Rorschach (character)

• 1. Introduction

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  Rorschach, whose real name is Walter Joseph Kovacs, is the masked vigilante at the center of Watchmen, the graphic novel series DC Comics published in 1986. The very first character to appear in that series is a red-haired man carrying a sign that reads "THE END IS NIGH". Readers meet him as a street-corner oddity. Only later do they learn that he is Kovacs, the vigilante they have been following. He is the story's narrator, its driving force and a criminal outlaw. The other former costumed heroes around him are now quietly employed by the United States government. Where did a character this uncompromising come from? What happened to Kovacs that made him see good and evil as pure opposites? And what would he refuse to give up, even when keeping it cost him everything?

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• 2. A Ditko Descendant

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  Alan Moore did not invent Rorschach from nothing. Like most of the main characters in Watchmen, he began as an analogue of a Charlton Comics character, and Moore treated that character as a starting point. For Rorschach, the model was the Question, created by Steve Ditko. Moore also drew on Mr. A, another Ditko creation, which the Question had itself been based on.

  Ditko built both heroes as followers of Objectivism, the personal philosophy of Ayn Rand. Moore found that philosophy laughable, yet he held a healthy respect for Ditko despite their opposing politics. He recalled that Ditko's very right-wing outlook interested him at the time. That interest, he said, probably led him to write Rorschach as an extremely right-wing character.

  Moore described his aim as creating a "quintessential Steve Ditko character", one with a funny name and an oddly designed mask. The name came from a habit he had noticed as a teenager. Ditko seemed fixated on the letter K, perhaps because it appears in his own name. Moore pointed to Kafka, Ditko and Ted Kord, and that observation nudged him toward Walter Kovacs.

  The two models played different roles. The Question served as the prototype. Mr. A was a far more radical figure, and he supplied Rorschach's politics and his black-and-white morality. Asked whether he had seen Watchmen, Ditko said Rorschach was "like Mister A, except Rorschach is insane."

  Moore had a second question in mind. He wanted to know what a Batman-type avenger, driven and fueled by vengeance, would be like in the real world. His short answer was "a nutcase". He said the tone of Rorschach's diary came from the Son of Sam letters that David Berkowitz sent to newspapers. The speech patterns, he said, came from Herbie the Fat Fury. Moore supplied the name and the descriptions, but the look of the character belonged to the artist Dave Gibbons.

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• 3. Ink and Fabric

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  Dave Gibbons's first designs for Rorschach looked nothing like the finished character. That early version wore white clothing covered with inkblots from head to foot. He also had a large blue trench coat, red gloves, a red and blue hat and spat-like items over his boots.

  Gibbons called Rorschach his favorite character to draw, because the features are so simple. In his words, "If you can draw a hat, then you've drawn Rorschach." A shape for the face and a few black blobs finish the job.

  The final look is a brown trench coat with a matching fedora that carries a light purple stripe. On his nighttime patrols he also wears a striped purple business suit, matching leather gloves, a grayed scarf and heavily unpolished elevator shoes.

  The mask is the defining piece. It is made from a material derived from Doctor Manhattan's technologies. Its front holds two viscous liquids, one black and one white, sealed between two layers of latex. The liquids shift in response to heat and pressure, which is why the pattern moves only when he wears it. The black forms symmetrical patterns like those of a Rorschach inkblot test, which gives him his name. It never blends with the white, so it never makes gray, just as he allows no gray in his view of the world.

  Without the mask, Kovacs stands 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 140 pounds. Most people who see him find him ugly, and he dresses like a homeless man. The fabric of the mask has a history older than the costume, and it began in a dress shop.

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• 4. From Kovacs to Rorschach

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  Walter Joseph Kovacs was born on the 21st of March 1940. His mother, Sylvia Kovacs, was a prostitute, and his father was known to him only as "Charlie". She was frequently abusive and condescending toward her son.

  In July 1951, at the age of 11, Kovacs fought two older bullies. The attention led authorities to investigate his home. He was removed from his mother's care and placed in the Lillian Charlton Home for Problem Children in New Jersey. There he rapidly improved, excelling at schoolwork, gymnastics and amateur boxing. Teachers saw a bright boy who did especially well in literature, mathematics, political science and religious education.

  In 1956, at 16, he left the home and took a job as a garment worker in a dress shop. He found the work bearable but unpleasant, partly because he had to handle women's clothing. His mother was murdered by her pimp, George Paterson, who forced her to drink Drano cleaning fluid and dumped her body in an alley.

  In 1962, Kovacs took fabric from a rejected dress that a young woman with an Italian name had special-ordered. He learned to cut and shape it with heated tools. Then he grew bored, since it served no purpose.

