’re helpless.  We can only sit back and watch it unfold, hoping the leaders of the world will make it right.  What we fail to realise (and what is made clear in Watchmen) is that the leaders of the world are just as much puppets as we are, puppets of the past and of their expectations, watching events as they fall, and doing whatever their script says. 

 

All of us are trapped behind glass, only seeing the surface.  And – just like the other visual motif in Watchmen – the glass is a mirror, reflecting only ourselves.  And like Rorschach’s face, too often we make the mistake of seeing happy little birds, or a dead dog split in half, and we mistake that for the truth.  The truth is it is just little black dots, and once you see that, you can make it be what you want it to be. 

 

In the early eighties, this is what the world must have seemed like to Moore: full of people watching from behind glass.  Seeing a Gordian Knot they couldn’t untie, and so giving up.  A world full of nothing but watchers.  The message of Watchmen is to stop watching.  To break the glass, to shatter the nostalgia.  To look for the truth, and, upon finding it, not run from it.  Have the courage to see things as they are, as desperate as they are, but not then give into despair and turn away.  To see how things really are – even if they show an inescapable doom -  and then still do what really needs to be done – whatever that might be – not to redeem the world in our vanity, but to make it better, to celebrate life and love, and to reach out.  And not to compromise in this, never despair nor surrender, even though we might be in the very maw of Armageddon.

 

The answer to Juvenal’s question: “Who watches the Watchmen” has always been “Us”.   It is our responsibility to keep the Watchmen honest.  If all we do is watch, then we are useless, and we are complicit in our own destruction.  The message of Watchmen is that it is not enough to watch, we must police our watchmen, and police ourselves.  We must stop being watchers, and become watchmen.  We are all the watchmen of the world.

 

It is given to Ozymandias to sum up the ultimate message of Watchmen: “There is no such thing as an ordinary person”.  That’s why, apart from Manhattan, not one of the heroes actually possesses superpowers, only the will to do what they do.  The message is clear: we can all be superheroes.  We all have the power to make the world better.  And we must have the courage to do so not in spite of the enormous scope of problems in the world, but because of them.

 

Or maybe the editor of the New Frontiersman said it the best: “I leave it entirely in your hands”.

 (c 2003)

This is what I thought of it the