Alan Moore’s America: The Liberal Individual

and American Identities in Watchmen

MICHAEL J. PRINCE

T
HE GRAPHIC NOVEL WATCHMEN, ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS A SERIES OF
twelve comic books in 1986 and 1987, has established Alan
Moore as among the very best writers in this medium.1 At its
core is an ensemble of diverse characters that explores fundamental issues
for American national identity during the second half of the twentieth
century. Moore’s work performs this task in two ways, firstly, by pre-
senting a group of diverse ideologically contingent American figures in
the individual characters, and secondly, by highlighting a sacrosanct el-
ement of America’s image of itself, the primacy of the ‘‘liberal individual’’
not just as an American type but as the naturalized core of the national
ethos. This article maps this subject identity into a national identity such
as that typified in Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, a small-n
nationalism as a successor to kinship and religion, ‘‘an imagined political
community [. . .] conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship’’ (5 – 6).
Alan Moore’s depiction of America is influenced by his love of American
comics, but the thematic heft of his work is due to solid evaluative
research on American history, politics, and technology. The resulting
product presents a coterie of costumed heroes as players on the stage of
history in a type of story that resonates with the preoccupations of post-
war American culture, a conspiracy narrative that highlights the issues of
individual and collective identity and agency.
Watchmen is an alternative history that starts on October 12, 1985
and runs to early the following year. While it frequently references
historical occurrences until 1970, it covers a time period in the
immediate past barely a year previous to publication. Because of the

The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 44, No. 4, 2011

r 2011, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

815
816 Michael J. Prince

government co-optation of some members of the costumed crime

fighter guild the ‘‘Watchmen,’’ America wins the Vietnam War, Rich-
ard Nixon is in his fourth term as president, and automobiles run on
electricity. The societal upheavals of the 1970s, Watergate, the energy
crisis, and defeat in Vietnam are absent, as are, curiously, fixed-wing
aircraft. The presence of costumed crime fighters is entirely cognitive,
that is, they are naturalized within the rational logic of the world as
presented in the work.2 With one exception, these masked adventurers
are nothing more than normal humans in great physical condition who
like to dress up and go after ‘‘bad guys.’’ The story centers on Ror-
schach’s investigation of an associate’s murder, which triggers his sus-
picion that some person or group has begun killing ‘‘masks.’’ This
conspiracy theory is borne out by the subsequent hostile actions against
the costumed crime fighters throughout the narrative. In conclusion it
is revealed that another of their cohort, Ozymandias, has teleported a
monster into New York City, killing over three million people, in
order to avert nuclear war between the US and USSR. While this is
shocking in its conception and perhaps maddening in its execution, the
clear and looming alternative was a full nuclear exchange that would
have led to a greater death toll. This plot succeeds in convincing the
rival governments that earth had been invaded by a trans-dimensional
being, and subsequently the US and USSR are unified in the face of a
new mutual threat.
While both Alan Moore and his illustrator David Gibbons are
British, their portrayals of the costumed heroes in aggregate treat
American national identity in a sophisticated and nuanced manner. The
first concrete indication of alternative history hinges upon the basic
issue of the political make-up of the United States. On the fourth page
of the first issue, a newspaper headline declares ‘‘Vietnam 51st State—
Official!’’ (I, 4).3
But the issue of American national identity is even more ingrained
in the work. In their earlier, original incarnation, the costumed heroes
adopted the name ‘‘The Minutemen.’’ The twin historical references are
to the American Revolutionary War militia and to the intercontinental
ballistic missile in the arsenal of the US Air Force’s Strategic Air
Command since 1962. This simultaneous linking of the ideals of the
Revolutionary War with a mass-produced Cold War weapon system
guided by a designated computer provides a referential dissonance that
invokes a latent conflict in post WW2 American culture. While liberty
Alan Moore’s America 817

in the nuclear age is regarded to be dependent upon large-scale and

technologically sophisticated collective action, the ideology of the
American Revolution was fiercely defensive of the liberal individual.
The Cold War strategy of ‘‘Mutually Assured Destruction’’ makes
the survival of the collective, that is, the society or civilization, an issue
of paramount importance. In the face of these challenges to the
liberal individual, the very idea of a costumed superhero seems anach-
ronistic.
Timothy Melley’s Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in
Postwar America employs critical perspectives that are extremely useful
in discussing this tension. Melley examines the nature of postwar
America in terms of a psychological dissonance between a society in
which agency is attributed to collective actors, such as government
bureaus and corporations, and the autonomous liberal individual. Cit-
ing numerous sociological, management, and scientific discourses of
the early postwar period, he argues

that the rise of conspiracy and paranoia as major themes in late-

twentieth-century American culture is connected to changing social
and technological conditions and to new conceptions of human
subjectivity. The numerous narratives that grapple with these chal-
lenges are often conflicted in their attempts to represent social con-
trol while defending a fantasy of individual autonomy and
distinctness. [. . .] Their cultural function [. . .] is not only to ar-
ticulate such fears but also to reassert the vitality of a more familiar
and comforting model of self in response. (44 – 45)

