**SPOILERS HEREIN!**
Nite Owl
We don’t get to know very much about the second Nite Owl in Watchmen. He’s the one main player that
doesn’t get a chapter of flashbacks to reveal his story. All we do know is that
he uses an array of gadgetry, and that at one point he partnered with
Rorschach. We also learn that Dan Dreiberg can’t get aroused out of
costume, but I could have lived without that knowledge.
J. Michael Stracynski tries to fill in those blanks in Nite Owl, the most hit-or-miss—or rather, hit and miss—of the whole Before Watchmen event. There’s a lot of stuff crammed into four little issues, some good, some not.
On the good side, Nite Owl II’s untold origin is wonderful. It turns out young Dan looked up to the Hollis Mason Nite Owl as an escape from his abusive father. Only his enthusiasm didn’t stop where most diehard fans' would; having a knack for science and technology and the family fortune at his disposal allowed him the opportunity to impress the old Nite Owl enough to pass him the torch. Thus establishes a theme about hero worship, in this case literal hero worship, and how symbols (even human symbols) can inspire people. In addition, the story makes it clear that Dan takes after Mason’s example so much that he comes to define himself as Nite Owl, rather than his alter-ego. Such was hinted at in Watchmen by his empty post-hero life and aforementioned bedroom difficulties out of costume, but it’s more obvious here. These ideas are interesting, and the comic could have been quite insightful had it explored them more. But even with these themes, Dan comes off as more human than his hero counterparts.
Then there’s the bad, which pervades the latter half (maybe a little more than half) of the arc, and stays with you after reading it more than the good.
Much of the comic takes place during Nite Owl’s team up with Rorschach. At first, this makes for some entertaining back-and-forth between the shy and timid Dan and his ruthless partner. But eventually, Rorschach becomes the one doing all the investigating and crime fighting. And the bad guy they’re chasing, an insane minister who burns prostitutes in a kind of ritualistic sacrifice, is needlessly mean and so obviously just trying to offend. But in this era of comics, he's so routinely outrageous and unoriginal, and also out of place in a prequel to a comic so deep and thoughtful.
Nite Owl, meanwhile, spends most of the time romancing a high-priced hooker who dresses in hero garb. That’s another possible explanation for his costume fetish, but again, I didn’t need to know that. Most of Dan’s ink consists of gratuitous sex scenes that add nothing to his character. Or maybe they are defining elements of the character, in which case he’s kind of a pervert.
J. Michael Stracynski tries to fill in those blanks in Nite Owl, the most hit-or-miss—or rather, hit and miss—of the whole Before Watchmen event. There’s a lot of stuff crammed into four little issues, some good, some not.
On the good side, Nite Owl II’s untold origin is wonderful. It turns out young Dan looked up to the Hollis Mason Nite Owl as an escape from his abusive father. Only his enthusiasm didn’t stop where most diehard fans' would; having a knack for science and technology and the family fortune at his disposal allowed him the opportunity to impress the old Nite Owl enough to pass him the torch. Thus establishes a theme about hero worship, in this case literal hero worship, and how symbols (even human symbols) can inspire people. In addition, the story makes it clear that Dan takes after Mason’s example so much that he comes to define himself as Nite Owl, rather than his alter-ego. Such was hinted at in Watchmen by his empty post-hero life and aforementioned bedroom difficulties out of costume, but it’s more obvious here. These ideas are interesting, and the comic could have been quite insightful had it explored them more. But even with these themes, Dan comes off as more human than his hero counterparts.
Then there’s the bad, which pervades the latter half (maybe a little more than half) of the arc, and stays with you after reading it more than the good.
Much of the comic takes place during Nite Owl’s team up with Rorschach. At first, this makes for some entertaining back-and-forth between the shy and timid Dan and his ruthless partner. But eventually, Rorschach becomes the one doing all the investigating and crime fighting. And the bad guy they’re chasing, an insane minister who burns prostitutes in a kind of ritualistic sacrifice, is needlessly mean and so obviously just trying to offend. But in this era of comics, he's so routinely outrageous and unoriginal, and also out of place in a prequel to a comic so deep and thoughtful.
Nite Owl, meanwhile, spends most of the time romancing a high-priced hooker who dresses in hero garb. That’s another possible explanation for his costume fetish, but again, I didn’t need to know that. Most of Dan’s ink consists of gratuitous sex scenes that add nothing to his character. Or maybe they are defining elements of the character, in which case he’s kind of a pervert.
