The City is Afraid of Me. I've Seen Its True Face.
For those of you who might be new to this blog, assuming anybody has ever read it ever (which I'm not counting on, just so I'm not let down when I find out one way or the other), I write and post extremely nerdy things. For instance, two of my posts last month were as follows: using a blockbuster movie as an analogue for an international crisis that has left hundreds dead and cost billions of dollars; and an interminably long and winded analysis of the phenomenon known as Comic Con.
Today, I assure you, will be as nerdy or even more nerdy than any of my previous posts.
Read on, if you feel you have the stomach for extreme geekiness.
The rest of this article is going to be discussing Alan Moore's character Rorschach and the challenges inherit in dressing up as him for Halloween or a similar masquerading occasion, but first: a little bit of back story.
Those of you reading this who didn't recognize the name Rorschach are probably the same people who understood my last post about as well as they would the Rosetta Stone. Rorschach, for the aforementioned uninitiated, is the closest thing the graphic novel Watchmen has to a protagonist. When creating the character, writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons were attempting to deconstruct the notion of Batman. They asked themselves:
Moore: "What would a guy like that be like in the real world?"
Gibbons: "What, you mean a billionaire with murdered parents?"
Moore: "No, no. A normal, superpower-less guy who's driven to the point of obsession and divides the world into 'decent people' and 'scum not worthy of mercy.'
Gibbons: "Well, he'd probably be batsh*t bonkers. I mean, like, a totally messed up dude who's totally psychotic and hates the police."
Moore: "Yeah. He's also probably not be a billionaire, because anybody who devotes his entire being to the ruthless murderer of killers, thieves, and rapists would undoubtedly squander all of his money and never regain it."
Gibbons: "You're totally right. And you know that whole 'identity crisis' Batman has?
Moore: "Yeah, I follow you."
Gibbons: "Well, we should take that to the next logical extreme and make him actually think that his alter ego isn't a real person. Like, make him think that the superhero is the real him and that Walter Kovacs died."
Moore: "Hey, great idea. For added effect, we should give him the name and face of a psychoanalysis test, because screw subtlety! If we make a crazy character, we've gotta make him crazy."
Or at least that's how I like to imagine the creative session went. At any rate, the audience is left with one of the comic book medium's most iconic and lasting characters. Physically, he's described as compact, muscular, and he smells of sewage due to the fact that he's homeless. His costume, instead of capes and boots, consists of a blood-smeared trenchcoat, filthy purple slacks, a white ascot, and a fedora. His most defining physical characteristic, though, is his constantly shifting mask. Symmetrical inkblots are perpetually floating around his face, giving him an erie, alien appearance that strikes fear into the hearts of evil doers and causes even his closest... eh, "friends" to feel discomfort in his presence.
Emotionally, Rorschach is one hot mess of a man. Raised by a single mother who kept food on the table through nefarious business tactics, Rorschach was permanently emotionally scarred when he saw his mother and one of her clients, um... making a transaction. He became introverted and violent, attacking others his own age and even going so far as to bite one of his classmate's face off. He was sent to a reform school, where he excelled in gymnastics, literature, and drawing twisted, disturbing symmetrical paintings of his mother having sex with a monster. After school, he became a homeless doomsday predictor, constantly marching the streets of Manhattan with a sign ominously reading "The End Is Nigh." When the whole, "Let's all become super-heroes" craze swept America, Rorschach was caught up in it, inspired by the real-life murder of Kitty Genovese. He didn't really become the growly, horrifying, nightmare fuel that fans know him as until a disturbing incident with a dress maker, two german shepherds, a little girl, and kerosene (no, this is not the setup to an insensitive joke).
On top of his off-putting outfit and enough emotional baggage to have him held up at airport security, Rorschach's crime-fighting abilities are second to none. He carries around a state-of-the-art grappling hook gun designed by his good buddy, Nite Owl. Aside from that, he uses no traditional weapons. Instead, he utilizes human's innate fear of what they can't understand, as well as his athletic prowess, experience as an amateur boxer in reform school, and anything within arm's reach to fight off bad guys. Throughout the novel, Rorschach is seen defeating villains using hairspray, a match, his own jacket, frying grease, a lunch tray, a toilet bowl, the ground (on multiple occasions), and somebody else's hand, which he uses to beat up the owner of said hand.
(If any of the above paragraph interest you, I strongly suggest you pick up a copy of Watchmen, as it is not only the single greatest graphic novel ever written, it also appears on TIME Magazine's list of greatest novels, period.)
Anyway, enough of the backstory. I started this blogpost with the hope of explaining the complexities of dressing up as Rorschach to go to Comic Con this year.
I still just see a butterfly ...
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