This article counts Watchmen among these narratives. The sense of loss
of individuality, added to the feeling that one is observed and con-
trolled by external forces, is labeled by Melley as agency panic, ‘‘a ner-
vousness or uncertainty about the causes of individual action’’ and ‘‘a
secondary sense that controlling organizations are themselves agents’’
(12). While all of the characters in Watchmen exhibit some agency
panic, most of them are possessed by a personally driven vigilantism
that manifests the autonomy and purposeful action attributed to the
liberal individual.
This is particularly significant for considering the United States’
notion of national identity: ‘‘The concept of the liberal individual [. . .]
has long been celebrated in American political culture, particularly in
the guise of ‘rugged individualism’ and atomistic ‘self-reliance’’’ (14).
818 Michael J. Prince

The autonomous individual is present on many levels in Watchmen.

First, as highly individuated persons, the Watchmen en masse stress
the prominence of this aspect of American identity. Their very exis-
tence contributes on a mythological level to the importance placed on
individuality in the notion of what it means to be an American. Also,
as individuals, they embody ideologically contingent roles in American
society, each characterizing a distinct political or economical value,
rehearsed as domestic or foreign policy. Yet, this is also problematical;
as crime fighters these hyper-individuals act for the putative good of
the ‘‘collective.’’ Taken in sum, though, plot and character elements
suggest that, even in the face of technological complexity combined
with political bungling, the organ of society is portrayed as influenced
by individual action.
As Jamie A. Hughes points out, ‘‘With each passing year, super-
heroes are becoming more involved in ‘real world’ scenarios that mirror
the current political and social problems’’ (547 – 48). The cognitive,
everyday humanness of the Minutemen (Dr. Manhattan excepted) il-
lustrates that ‘‘The superhero in Watchmen has become just another facet
of society’’ (Reynolds 109; cited in Hughes 548). But this is a highly
symbolic facet, one that provides a defining cultural charge to a general
notion of American identity within the narrative. An editorial in the
ultra-right wing New Frontiersman, defends the present-day costumed
crime fighters by linking them to Revolutionary War heroes, conflating
both groups into symbols of American identity.

Would our sense of national identity, our pride, our sense of honor;
would these things be so enduring were it not for such great sym-
bols of freedom as Paul Revere’s midnight ride, or the Alamo, or the
Gettysburg Address? [. . .] The overall effect of [critical Nova Express
pieces] is that of [. . .] [an] attack upon not only [. . .] the individual
costumed adventurers themselves, but also upon a whole American
institution!
(VIII New Frontiersman 1 – 2)

Clearly, then, the Watchmen are naturalized as facets of American

society; but, in addition, each of the costumed heroes can be seen to
symbolize a different facet, representing contemporary societal issues
and problems.
The first is Edward Blake, the Comedian, whose costume resembles
that of the Marvel superhero, Captain America. Like his Marvel comics
Alan Moore’s America 819

