(07-01-2013, 03:32 PM)Bea Wrote: So, while I as grinning like a fool when I was reading the responses to this thread, because I love 90% of the characters posted here, I remembered some more! (I'm really bummed I don't have my comic collection with me at the moment, so I'm sure a bunch will come to me as I go)
I'm a fool for Watchmen, I really am. It's it, without a doubt, probably one of my most favorite comics and movies. So, of course I'd have to find a favorite character in there somewhere.
Rorschach: Here we have an individual striving to make things right, but only in the worst sort of way. I'd follow up Shuck's post in saying that he probably has some Captain Ahab similarities in that he wants to rid the city of filth and he'll bludgeon, stalk, torment and murder his way into doing it. And this is probably one of the only times I've felt that the protagonist was considered far more dangerous and, hell, scary than the antagonist. Rorschach is fucking busted as all hell.
![[Image: watchmen%20Rorschach.jpg]](http://cdn.albertmoy.com/Images/Category_2/subcat_561/watchmen%20Rorschach.jpg)
I was going to talk about Rorschach a little bit too, or generally just Watchmen as a whole so I'm glad you brought this up.
The real reason I like Watchmen is because it has all of the "classic" super hero elements. You have your Justice League or Avengers (Minutemen) who all came from different backgrounds but united for justice. You have your arch-villain (Moloch) who they've fought and fought again one hundred times. But then it spins it on its head. Alan Moore takes these elements and says "Well, if this was real, and was happening today (1985) and had been happening since the '40s, when comic book super heroes became popular, how would the world be different?" That's when you get real characters who play the part but aren't really super heroic. Comedian, Silk Spectre, Rorschach. All of them bad in their own way (Rorschach's methods, Silk Spectre I's vanity, Comedian's... well, everything), and the only one who actually seems like a genuinely good guy is the one who blows up all the major cities on the planet. It's essentially a comic book that asks "What if this whole thing we've been doing for the past 50 years wasn't confined to comic books? How would this be different if the heroes and villains were real people?" and "What kind of people would this line of work attract in the real world?"
Rorschach is definitely one of the most interesting characters in the book. He's scary, he's mean, and he's insane, yet he's the good guy. But he's not just the good guy because the government says he is, like the Comedian. He actually does want to help. Rorschach is an outlaw for trying to fight crime, and in the end of the story, he cares more about stopping Ozymandias than anyone. He doesn't want to see innocents get hurt. He'll kill baddies mercilessly all day, but despite his brutality, he'll never hurt an innocent man. He's a strange and extreme character and I think it makes him very interesting.
