Watchmen at Thirty, Pt. 7: A Brother to Dragons

"Just a schoolkid's fantasy
that got out of hand. "

In the seventh chapter of the Watchmen story, the simmering sexual tension between Laurie and Dan finally boils over. Haltingly at first - 

but once they get their costumes on and go out and save some folks, it's all systems go.

That bit about putting on the costumes as a prerequisite for taking them off again is an important part of the superhero deconstruction playing out over all twelve issues of Watchmen. Revolutionary stuff in 1986, to be sure. These few panels of Laurie and Dan hooking up - with Dan's skyship emitting a torrent of flame at a "climactic" moment followed immediately by full frontal post-coital cigarettes (not shown; look it up yourselves, pervs) - were a liberating mash-up of Hitchcock, New Wave artsiness, and superhero comics. All at once and right on down to now, sexual dynamics in comics - the kind you'd find in a book or a film - were on the table. Moore and Gibbons, as brazenly and effectively as John McClane at the end of Die Hard 2, had lit the runway.

Unfortunately, most of the sex-planes that landed in the wake of Watchmen were of the Catwoman New 52 variety: Catwoman and Batman have a Wrestlemania rooftop bang. ("And most of the clothes stayed on." OMFG.) This is not so surprising. As a species, the ability and freedom to do something usually brings a lot more Paradise Hotel than Paradise Lost. Just makes the Paradise Losts of the bunch all the more special. But yeah, as with its other deconstructions and motifs, the sexual boldness of Watchmen was widely imitated but rarely wielded to such effective purpose.

After their first attempt to have sex - all while Ozymandias is flipping around (for charity, of course) on parallel bars on the TV screen in the background, as narrated by a fawning TV commentator. No wonder Dan's not feeling romantic! - Laurie and Jon fall asleep on the couch.

Whereupon Dan begins to dream, remembering this portrait given to him from a disturbed foe of yesteryear.

What's going on here? You can likely figure it out, but just in case I'm not providing enough context: in her guided tour of the Owl-Cave, Laurie discovers the framed memento from Twilight Lady, who had "a thing" for Nite Owl. After the unsuccessful sexual encounter, Dan summons the image of Twilight Lady to mind, then dreams he is embracing her. She unzips his skin-suit to expose his true self, and he does the same, revealing Laurie. Your standard sex fantasy. 

Thing is, it probably would be your standard kind of sex fantasy for a superhero. As we saw in the Spider-Man in the 80s series, this sort of thing was the subtext for a whole lot of Peter Parker's relationship angst. All Moore and Gibbons did was read between the panels and be more explicit about it.

Laurie and Dan decide to fire up the Owl-Ship (Archie, short for Archimedes), and don their costumes, for old time's sake/ blow away the cobwebs.

They save some people from an apartment fire, which gets the ol' juices flowing. Afterward, they park Archie and waste little time in finishing what they began before.

Visually, this issue  makes considerable use of reflections, notably in the post-coital scenes at issue's end -

but earlier as well:

As befits the issue's theme, we see lots more of traditional superheroics in this issue. We're a little closer to Nite Owl's equipment being standard military issue in 2016 than we we were in 1986, but otherwise we're in recognizable comic book territory.

"A Brother to Dragons" ends with Nite Owl's suggestion of springing Rorschach from prison. Rorschach himself doesn't appear in this issue except in flashback.

His landlady does, though.

The supplemental pages are excerpts from a flowery essay Daniel Dreiberg wrote for the American Ornithological Society, "Blood from the Shoulder of Pallas." I think this is a rare supplemental-material misfire from Moore - the voice is completely off for the Dreiberg we see in every other issue. Undoubtedly, this is intentional, i.e. Dreiberg, like most of us, assumes a more scholarly tone for his American Ornithological Society musings, but the effect is jarring and there's no real point to it. I'm not sure it accomplishes anything except hey, here's a fake article from Dan Dreiberg about birds. Perhaps I am missing some huge symbolic meaning. 

If so, please feel free to school me in the comments. Otherwise, see you next time.