analogue, he is draped in stars and stripes from the American flag, and,
like Captain America, he uses his skills and costumed hero persona to
fight against Communist insurgents and governments, not domesti-
cally (as Captain America did in the 1950s), but as a tool of American
foreign policy. It is generally known that ‘‘he has good government
connections, and it often seemed as if he was being groomed into some
sort of patriotic symbol’’ (III Under the Hood, 11). The question is: what
sort? Blake displays racial intolerance, abusive behavior to women, and
a gleeful appreciation of carnage. The sexual assault of fellow Min-
uteman Sally Jupiter reveals some of these qualities. However, his
extreme response to his Vietnamese girlfriend’s cutting his face exem-
plifies a knee-jerk, violent reaction symptomatic of the brutal byprod-
ucts of intrusive American foreign policy. The cold-blooded murder is
positioned as a My Lai massacre in miniature (II, 14). Obviously this
behavior is worthy of contempt, but Blake’s anger can be seen as
directed at both Vietnam and, indirectly, at his own country, because,
without the political decisions of his minders, he would not have been
sent there in the first place.
The symbol employed by Blake on his Comedian costume, the
‘‘smiley face,’’ stands as an icon for this careless chauvinism facilitated
by a nihilistic ethical detachment. However, as an icon for America, it
is presented in the work with multivalence as well as ambivalence. The
book begins and ends with reader’s focus directed to this symbol rep-
resenting Edward Blake’s nihilism as well as the sloppy thinking of the
marginalized Right, invoked by the ketchup bespattered T-shirt of
New Frontiersman’s assistant editor (XII, 32). And while its appearance
on Mars may represent playfulness on the part of Gibbons and Moore,
it does expand the province of meaning, on one level giving Blake’s
antihumanism a broader, cosmic justification. Nevertheless, Blake’s
personal history and political connections cast his murder in the per-
spective of the questionable nature of American covert operations.
If Edward Blake represents the darker side of military intervention,
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan is an ostensive personification of Amer-
ica’s strategic nuclear deterrent. The symbol on his forehead, the hy-
drogen atom, is simplistic in execution, yet laden with the threat of the
hydrogen bomb. As Brent Fishbaugh has observed, ‘‘Moore [. . .] uses
his superhero characters [. . .] as symbolic representations of hard and
soft sciences and of their potential, shaped by human failings, to create
utopia’’ (189). Fishbaugh’s insight highlights an aspect of Watchmen
820 Michael J. Prince

that makes it unusual in the field of Armageddon narratives. If one

takes Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Sidney Lumet’s Fail-Safe as
templates for how the complexity of technology triggers nuclear an-
nihilation, it is interesting to note that in Watchmen both political
policy and execution of the nuclear deterrent are left in (admittedly
fallible) human hands. To those familiar with Moore’s work, this may at
first appear a strange claim. In ‘‘The Tide of History: Alan Moore’s
Historiographic Vision,’’ Sean Carney points out that one view of his-
tory in Moore’s work depends on a notion of metaphysical inevitability
in which ‘‘leaders do not control the tides of history—they are just
surfing on them’’ (Moore and Villarrubia, cited in Carney). Yet, Carney
argues, Moore ‘‘represents history as the contradiction between [meta-
physical and material] visions of history.’’ Ultimately, ‘‘he is concerned
with how history is made by human beings’’ (Carney). And the human
element is laid forth in some detail in the addendum text to the fourth
issue, Dr. Manhattan: Super-powers and the Superpowers. While the author,
Milton Glass, along with several other textual references throughout
the book, labels Manhattan as a god, this brief chapter on Realpolitik
stresses that ‘‘we have made a man to end all worlds’’ (emphasis added).
In Watchmen, Manhattan is the guarantor for American security and
global prestige. His ‘‘birth’’ and subsequent cooptation by the military
industrial complex enabled the United States to win the Vietnam War,
and his ability to mold atoms into any form whatsoever delivers on the
utopian promise of nonpolluting industries, thereby freeing the United
States from the strategic morass of dependence on foreign oil.
Even though Manhattan is being used by the authorities more as a
technology than a diplomat, his strengths and vulnerabilities as a per-
son are what feature most strongly in the narrative. In terms of the
primacy of the liberal individual, Dr. Manhattan’s ‘‘birth’’ verifies some
immutable kernel of identity, and it is of moment that the two most
‘‘advanced’’ members of the Watchmen (Osterman and Veidt) testify to
some notion of an immortal soul, a nonmaterial essence of personality.
During his research, he is caught in a particle accelerator which oblit-
erates his physical form, yet something of Jon Osterman’s essence per-
sists that can still act upon matter. After several trials and errors, this
essence succeeds in re-fabricating a material body, though his neon-
blue glow indicates his nonhumanness as much as his immense powers
emphasize his superhumanness. Because his ego survived physical an-
nihilation, and that he managed to reassemble himself so that he is
Alan Moore’s America 821

