The high concept of Watchmen could be best described as “A murder mystery set on the eve of nuclear apocalypse. With superheroes.” That’s technically true, but reductive. Besides shorting the story, it doesn’t even hint at the brilliance of the design and execution. I recently re-read Watchmen, probably for the tenth time but the first in maybe seven years. Connections and themes that weren’t apparent to me last time jumped out now (I credit the last several years of analyzing Lost and The Sopranos for any newfound insight), and I think it’s an even stronger work than I originally did. And this from a man who wrote two papers on Watchmen in college – once for World Religion, once for English Lit. Also, Dr. Manhattan appeared in a Macroeconomics paper, but I’m not proud of that.)
On Friday night, a comedian died in New York…. Nobody cares but me.
— Rorschach
The story opens with two detectives investigating a crime scene. Somebody broke in to the apartment of fiftysomething Edward Blake and tossed him out a window to his death. The brutality of the crime shocks the detectives, but even more shocking is their discovery that Blake was The Comedian.
The Comedian was a government-sponsored superhero. Actually, more of a costumed Black Ops agent. In the world of Watchmen, superheroing was a fad in the 1940’s that made a resurgence in the late 50’s. (Mirroring the real world introduction of superheroes in comic books and their return after a lengthy absence.) Regular people put on costumes and beat up pimps and drug dealers and bank robbers.
In short order, we meet the key characters. Rorschach, an obsessed vigilante. Dan Dreiberg, formerly known as the Nite-Owl, a brilliant inventor who can’t let go of his glory days. Laurie Jupeczyk, the Silk Spectre, is a second-generation crimefighter following in her mother’s footsteps. Ozymandias, Adrian Veidt, is the world’s most intelligent man and near-perfect physical specimen. And then there’s Jonathan Ostermann, better known as Dr. Manhattan.
Dr. Manhattan is the only being in Watchmen with super-powers. In 1959, Osterman was exposed to massive radioactivity and reborn as a near-omnipotent blue-skinned being. He’s difficult to explain, but Dr. Manhattan is in touch with the atomic structure of the universe. As far as powers go, that’s the one to have. One of the real triumphs of Watchmen is the re-imagining of our world, and how the existence of somebody like Dr. Manhattan would change it.
In short order, the story goes from a murder mystery to a character piece, but it’s all set against an oncoming nuclear Armageddon. It’s hard to really remember now, but back in 1986, we spent a lot of our time worrying about it. I remember my 7th grade History teacher telling the class that “It’s not a matter of if there’s nuclear war, but when.” Watchmen perfectly tapped into this fear, and it makes reading it now legitimately upsetting. Not only because it brings back memories of that time, but because of the realization that today’s world is terrifying and unpredictable in a completely different way.
Still, those broad strokes of the story don’t do Watchmen justice. It’s the way the story is told that really elevates it. Each chapter ends with supporting material about or written by one of the characters in the story. The original Nite Owl’s autobiography, Rorschach’s psych profile, an interview with Veidt, even a history of the pirate-themed comic book that plays a key role in the narration. It really deepens the world presented, creating entire backstories for characters who play only a small part in the text proper. Hooded Justice, presented as the first vigilante, doesn’t make much more than a cameo in the actual story, but the supplemental material fleshes him out, and sheds some light on the history of the major characters in the process. It’s well-handled, and it creates the idea that we’re only seeing a small part of a fully realized fictional world.
