List of characters in Watchmen - The Crimebusters era
The following individuals form the primary cast of characters for the Watchmen series. They came together only briefly as "The Crimebusters", a failed attempt in 1966 by Captain Metropolis to form a successor group to "The Minutemen". The Crimebusters concept is inspired primarily by the Justice League.
The Comedian was a member of the Crimebusters and of the Minutemen. He has a highly cynical and nihilistic outlook on life and believes that most individuals are powerless to affect geo-political realities. The Comedian is often motivated by his own desires and is inclined to be autonomous, only aligning himself with others if their motives are similar to his own. A possible sadist, the Comedian often engages in violent activities and became a government agent during the Vietnam War. Near the end of his service in Vietnam, he was attacked and injured by a Vietnamese woman who was pregnant with an unborn child (who is strongly suggested, but not definitively revealed, to be his). Angered when the Comedian stated his intention to leave her behind when he returned to the United States, she slashed his face with a piece of a broken glass bottle. In retaliation the Comedian murdered her (and thus the unborn child) with a single gunshot, an event which was witnessed by Dr. Manhattan. The Comedian's injury healed badly and left him with a large scar across his right cheek, from the corner of his mouth to the outer corner of his right eye.
When they were both members of the Minutemen, the Comedian sexually assaulted Sally Jupiter, the original Silk Spectre. Later he had an apparently brief affair with her during which he fathered a child, Laurie, the second Silk Spectre.
Initially, his "morally correct" actions when fighting crime are contrasted against his abrupt and cruel personality, which portray him as a person lacking empathy for others. However, his actions upon his discovery of Ozymandias' "Alien Island" suggest that the Comedian is not merely a selfish egotist.
Rorschach independently discovers that Edward Blake was The Comedian's secret identity.
According to Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan (Chapter 2: Absent Friends), Blake is not exactly a utilitarian or a nihilist but one who could see the strings and viewed the world as a stage or a joke. Rorschach writes: "But there is no shelter. And the future is bearing down like an express train. Blake understood. Treated it like a joke, but he understood. He saw the cracks in society. Saw the little men in masks trying to hold it together. He saw the true face of the twentieth century and chose to become a reflection, a parody of it. No one else saw the joke, so he was lonely."
The character of the Comedian is loosely based on the original Peacemaker.
An extreme example of moral absolutism, Rorschach (Walter Kovacs) is uncompromising in his answer to evil: it must be punished, whatever the cost - though he admits in his journal to simply "do what we have to do." However, he says that there is no meaning or moral absolutes imposed from beyond, that they are all created in the minds of the individual. His staunch opposition to crime is equaled by his total lack of empathy for criminals, whom he treats as non-human; his disdain for conventional law, government, and the police causes him to become a vigilante, as, in his belief, the law does not do enough to combat crime. He shows little reverence for "conventional morality", willing to take drastic measures to achieve his goals, such as the torture or even the execution of criminals. His "law and order" attitude, coupled with his readership of The New Frontiersman, make clear he values strongly-held and expressed views of society; however, the punishment of crime is the only thing relevant to his personal crusade, and is thus the only thing he expresses. Rorschach is determined not to spend his life as a bystander, thus, like Batman, crime has driven him to become a crusader.
In Rorschach's case, it was the murder of Kitty Genovese (and the inaction of her neighbors) that inspired him to fight crime. Kovacs fashioned a mask out of a section of a dress he chooses to believe belonged to Genovese, its unique shifting white and black pattern originating from a special material created by Dr. Manhattan. The clear division between black and white in the mask mirrors Rorschach's absolutist outlook: things are either right or wrong, black or white; there is no middle ground, no "grey area". However, he was just another masked adventurer, content to leave punishment to the legal system, until one of his investigations led him to discover the brutal murder of an innocent girl. The girl was butchered and fed to two German shepherds by her kidnapper. This heinous act sent Rorschach into a rage; no longer satisfied with merely stopping crimes, Rorschach decided that he would also discern the punishment, where once he was content to simply leave perpetrators of crimes bound and gagged for the police to find. This event is described as the point where Walter Kovacs died, and Rorschach was born. Laws no longer mattered to Rorschach, and he was the only masked adventurer to continue to operate without government sanction after the ratification of the Keene Act. His stance toward the Keene Act was epitomized in his killing of a notorious serial rapist: he subsequently deposited the body in front of a police station with a note attached to it, saying "NEVER!"