master of the forces of nature, Manhattan strikes one at first as the most
secure individual of all.
It may seem oxymoronic, then, to assign agency panic to an om-
nipotent being. But historically the complex organizations of devel-
oping and deploying nuclear weapons contribute significantly to the
worldview in which agency panic takes hold: in Watchmen Princeton
University, the Gila Flats research laboratory, and the Rockefeller
Military Research Center represent large-scale postwar organizational
forms that dominate Osterman’s development and control his fate.
Individual initiative and agency are not put at a premium when per-
sons actually function as parts of a greater machine (Melley 62). For
example, his life-changing ‘‘accident’’ happens because of a safety fea-
ture of the technology; it was specifically designed to be structurally
beyond human intervention (IV, 7). Likewise, omnipotent but some-
how integrated, Osterman is co-opted by the military industrial com-
plex, and, even as Dr. Manhattan, senses his lack of power: ‘‘It’s all
getting out of my hands’’ (IV, 12). His fatalistic perception of the
universe has left him almost incapable of meaningful human interac-
tion. In spite of his ‘‘love affair’’ with the most desirable woman in the
series, he cannot see the world from the ‘‘human’’ level. He is as much a
prisoner of time, space and matter as he is master over it. When his
girlfriend complains ‘‘Is that all you are? The most powerful thing in
the universe, and you’re just a puppet following a script?,’’ he replies:
‘‘We are all puppets, Laurie. I’m just a puppet who can see the strings’’
(IX, 5). Volition on the human level is not beyond him, but below
him. He experiences all time as an augmented simultaneity, so he is the
ultimate fatalist: he knows the future as well as the past, but can alter
neither. He accepts his role as America’s strategic deterrent without
question, and yet he allows a mere television interviewer to shame him
off the planet. At the end of the novel he elects to avoid personal
interaction with humans forever. Ironically, Dr. Manhattan suffers un-
der an analogue of the sort of agency panic American society expe-
rienced after the Manhattan project, with a diluted sense of free will. In
Watchmen, his knowledge and perspective disqualify the possibility of
individual agency categorically.
In this light, both the Comedian and Dr. Manhattan are metaphor-
ically transferred from hyperindividualistic costumed crime fighters
into the more or less willing tools of American foreign policy. What
the United States abhors domestically is therefore defused by being
822 Michael J. Prince

exported. The other characters to be discussed in this article have been

legally prevented from practicing their craft by a piece of legislation
known as the Keene Act of 1977, a measure outlawing all forms of
costumed crime fighting. Both Ozymandias and Rorschach have
adopted strategies to circumvent the spirit of this law—the former by
feigning a whole-hearted conversion to entrepreneurial capitalism, and
the latter by flagrantly thumbing his nose at it, persisting in his
personal brand of costumed vigilantism.
Rorschach, who, by virtue of his mask, bears a constantly shifting
outward identity, is the most uncompromising individual among the
Watchmen, exemplified by his sense of integrity, goal directedness, and
resistance to indoctrination, chief among these the professed ‘‘cures’’ of
psychiatric medicine. At first, this may not be obvious; while Ror-
schach himself never endorses the diagnosis of paranoia, both in the
other characters’ and the readers’ field of perception, the moniker seems
to fit. In spite of his shifting facial features, in spite of being repeatedly
subjected to institutions specifically designed to alter outlook and be-
havior, and in spite of what others regard as florid paranoia, Rorschach
consistently battles for his individual integrity. This is consistent with
Timothy Melley’s argument:

that ‘‘paranoid’’ interpretations are often complex and self-defeating

attempts to preserve a familiar concept of subjectivity. [. . .] They
sometimes amount, then, not only to a self-defensive posture in the
face of external controls, but to a fraught and paradoxical defense of
liberal individualism itself. (23)

At a fundamental level, Rorschach’s ‘‘paranoia’’ is a reflection of his

hyperindividualist stand. So if paranoia and resistance to the collective
are indicative of one’s attempt to fend off agency panic, Rorschach is
the poster child of the liberal individual in Watchmen.
His out-of-costume persona as a sign-toting harbinger of the Chris-
tian apocalypse, as well as his reactionary worldview, characterize him
as an ultraconservative of a particular ilk, something akin to members
of militia movements, which on one level, is what the Watchmen is.
Alan Moore has aligned Rorschach, then, with what may be termed
‘‘the lunatic right-wing fringe.’’ He is a faithful reader of New Fron-
tiersman, and Rorschach’s world is illustrated in their editorial cartoon:
Jews, Negro drug dealers, organized crime, and the liberal press are in
league to destroy America, depicted here as a costumed crime fighter,
Alan Moore’s America 823