Dr. Manhattan
Dr. Manhattan is by far the greatest character in Watchmen. With him, Alan Moore took a concept that’s pure fantasy—a man gaining superpowers—and treated it realistically and scientifically. But he didn’t meditate on the morality of using those powers. Plenty of other superhero stories made that passé (and Ozymandias gives us enough moral implications to think about). Instead, Moore hypothesized how an all-knowing and all-powerful being thinks and perceives the universe.
He’s omnipotent, wielding complete control over matter and energy (and according to this comic, space). You could say he’s omniscient, but not in the way humans understand the term (which I think would be closer to “clairvoyant”). He isn’t just aware of every event past, present, and future, but he perceives them to all be happening at once, as linear time doesn’t exist to him. But knowing every fact and experiencing them all at once means major, sometimes horrific events happen all the time to his indifference. And seeing everything at the base atomic level doesn’t make for an emotional view of things. Clearly he’s no longer a human; his abilities are literally godlike, and the character transcends mere superheroism to become a hypothesis of how a real deity might actually think. Ever wonder why God lets bad things happen? Maybe it’s because he sees things like Dr. Manhattan.
And yet, to me, his arc is the most emotional part of Watchmen, despite the fact that he doesn’t feel emotion himself. There’s something inherently sad when a person loses their humanity. Most often, this means losing the civilizing qualities but keeping their flesh and blood and their more base tendencies. Jon Osterman quite literally and completely lost his humanity when he became Dr. Manhattan.
It’s already been established that the big blue being experiences what was and what will be simultaneously with the present, but in Dr. Manhattan, Straczynski explores what could have been. The title hero reminisces about how if Jon Osterman had been more careful in that atomizing chamber, he wouldn’t have been vaporized and reassembled as a superpowered being. From there, the alternate future multiplies into many timelines depending on several little, seemingly insignificant choices the un-super Osterman makes, as per quantum theory. Events change drastically (some even look like those in our timeline), but in all of them he’s married to his first love Janey Slater, and all end in worldwide nuclear war at some point or another.
There’s a sense of longing, of regret, in the doctor’s narration that he missed out on a normal life, but in the end, he sacrifices his chance at this to keep the correct timeline intact so that the human race can live on. And it’s a very human act of sacrifice, one out of love. This isn’t the first time Dr. Manhattan showed some partiality to the human race. My theory is that's because he wasn’t always all-powerful. He may no longer be human, but having been one gave him a perspective on humanity that such a being (or a deity) might not have otherwise. He understood our emotions and sense of nobility, even if he doesn’t feel them himself, and saw enough value in that to give our race a chance.
This comic fulfilled my hope of enriching and adding to the character beside what we saw in Watchmen, and is doubly an achievement for giving a new level of humanity to a character who’s not even human. It’s a work rich in emotion, masterfully told and deep but still accessible. The narrative deviates into different timelines, but is never hard to follow. And Adam Hughes’ art is beautiful.
Also, I must commend Straczynski for the final few pages, which depict what happens after we last see Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen. Here, the blue man travels to a distant solar system, planting the seeds of life on the third planet from its sun (possibly our Earth). The same thought actually crossed my mind when I read the original once. Honest!
Moloch
Remember Moloch the Mystic? If not, he’s the former supervillain that we see in Watchmen as a dying old man. The Comedian spills the beans on Ozymandias’ plan to him. Rorschach visits a few times, the last time finding him with a bullet in his head in a trap set by Ozymandias to lead the police to Rorschach. Well, Moloch gets his own two-issue miniseries, also included in this volume.
The first issue recaps the villain’s life story, going from a bullied young man, to aspiring magician, to criminal mastermind and arch-enemy of costumed heroes, to prison, and finally to a born-again Catholic. At the very end, he gets hired as an errand boy for Adrian Veidt (the CEO formerly known as Ozymandias). The second issue depicts the odd jobs he does for Veidt, like delivering poisoned cigarettes to Janey Slater (to give her cancer to blame on Dr. Manhattan), unknowingly aiding in Veidt’s master plan. The story is brisk and concise, and Eduardo Risso’s art—wacky and nonsensical in the past parts but standard in the present one—is fun (Moloch looks like a gremlin rather than an old man). But, were you really wondering about the origin of this character? I wasn’t. I also kind of got the idea that he and Slater were pawns in Ozymandias’ plan already, and didn’t need this to spell out the details.
Sadly, this is a taste of what the Ozymandias series has in store, and the comic seems more intent on leading into that than telling its own story. Dr. Manhattan also contained a sequence clumsily leading into Ozymandias, but it was so good otherwise that you could ignore this and keep reading. Moloch, on the other hand, seems completely like a tie-in, and is just as disposable as most tie-in issues tend to be.
**Tomorrow: Ozymandias/Crimson Corsair**
No comments:
Post a Comment