~

Watchmen at Thirty, pt. 6: The Abyss Gazes Also

"I took the remains of her unwanted dress 

and made a face I could bear to look at in the mirror."

The midpoint of the Watchmen saga is probably the darkest issue of the series. (And considering some of the things we've seen... yikes.) How could it not be, being Rorschach's origin story? As was the case with Doctor Manhattan in issue #4 or Ozymandias in issue #11, the whole story flips between Rorschach in the present -

and the experiences in his past that brought him to this point. 

It's difficult to gauge how influential this issue truly was. The idea of a serial killer/ vigilante having sexual hang-ups sublimated into reactionary violence was not startlingly original in 1986, though not nearly as ubiquitous as it would become by the 90s, nor the idea of a doctor's world slowly coming apart the more he peers into his patient's diseased mind. Both were new as-applied-to-comics, of course. Suffice it to say, no (or very very few) heroes or villains (or doctors examining them) ever got the working over Moore and the gang give Rorschach in Watchmen #6.

It's told from the viewpoint of Dr. Malcolm Long, the prison psychologist who sees Rorschach as his ticket to criminal psychology fame. But as the title warns, peeling away the layers of a mind like Rorschach's comes at a terrible price. 

The story begins with Dr. Long showing Rorschach - now just "Walter Kovacs" - a series of ink-blots and asking him what he sees in them. Rorschach is less than forthcoming.

When the taunts of his fellow prisoners overwhelm Rorschach as he's led back to his cell, they change into the taunts of children who bullied him as a boy.

Dr. Long fleshes out the subsequent events of Rorschach's life: after blinding one of the bullies and putting the other one in the hospital, the subsequent home investigation results in his becoming a ward of the state. (The name of his boarding school? "The Charlton House." Wink wink, nudge nudge.)

Relics of his time in juvy comprise the back-pages material of this issue.

But it isn't until Rorschach begins telling him what he really sees in the ink blots that the doctor - and we-the-reader - get a true idea of what made Rorschach into the vengeance-meting sociopath he is. 

Years ago (we're told) there was a kidnap case...

When he discovers a tattered pair of undies in the furnace and evidence of a body being butchered, he puts together the sickening truth...

- and lays in wait for the butcher to return home. (Fantastic colors, Mr. Higgins)

After handcuffing him to the furnace, Rorschach spills kerosene everywhere - 

and hangs around outside for an hour to watch it burn. ("No one got out.")

This was changed in the movie to Rorschach murdering him with a meat cleaver. ("Men get arrested; dogs get put down.") It's still an intense scene, but the sequence of events and how it changes him in the comic is much better. This is, as the character says, the moment when Walter Kovacs closed his eyes, and Rorschach opened them. 

Overall, I'm net-positive about the film and the changes it made. Most of them worked, I felt. The film wasn't perfect, and I know some folks absolutely loathed it. Not me, though. And as far as adaptations that honor - and grok - the source material, you have to tip your cap to Zack Snyder and the gang.

Rorschach's lapse into murderous vengeance has at least one comic book precedent: Michael Fleischer's and Jim Aparo's Wrath of the Spectre. That was seen as a real aberration when it appeared, though as with most things shocking-for-its-era, it's probably a little quaint now. 

Besides learning what makes Rorschach so much fun at parties, the story documents Dr. Long's discovery that he can't just close the file on Rorschach when he leaves the office. He becomes increasingly estranged from his wife in an unconscious imitation of Rorschach's withdrawal from all women and rejection of sex, as symbolized by the butterfly-blot that is the story's main motif - 

as well as the Hiroshima lovers that he keeps seeing.

And even though the entire issue is basically one long "Hangin' with Mr. Rorschach," nevertheless, let's end by showcasing some of our disturbing friend's more meme-worthy moments:

...

(slow nod)

Rorschach sounds a little like Cohle from True Detective Season 1, doesn't he? I wouldn't be surprised if he - or Thomas Ligotti, whose work is typically cited as the TD character's inspiration - are big Watchmen fans.

Until next time!

~