with the support and backing of the Soviet Union (VIII New Fron-
tiersman, 3). Antisemitic, homophobic, a paranoid millennialist who
routinely breaks the fingers of those he interrogates, there is little in
Rorschach to inspire empathy and identification. Matthew Wolf-Meyer
points out, ‘‘Rorschach’s popularity among readers, and supposed cen-
trality to the series . . . is admittedly disturbing,’’ and allegedly con-
trary to the intentions of the author: ‘‘Moore ultimately felt that
[Watchmen] had failed, as too many readers identified with Rorschach
rather than the more complex Veidt or Dr. Manhattan’’ (507). The key
to whatever empathy Rorschach may garner from the readership of
Watchmen may be based in his resilience in the face of everything that
would undermine his identity.
Born Walter Joseph Kovacs, son of a prostitute, he is the product of
‘‘institutions’’ as much as accident. While growing up, he experiences
orphanage, reform school, hospital, and prison; he represents the tangle
of personal identity, which can result from such a trajectory. The
murder of Kitty Genovese inspired him to pursue a career of costumed
vigilantism. After a violent act of vengeance against a murderer,
Kovac’s ‘‘was reborn [. . .], free to scrawl [his] own design on this
morally blank world’’ (VI, 26). In the sixth installment, when this
defining episode was revealed to the prison psychiatrist, the force of
Rorschach worldview converts the psychiatrist—‘‘We are alone. There
is nothing else.’’—and illustrates that Rorschach’s ideology is as far
away from the collective as one is possible to get (VI, 28).
In spite of being in the care of larger ‘‘organizations,’’ he remains
immune to all of the efforts of identity formation these institutions
practice. On the contrary, in the eighth volume, Rorschach is shown to
be the master of the most coercive institution of all, the maximum-
security prison. After he thwarts an attempt on his life, he declares,
‘‘None of you understand. I’m not locked up in here with you. You’re
locked up in here with me’’ (VI, 13). Cues to Rorschach’s extreme
remoteness from society come on the first page of Watchmen: ‘‘. . . all the
whores and politicians will look up and shout ‘save us!’ . . . and I’ll look
down and whisper ‘no.’’’ ‘‘Don’t tell me they didn’t have a choice,’’ he
intones bitterly, suggesting already here that Rorschach’s position is
one of meting out individual responsibility, even in the face of a col-
lective problem (I, 1). Indeed, to Rorschach, individuals, and individ-
uals only, impose meaning and are responsible for history (VI, 26).
Likewise, the first issue concludes with Rorschach’s categorical
824 Michael J. Prince

Manichean perspective iterated: ‘‘Why does [Blake’s] death matter

against so many? Because there is good and there is evil, and evil must
be punished. Even in the face of Armageddon I shall not compromise
in this’’ (I, 24).
And his death in the twelfth issue bears this out; his spurning of the
necessities of the collective is absolute. The reason that Dr. Manhattan
has to kill him is that Rorschach would rather flip humanity back onto
the brink of atomic apocalypse than compromise and silently accept
Edward Blake’s murder (XII, 23 – 24). When Dr. Manhattan declares
that he cannot allow Rorschach to return to America to tell the truth
about Oxymandias’ mass killing, Rorschach says as he is removing his
mask: ‘‘Of course. [You] must protect Veidt’s new utopia. One more
body amongst the foundations makes little difference.’’ And once he
has fully exposed the face of Walter Kovacs he urges Manhattan to ‘‘DO
IT!’’ This apparently irrational death wish is Kovacs’ compromise; he
has returned to his original identity, angered but whole, ready for
death. After annihilation, all that remains is blood spattered on the
snow, his hat, and the Rorschach mask, but reduced to a circle with a
single perfectly round black blotch in the middle, indicating a com-
posed, if gory, sense of closure.
There is much that is unresolved in Rorschach, and, as mentioned
above, Moore claims that he actually would have preferred that his
readers grasped the ‘‘utopian possibilities’’ represented by Ozymandias
or Dr. Manhattan. From a purely ideological reading, this would be far
from simple: Dr. Manhattan spends his earthly existence working for
the United States Military as a weapon of mass destruction; and Veidt’s
business acumen combined with a hubris-fueled distance to other hu-
mans puts him strongly in the camp of capitalism, especially given that
his products’ commercial footprints expand in response to the vagaries
of the war machine. Still Rorschach is the easiest target of disdain, as he
represents the most unsavory part of American culture; he is a right-
wing nut, a paranoid vigilante in dire need of a shower and a gift card
to the Gap.
But this disdain should be reconsidered given the ambiguity in-
herent in the character and the structure of the narrative. The most
‘‘normal’’ of the Watchmen, Dan Dreiberg, a.k.a. the Nite Owl, ac-
tually counts Rorschach as a friend. Even if empathy for this character is
not part of authorial intent, there is undeniably a textual preoccupation
with his figure; the reader is (by design) meant to ponder Kovacs more
Alan Moore’s America 825

