**SPOILERS HEREIN!**
Comedian
We never see the Comedian alive during Watchmen, only getting descriptions of his deeds in the prose
sections and a few glimpses in flashbacks. That’s actually a good thing. Ed
Blake is pure, malevolent nihilism incarnate, completely
unsympathetic and relishing in the monstrous brutality he deals out. Such a
character is more effective the less you get to know him; too much familiarity
could lead to sympathy, in spite of all the awful things he does. Minutemen
almost gave him a moment of sympathy, offering a horrific experience in the
Pacific during World War II as a possible explanation for his extreme
misanthropy. His discussion on how there are different truths at the end of
the comic, however, negates this in my mind. To me, his war story seemed like just a big lie
to get into Sally Jupiter’s pants, this time without raping her.
In Comedian, Brian
Azzarello gets up close and personal with Blake, chronicling his time in Vietnam,
and also depicting him as a close friend of the Kennedy family (the comic
dispels the theory hinted at in Watchmen,
and depicted in the movie, that he was behind the JFK assassination, but trades
it for another Kennedy brother, and even throws in Marilyn Monroe). To
Azzarello’s credit, he doesn’t make the guy the least bit sympathetic. If
anything, the comic makes him look even worse
The Vietnam stuff is savagely violent, with J.G. Jones’ art
(which is pretty damn good) holding little back. It’s got the excessive gore of
the Max Punisher, but without the
sick sense of humor to undercut it. Or maybe it’s the Comedian’s ultra-sick
sense of humor, that everything about life is a meaningless joke. Whatever the
case, it’s not a very pleasant read. It’s not even very horrifying, just tiring
brutality for the hell of it. Then again, this might be the very point.
The one element that carries significant weight is his
relationship with Robert Kennedy. On the ’68 campaign trail, the Democratic candidate
plans to denounce his close friend the Comedian for a massacre on a Vietnamese
village. But before he gets the chance, Blake assassinates him in the
Ambassador Hotel, blaming it on Sirhan Sirhan. This turn of events shows that Blake’s
brutality runs deeper than we previously thought. He so loves dealing out death
that he’ll kill even those close to him to continue his lifestyle. Before, when
we didn’t know any more about him than what was shown in descriptions and flashbacks,
we could have imagined that Blake’s nihilism made at least some exceptions. He could
have, must have, human attachment toward somebody.
Comedian firmly and unsubtly says no,
he doesn’t.
You could argue that Blake showed a little humanity in Watchmen the way he reacted and vented
to Moloch after discovering Ozymandias’ master plan, but I never saw it that
way. To me, this wasn’t a reaction of horror to the sheer scale and amount of
death the plan would entail, but a shock to Blake’s system at the realization
that this plan would put an end to the violent conflicts he lived for. I’d say Azzarello
proved my theory right. The comic succeeds in presenting another level to the
Comedian, even if that level is just another threshold for brutality. But
frankly, Blake’s contempt for humanity was already plenty apparent long before
this series.
And I liked the ambiguity about Blake’s connection to the
JFK assassination in Watchmen better
than his clear run-ins with real historical figures in this one. The worst is
his sit-down with Nixon lackey G. Gordon Liddy (on whom the character was
allegedly based). The two crossing paths was amusing in a single panel in Watchmen, but it’s quite corny over
several pages here, and so self-aware that they’re practically winking at the
reader. It’s also very out of place for such a violent and bleak story. It’s
like pausing Apocalypse Now to
include a lame piece of sketch comedy.
Rorschach
A lot of people hated Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again, the sequel to his epic The Dark Knight Returns, but I liked it. Yes, it’s an incomprehensible mess at times. But if you take it for what it is, a zany spoof of brooding superhero tales (at least I think that’s what it’s supposed to be), some parts of it are very funny. One such humorous element is the depiction of the hero the Question as an ultra-uncompromising individualist revolutionary, narrating so seriously it’s laughable. In this, I saw a spot-on parody of Rorschach (unsurprising, as he was the inspiration for the character).
Rorschach is psychotic. His unrelenting moral code may make sense to him, but it's completely twisted to any rational person. His extreme methods cross the line even when he’s dispatching monsters worse than him. His journal that serves as narration reads like the rambling writings of a serial killer. He’s almost like a costumed Travis Bickle. But Taxi Driver makes it clear that despite doing something relatively moral if brutal, Travis is still a very sick and troubled person, not a hero. I always felt Watchmen made it pretty obvious that Rorschach is decidedly un-heroic. Apparently it’s not as clear on that as I thought, because he seems to be everyone’s favorite character.
Me, I’ve reached the conclusion that Rorschach represents a moral standing so extreme that it’s impossible to take him seriously anymore. Indeed, the aforementioned version of the Question didn’t need to try very hard to parody Rorschach. A lot of his narration in Strikes Again sounds exactly like Rorschach. When a parody doesn’t even need to write a joke to poke fun at its target, it’s pretty obviously that target’s a caricature. Once I realized that, every word Rorschach says or writes in his journal, even the most triumphant and climactic ones, actually became funny. Hysterically funny.
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| Indeed. |
Rorschach’s own title features the team of Azzarello and artist Lee Bermejo that also produced Joker and Lex Luthor: Man of Steel (both of which followed the villains instead of the heroes; are they trying to tell us something about Rorschach?), which is to say the artwork is awesome. But the story is just a vanilla gritty antihero crime caper, offering no new insights about the character or straying from the formula. Rorschach fits right into this mold, voicing his hatred of humanity outright and in his journal (throwing in some R-rated language this time that DC probably wouldn’t allow back in the 1980s), grunting out his trademark “hurm,” and laying down brutal beatings on people he deems deserving.
The narrative has him chasing a brutal drug gang and a serial killer on the eve of New York’s 1977 blackout. But instead of the real Son of Sam, the killer is a fictional creation called the Bard, as he carves ominous poetry into his victims’ flesh. Ominous poetry that struck me as similar to Rorschach’s ravings. This got me thinking that perhaps Azzarello shared my view of Rorschach, and might explore how the character is very much like the bad people he chases. Alas, no dice. The conflict with the drug dealers ends predictably and violently, and the serial killer mystery gets solved by mere coincidence, before the “hero” even gets a solid lead on it.
But the artwork’s really cool. That much makes the comic at least a passable distraction. To get the optimal experience, I recommend playing this every time Rorschach speaks.
**Tomorrow: Nite Owl/Dr. Manhattan**
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