  Two years later, in March 1964, he read a newspaper account of the rape and murder of Kitty Genovese. He believed she was the woman who had rejected the dress. What shamed him was the unresponsiveness of her neighbors. It left him disillusioned with the apathy he saw in most people. He went home and made "a face he could bear to look at in the mirror" from the fabric. Then he began fighting crime as Rorschach.

  At first he left criminals alive but bloodied for the police, with a Rorschach test left as a calling card. In the mid 1960s he teamed up with Nite Owl II. The partnership proved highly successful against organized crime.

  The change came in 1975, with the kidnapping of a young girl named Blair Roche. Kovacs traced her to a man named Gerald Grice. In Grice's shack he found evidence that Grice had killed the girl and fed her remains to his dogs. Kovacs suffered a psychotic breakdown. He killed the dogs with Grice's meat cleaver and waited.

  When Grice returned, Kovacs hurled the dogs' bodies through the windows and handcuffed him to a stove. He poured kerosene around the man and left a hacksaw, saying the only escape was to cut off his own hand. Then he set the shack on fire and walked away. No one came out. In a later psychological evaluation, the vigilante said that Kovacs went into the shack but Rorschach came out.

  Then came 1977, when the Keene Act outlawed vigilantes. Rorschach answered by killing a wanted serial rapist. He left the body outside a police station with a note bearing a single word: "never!"

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• 5. The Mask Killer Theory

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  The murder of a man named Edward Blake in 1985 pulled Rorschach back to the center of events. His investigation showed that Blake was the Comedian, a masked hero. Rorschach concluded that someone was picking off costumed heroes. The theory gained strength when Doctor Manhattan was forced into exile and an assassination attempt targeted Adrian Veidt, the former vigilante Ozymandias.

  He questioned Moloch, a former supervillain who had unexpectedly attended Blake's funeral. Moloch told him what little he knew. Later a note from Moloch invited him back for more information. Rorschach arrived to find Moloch dead, shot through the head. The police, tipped off by an anonymous call, surrounded the house. Rorschach scolded himself for walking into such an obvious trap. He fought, tried to escape through a window and was unmasked and arrested.

  He was sent to a prison full of criminals he had put away. Among them was a crime boss called the Big Figure, who was hungry for his blood. The prison psychologist, Dr. Malcolm Long, believed he could rehabilitate Rorschach. Instead, Rorschach's account of his life and his justifications for his worldview led Long to question his own views.

  One day at lunch an inmate came at Rorschach with a shiv. Rorschach threw the boiling oil from a deep-fryer into the man's face. As guards seized him and began to beat him, he yelled hoarsely at the watching crowd, "None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me." The inmate died, and a riot broke out. The Big Figure and two associates came after Rorschach. He outwitted all three and killed them in rapid succession.

  Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II had begun to take his mask-killer theory seriously. They broke him out of jail to follow it up.

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• 6. The Antarctic Refusal

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  A spare costume from his apartment put Rorschach back in uniform after the prison break. With Nite Owl he worked through the underworld bars and came away with a name. It was a company called Pyramid Deliveries. They broke into Veidt's office, where Nite Owl correctly guessed the password and found that Veidt ran the company.

  Rorschach had kept a journal throughout the story. Realizing that he and Nite Owl might be no match for Veidt, he made one last entry. It stated his certainty that Veidt was responsible for whatever came next. Then he dropped the journal into a mailbox.

  The two flew to Antarctica. There they learned Veidt's aim. He wanted to unite the world against a perceived alien threat and prevent a nuclear holocaust. He had set the plan in motion well before they arrived. Doctor Manhattan and Silk Spectre II came after seeing the carnage that Veidt's false alien had caused in New York City. Despite their horror, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre II and Doctor Manhattan agreed to stay silent. The United States had entered a peace accord with the Soviet Union.

  Rorschach thought the others must be joking, and he left to tell the world. Doctor Manhattan confronted him outside and said he could not allow it. Rorschach understood that refusing to compromise meant his death. He took off his mask and demanded that Manhattan "do it". Manhattan did.

  Moore said he did not see this ending until the fourth issue. Only then did he realize that Rorschach's refusal to compromise meant he would not survive the story. At first, he said, he knew the surface mannerisms. He did not know what lay inside until he began to dig. He decided Rorschach carried a "king-sized" deathwish and wanted to die in his own dignified way. Asked why Rorschach removes his mask at the end, Moore said it "just felt right". He explained that it "is not the mask talking, it's not Rorschach, it's the actual human being Walter Kovacs that is somewhere under there".