than any other character. He is the first of the costumed crime fighters
mentioned by name (I, 4). Furthermore, his costume, and assumed
identity begs for interpretation: in the scheme of costumed crime
fighters, an owl is an owl, a hydrogen atom is a hydrogen atom. But, a
Rorschach blot is simply an abstract black and white figure that means
nothing without the act of human interpretation. In other words, the
reader is expected to puzzle over Rorschach as one would an inkblot.
What does he mean? As one who chooses annihilation rather than
sacrificing his integrity, this is the figure the reader is meant to ponder
and figure out. On this level, Rorschach personifies the struggle be-
tween the individual and the collective. To the degree that he is the
focus of Watchmen, the same could be said of the work as a whole.
In addition there is a textual cue of another order, and that is the
parallel between the narrative of Watchmen and Rorschach’s journal.
This graphic novel is rich in intertextuality: Biblical quotations and
popular song lyrics contribute to the installment titles; the end sec-
tions are filled with various prose texts that shed more light on char-
acters and plot. The only history of the original Minutemen, Under the
Hood, binds the first three issues together; the opposing partisan
newspapers, New Frontiersman and The Nova Express provide further
background insight; and frames and pages from the comic book The
Black Freighter thrum along in close harmony with the plot of Watch-
men. But as the ‘‘voice over’’ from the principle ‘‘detective’’ in this
narrative, Rorschach’s journal is in a privileged position. In the ap-
pendix to Absolute Watchmen, Moore indicates that his inspiration for
this project comes in part from Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four, a novel
that features Winston Smith’s journal (Minutes, ‘‘Alan Moore’’). In the
course of the narrative, Rorschach writes and revises his testament for
the future, and, in spite of his death, his journal survives and may again
demystify a population driven for the moment to a protective, col-
lective paranoia, though this possibility is remote.
Dan Dreiberg presents a worldview closest to what may be termed
in this series as ‘‘normal,’’ exhibiting an ordinary degree of perplexity
over America’s difficulties. As Rorschach’s partner, he is also his foil.
He is bewildered by the violence and decay he witnesses. ‘‘But the
country’s disintegrating. What happened to the American dream?’’;
the Comedian answers ‘‘It came true. You’re looking at it’’ (II, 18).
Also, the reader’s empathy may be drawn to Dreiberg’s budding ro-
mance with Manhattan’s girlfriend, Laurie, especially his human frailty
826 Michael J. Prince

in the face of looming nuclear annihilation, as shown by his sexual

dysfunction: ‘‘It’s this war, the feeling that it’s unavoidable. It makes
me feel so powerless. So impotent’’ (VII, 19). But that sense of im-
potence and powerlessness evaporates when he dons his costume again
and liberates his former partner to solve what is the central crime, the
attack on the ‘‘masks.’’ For all his apparent reticence and normalcy, it is
Dreiberg who discovers Ozymandias’ role as villain. And as a voice of
tempered, reasonable compromise, once he understands how nuclear
war was averted, he acquiesces to it (XII, 20). Dreiberg sacrifices
principle to pragmatism, especially if it means he can carry on with
some sort of ordinary existence. The dénouement of the novel has him
and Laurie living a decent bourgeois life, and he is performing one of
the most vulnerable of human actions, meeting the mother-in-law.
The last character to be discussed is Adrian Veidt, a.k.a. Oz-
ymandias. He is the quintessence of the self-made man in the Charles
Atlas mold: he comes from an affluent family, gives away his inher-
itance and starts from scratch and is on a constant program of self-
improvement (XI Nova Express, 9). That Ozymandias markets action
figures in his own likeness, that he sells cologne as well as toys, and
that he advertises in comic books may indicate that his ‘‘strive-toward-
self-improvement’’ attitude is meant to be presented in an ironic light.
Also, Veidt’s capitalist acumen is tainted by a lack of compassion, and
an ends-justify-the-means mentality. Nowhere is this clearer than in
his murder of the Comedian simply because he stumbled onto his plan,
and his trans-dimensional attack on New York City in effect makes
him the greatest mass murderer in history. As the ‘‘smartest man in
America,’’ he also stands for the well-meaning intelligentsia, the val-
idated expert of our society, the scientist. He is the most self-actualized
of the costumed crime fighters, in bourgeois terms, and in his success
he comes to assume a pharaoh-like disdain for humanity. Yet at the
same time, all of his efforts for the last two decades have been directed
toward one goal—to save humanity from itself—and, as incredible as
the plan may be, he succeeds.
In the figure of Ozymandias, Alan Moore iterates the primacy of the
individual, but in the interest of the collective. He is the self-made man
and capitalist philanthropist rolled into one. As an agency panic nar-
rative, Watchmen preserves the notion of power and effectiveness of
individual action in the face of ever more complex and technologically
advanced systems. Veidt believes in an immortal soul that survives the
Alan Moore’s America 827