The character of Rorschach is primarily inspired by The Question and Mr. A, both characters created by Steve Ditko.
Although an intellectual elitist who believes in utilitarianism and is willing to murder millions of innocents in the attempt to preserve the lives of billions more, Ozymandias seems to be the most outwardly "good" member of the Watchmen cast. Like Rorschach he believes himself to be exempt from the limitations of conventional behavioral norms and puts himself beyond that of normal human experience. His behavior and self-belief suggest that he may be a megalomaniac or have a messiah complex, while his idolization of Alexander the Great leaves him with something of a "chip on his shoulder." Not even his philanthropy, inventions, or huge, multi-million dollar business ventures can sate his desires for greatness. This viewpoint enables him to have an apparently callous disregard for the lives of "ordinary" people (though he later confides to Dr. Manhattan about his responsibility to shoulder the terrible guilt). If Dr. Manhattan is seen as God, then Ozymandias can easily be seen as the apollonian aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy.
Ozymandias retired from superheroism several years before the Keene Act to start building his "empire"; very successful businesses thanks to his intelligence, whose income would be used to fund his plans.
The character of Ozymandias is inspired by Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt.
After an accident as a scientist, Jon Osterman was transformed into something non-human, and the only character in Watchmen with superhuman powers (except for possibly those characters whose psychic ability is alluded to). Throughout the series, he becomes increasingly detached from humanity as a whole. As the story progresses, he disavows any interest in human affairs and rejects the validity of any notion of morality. For example he gradually abandons clothes. His ability to see the world outside of time leads him to embrace determinism. Doctor Manhattan is identified as something of a God-figure as Watchmen progresses; after dying and resurrecting himself, he gains near omniscient knowledge and almost omnipotent powers, and in his final scene walks on water and leaves to create human life somewhere else. For all his god-like power, he is as flawed and human as the rest, having difficulties with relationships. He personifies intellect over emotion. Because of his aloofness and somewhat nihilist philosophy, he is vilified by several characters throughout Watchmen. He represents Nietzsche's übermensch in the sense that his actions are completely beyond good and evil, in contrast with Rorschach whose actions are completely driven by the concepts of good and evil (which Ozymandias opined, in an interview, "to be an intellectual limitation").
The character of Doctor Manhattan is primarily inspired by Captain Atom, but there are also clear similarities[original research?] between Manhattan and the Silver Age Superman, as well as the Spectre.
A reluctant hero, Laurel (Laurie) Juspeczyk was pushed toward the vocation by her mother, the first Silk Spectre, who had been a successful crime fighter prior to her daughter's birth. Somewhat reluctantly, she ends up in a relationship with Doctor Manhattan. During the story she becomes increasingly upset with Manhattan's detachment from humanity, and after their break-up, Dr. Manhattan leaves Earth. In the end, she plays a pivotal role in making Manhattan realize the value of human life. She also became romantically involved with Dan Dreiberg, the second Nite Owl.
The character of Silk Spectre (Laurie) is inspired not only by Nightshade, but also by Black Canary and Phantom Lady.
Something of a recluse, Dan Dreiberg's strong interest in ornithology manifests itself in some of his inventions, which relate to owls in some way. Detached from his parents, he struggles to find purpose with his life, thus glamorizing the notion of being a costumed crimefighter. He admits to idolizing the exploits of the original Nite Owl and also being quite taken with childhood notions of nobility and adventure. However, he does not have a resolute purpose, such as that of Rorschach, and is quite contingent, often relying on others to tell him what to do rather than following his own desires. Dreiberg seems out of all the heroes to represent the everyman, the pragmatist driven by a waxing and waning standard of ethics that seeks ultimate good but is willing to compromise on specifics. Additionally, his crimefighting pursuits reflect most clearly the ineffectiveness of the costumed heroes of his world, as he spends immense amounts of funding to craft vehicles and specialized garments ready for missile warfare, sub-zero temperatures, radar invisibility, etc. to catch what he dismisses as "hookers" and "purse snatchers". But when he, Silk Spectre, and Rorschach (especially he and Rorschach) begin uncovering the mastermind behind recent events, all his inventions suddenly become integral to their pursuit. He also becomes romantically involved with Laurie Juspeczyk, the second Silk Spectre.
The character of Nite Owl (Dan Dreiberg) is inspired primarily by Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle.
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