  The journal reached the offices of the New Frontiersman, a right-wing newspaper. Angry about the new accord, the editor pulled a planned two-page story. He left his assistant, Seymour, to fill the space. Seymour began to reach for the paper's Crank File, which held the journal. The outcome is left ambiguous.

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• 7. Mind and Method

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  Rorschach considers the mask his true face and the Kovacs identity a disguise. During his trial and his psychiatric sessions, he refused to answer to his birth name.

  Moore wrote him as extremely right-wing and morally absolute. That viewpoint alienated him from society, even from other superheroes. He treats right and wrong as starkly black and white, with no room for compromise. The one exception is his respect for the Comedian. He dismisses the Comedian's attempted rape of the first Silk Spectre as a "moral lapse". Heroes who do not share his unwavering views he derides as "soft".

  Childhood trauma left him uncomfortable with female sexuality. The crimes that wounded him most deeply were crimes against women. Other characters in the comic often describe him as mentally ill.

  Like most Watchmen characters, he has no superpowers. He has a strong will, peak-human strength and a finely honed sense of timing and precision. Household objects become his tools and weapons. At Moloch's house he used an aerosol can and several matches to set fire to a police officer. He threw ground black pepper to blind another. Over the series he also uses cooking fat, a toilet bowl, a cigarette, a fork and his jacket as weapons. A coat hanger serves as a makeshift measuring device.

  His gas-powered grappling gun, designed and built by Nite Owl II, lets him climb buildings. Once he used it as a harpoon against a police officer. He is skilled at street combat and extremely stoic, with an indifference to pain. In Antarctica he wore only a trench coat over street clothes and never complained about the cold.

  Nite Owl called him "tactically brilliant and unpredictable". His talent for detective work showed when he found the Comedian's costume in the dead man's apartment after the police had failed. Like Batman in the mainstream DC Universe, he carries the title of "World's Greatest Detective". He can pick locks, though a running gag has him simply forcing open Nite Owl's front door.

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• 8. Reception and Afterlives

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  In 1988, Rorschach won "Character Most Worthy of Own Title" in the American Section of the Eagle Awards, for comics released during 1987. He has been called the "obvious fan favorite" and the "flagship" character of Watchmen. His popularity led Moore to proclaim the series a failure as literature. Moore regarded him as a misanthrope, and fans had embraced him anyway.

  In May 2008, Wizard magazine named him the 6th-greatest comic book character of all time. Two months later, Empire magazine ranked him 16th. TopTenz placed him 3rd on its 2010 list of comic book anti-heroes, and IGN ranked him 16th among its top 100 comic book heroes in 2011. Fandomania's 2009 list of sci-fi and fantasy friendships put his bond with Nite Owl II at 10th place. It noted that they hold contrasting worldviews but share the belief that crime must be fought.

  Director Zack Snyder said that no character mattered more to the Watchmen film than Rorschach. Jackie Earle Haley played him, and Eli Snyder, the director's son, played the young Rorschach in flashbacks. Critics praised Haley, and IGN called his work a highlight even though his face is hidden for most of the film.

  The film changed details. Rorschach is 35 rather than 45, and right-handed rather than left-handed. His speech is toned down, and his instability is downplayed. In the film he kills Grice by hacking him with the meat cleaver, then says, "Men get arrested. Dogs get put down!" Nite Owl is also present at his death, because Snyder wanted a moment showing the "sweet" bond between them.

  Other versions followed. Titus Welliver voices him in an animated film, and Tom Stechschulte voices every character in a motion comic. Haley returned to the role in the video game Watchmen: The End Is Nigh. In the 2017 series Doomsday Clock, by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank, Reggie Long takes up the name. He is the son of the prison psychologist Dr. Malcolm Long. The standalone DC Black Label sequel Rorschach introduces Wil Myerson as another incarnation. In the television version of Watchmen, a white supremacist splinter group misreads the journal as a racist manifesto, and its members wear crude replicas of his mask.

  Parodies and references came quickly. In The Question #17, in 1988, the Question reads Watchmen, becomes more aggressive and later says, "Rorschach sucks." In Deadpool: Sins of the Past #4, in 1994, an unmasked Deadpool screams, "My face! Give me back my face!" In Uncanny X-Men #525, in 2010, Fantomex repeats the prison line and adds, "That film was stupid." In the 2007 Simpsons episode "Husbands and Knives", infant versions appear on a DVD cover. Velma in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated asks Fred, "Who were you expecting, Rorschach?" The creator of the manga Attack on Titan, Hajime Isayama, says Levi Ackerman was inspired by Rorschach. Moore himself voiced the character in the documentary The Mindscape of Alan Moore. Most recently, Rorschach appears in Laura Beatty's 2019 novel Lost Property.

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