body,4 and yet, through his machinations with his diverse corporate
holdings, he has fused his individuality with a corporation for what he
sees as a necessary plan to preserve civilization and human life. While
there is much merit in Wolf-Meyer’s point that Ozymandias represents
the utopian longing for a better human future, his ‘‘triumph’’ should be
regarded as severely attenuated. This is not a case of an ‘‘übermensch
[. . .] [uplifting] [. . .] humanity’’ (507). The Veidt method, after all,
was for sale; and humankind did not improve all that much due to its
successful marketing. Rather, Ozymandias’ plan is merely damage
control. In the logic of the narrative, Ozymandias is at best a Carlylean
‘‘hero,’’ one man who makes history, but nevertheless, a man. His trans-
dimensional ‘‘joke’’ that postpones humankind’s demise is fundamen-
tally a product of tried and true entrepreneurial techniques—the artists
and scientists who brought the monster to fruition were hired and
organized specifically for this end. Ozymandias’ almost child-like need
for approval and assurance from Dr. Manhattan in the concluding
chapter, combined with his obvious shock with the realization of the
transience of his victory puts Veidt firmly in the human-all-too-human
camp at the end of the novel.
Perhaps ultimately, all of the characters and American identities are
presented in an ironic light to a satirical aim. This aim is complex, and
relates to American identity externally—in the realm of international
politics—and internally, in terms of typically American domestic ten-
sions. As world policemen, the Comedian and Dr. Manhattan are por-
trayed ambiguously, but mostly in a negative light. Their debut as
willing tools of American foreign policy in the Vietnam War would be,
for most readers, a questionable use of their talents. Dr. Manhattan’s
godlike detachment in the end views humans as mere playthings.
When Ozymandias points out that Manhattan had ‘‘regained interest in
human life,’’ he replies ‘‘Yes, I have. I think perhaps I’ll create some’’
(XII, 27). The Comedian’s covert exploits in Latin America and other
Third World countries up to his death are analogous to the Reagan
administration’s dealings in Central America revealed during the Iran-
Contra hearings, not exactly America’s finest hour regardless of which
side of the political fence one sits.
Domestically, Rorschach defies the rule of law to pursue his brand of
vigilante justice. His hyperconservative individualism takes on the cast
of paranoia in this story; and his belief system and personal hygiene
issues do make him an easy figure for ridicule. Yet, his paranoia was not
828 Michael J. Prince

baseless: he was right: there was a conspiracy against the Watchmen, and
the end of the world was nigh. And though his efforts combined with
the others did nothing to prevent it, it was Rorschach’s uncompro-
mising insistence on truth and justice that revealed the force behind
both the conspiracy against the costumed crime fighters and the elab-
orately arranged pseudo-Apocalypse. Ironically, as one burdened by
clinical psychological problems, he is of all the costumed crime fight-
ers, the least affected by agency panic. Ozymandias is in the end the
mortal individual who has allowed himself to be most absorbed by the
collective, turning the Adrian Veidt name into a corporatist entity on
par with the forces of the military industrial complex. Rorschach’s
highlighted agency combined with an inability to compromise, even
unto death, make heroism out of pathology. But, it is odd that Alan
Moore was not aware that this figure would generate sympathy among
his audience. At this point it would be helpful to return to Wolf-
Meyer’s assertion that superhero comics and their devoted audience
seem incapable of grasping the utopian possibilities that such super-
heroes and fantastic worlds make possible. In particular, why are the
majority of readers (and, unwittingly, the author) more empathetic to
Rorschach’s moral stance than Oxymandias’ übermensch decisiveness?
Initially, one could point out that all of the active Watchmen except
Dreiberg and Rorschach operate at the highest levels of corporate/
fascist power. However, the key to this puzzle probably lies in the
primacy of the liberal individual, especially in the American psyche. As
Timothy Melley shows, individual resistance to being incorporated
into the larger organization is a fantasy, but, at the level of artistic and
aesthetic production and reception, it is a powerful and persistent one
(188). George Orwell has observed that the very act of authorship is a
political act against ‘‘the destruction of liberalism’’ (132). The same is
true of some types of reading. For the readers of graphic novels may
recognize, as John Fiske suggests, ‘‘a progressive potential’’ in this
popular culture text, characterizing aspects of hegemonic power and
‘‘[validating] [. . .] tactical resistance to it’’ (61). And this is a healthy
thing for our culture. For, if the ‘‘individual’’ is to be considered a mere
construction, an affect of discourse, so most surely is the ‘‘collective.’’
There is an inherent danger in awaiting the Nietzschean superman to
bring humankind to the next level, or to surrender to Carlyle’s hero,
particularly during times of social crisis. The ever-present hazard is
that reprehensible actions can be justified with the threat or promise of
Alan Moore’s America 829

historical inevitability, one of the hallmarks of all brands of totalitarian

thought.5

Notes
1. A paper more focused on the graphic elements would emphasize David Gibbons’ contribution
to Watchmen, and there is no doubt that the book would have been markedly different without
his collaboration. Nevertheless, this article treats Alan Moore as the author of this text.
2. In Darko Suvin’s structuralist poetics of science fiction, the reasoned explanation of what would
otherwise be fantasy in a story (e.g., flying cars, teleportation) makes a story cognitive. To the
degree that this is done with the characters Dr. Manhattan and the high-tech tool kit of Nite
Owl and Ozymandias, as well as the teleportation of the trans-dimensional monster that kills
half of New York, Watchmen, is a work of science fiction. For a fuller discussion of cognitive and
noncognitive genres (see Darko Suvin 8 – 20).
3. For Watchmen, this paper indicates the original issue number in Roman numerals and the page
in Arabic. Throughout the text, ‘‘issue,’’ ‘‘installment,’’ and ‘‘chapter’’ are used interchangeably.
This acknowledges the original publication form as well as the form that most contemporary
readers find Watchmen today with all the individual issues bound as chapters in one volume.
4. Watchmen, X: ‘‘The Veidt Method.’’ ‘‘Both the body and the mind are part of a biological robot
that our immaterial souls inhabit.’’
5. According to Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is dependent upon the perceived inevitability of
ideology. In this way, Communism under Stalin employed history and Nazism under Hitler
used race to provide a telos to motivate and entrap their subjects (see Arendt 460 – 79).

Works Cited

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and

Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991. Print.
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1973. Print.
Carney, Sean. ‘‘The Tides of History: Alan Moore’s Historiographic
Vision’’.’’ ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies 2.2 (2006).
Web. 6 July 2007.
Fishbaugh, Brent. ‘‘Moore and Gibbons’ Watchmen: Exact Personifica-
tions of Science.’’ Extrapolation 39.3 (1998): 189 – 98. Print.
Fiske, John. Understanding Popular Culture. London: Routledge, 1989.
Print.
Hughes, Jamie A. ‘‘‘Who Watches the Watchmen?’: Ideology and ‘Real
World’ Superheroes.’’ The Journal of Popular Culture 39.4 (2006):
546 – 57. Print.
Melley, Timothy. Empire of Conspiracy: the Culture of Paranoia in Postwar
America. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2000. Print.
Moore, Alan, and David Gibbons. Watchmen (Absolute Watchmen). New
York: DC Comics, 2005. Print.
830 Michael J. Prince

‘‘Moore and Villarrubia on The Mirror of Love.’’ n.d. Web. 6 July 2007.
Orwell, George. ‘‘Inside the Whale’’ in George Orwell: Essays. London:
Penguin, 2000. Print.
Reynolds, Richard. Superheroes: A Modern Mythology. Jackson: UP of
Mississippi, 1992. Print.
Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of
a Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. Print.
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The Journal of Popular Culture 36.3 (2003): 497 – 517. Print.

Michael J. Prince is an associate professor of American Literature and Culture

at the University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway. He completed his
doctorate in 2001; his thesis, Myth Making Man: Myths of Human Evolution in
the Science Fiction of Philip K. Dick, Doris Lessing, and Octavia Butler, treats the
dispersal of cultural myth via popular science texts and science fiction. He has
published scholarly articles on William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, and
Frank Zappa. His current project concerns discursive negotiations of the
individual and the collective in post-World War II America.
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