• Rorschach is Alan Moore’s principal protagonist in the graphic novel Watchmen
• The mask-wearing, face-busting ‘superhero’ embodies the novel’s theme of paranoia
• Rorschach’s journal acts as the story’s framing device and may influence the events of HBO’s upcoming series

You can’t miss the mask.

It occupies center frame, and the opening shot of HBO’s Watchmen trailer. A room full of unidentified figures wear it, clad in plaid clothing, muttering the line: “We are no one. We are everyone. And we are invisible. Tick tock.”

Their mask is the “face” of Rorschach, the principal protagonist of Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’ cultural touchstone graphic novel, Watchmen.

The character’s name “Rorschach” refers to the famous ink blot test of the same name, developed by Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach. The test involves a series of ten inkblot pictures shown to a patient in order to provide a psychological evaluation. The patient describes what he sees—sometimes a face, sometimes a butterfly. The subjectiveness of the test and the possibility of contradictory answers allows for the riddle: an entity being two different things simultaneously—someone, no one, etc.

But who was the original Rorschach? Who was no one and (now, in HBO’s series) everyone—wearing plaid?

In the Graphic Novel (and Comics)

Rorschach acts as the novel’s principle storytelling vehicle; much of it is framed through his investigative journal.

After masked heroes are outlawed by congress, Rorschach begins fighting crime alone. He does so until October 1985, when the novel begins. In October, Rorschach investigates the killing of another superhero, the Comedian. Believing somebody to be assassinating masked heroes, Rorschach calls on each of his former crime-fighting partners: Dr. Manhattan, Ozymandias, Nite Owl, and Silk Spectre. Only Nite Owl adopts Rorschach’s suspicions and the two begin further investigating. Midway through the story, however, Rorschach walks into a trap and is violently arrested by police.

Most of what we learn about Rorschach in the novel occurs in a series of flashbacks, framed while Rorschach is in jail and receiving psychological evaluation—the inkblot test that bears his name—by psychiatrist Malcolm Long. Rorschach initially lies to Long, claiming to see only butterflies and flowers when in fact his violent history unfolds before the reader.

As the story goes, Rorschach was born as Walter Kovacs in 1940. His father abandoned the family before the birth, and in order to keep the lights on, Kovacs’ mother begins working as a prostitute. She beats Kovacs after he walks in on her with a client.

Later, when two passing kids on the street call his mother a “whore,” Kovacs sticks a cigarette in one of the boy’s eyes then jumps onto the other and starts biting his face. Kovacs is ten. He is soon moved to a foster home. When he is told at 16 that his mother had been found dead in the South Bronx, Kovacs responds with a single word: “good.”

Kovacs then begins working in the garment industry. A customer orders a dress be made but refuses to accept it. Kovacs keeps the dress, and, after learning that his customer was raped and tortured outside her apartment bulling while the neighbors watched, Kovacs decides to cut the dress into a mask.

Kovacs begins fighting crime as Rorschach. Fighting crime entails beating and torturing criminals. One night, while investigating a missing girl, Rorschach breaks into a suspect’s home, passing two dogs chewing a bone. In the home he finds a furnace containing a piece of child’s clothing. He looks out the window, realizing the bone is a human femur. Rorschach then kills the dogs with a meat cleaver and then ties up the suspect, dousing the room in kerosine, and lighting the house on fire.

Rorschach finally tells Long the story and admits that it was at this moment Walter Kovacs died and Rorschach remained—the only identity left.

Long leaves the interview room, his own home life now deteriorating due to his new assignment.

Not long after, Nite Owl and Silk Specter break Rorschach out of prison. Rorschach and Nite Owl head to the arctic to further investigate Ozymandias. In the arctic and surrounded by TV monitors, Ozymandias reveals his plan to fake an alien invasion and exterminate half of Manhattan in order to unite the U.S. and Soviets, avoiding a nuclear holocaust. When he’s done speaking, Ozymandias explains that the event has already occurred, and a horrified Rorschach and Nite Owl watch the coverage on television. Ozymandias’ plan, however, appears to succeed, and some of the masked heroes agree to stay silent. Rorschach refuses and is vaporized by Dr. Manhattan.

Before Rorschach left for the arctic, however, he had mailed his journal to a local paper. The novel ends with editors finding the journal—which includes his investigation into Ozymandias.

In the Doomsday Clock comic series (published after Watchmen and taking place seven years after the novel’s events), Rorschach’s journal has been published by the press. Chaos ensues and a boy dons Rorschach’s mask. The boy is the son of psychiatrist Malcolm Long who examined Rorschach while in prison.

Connection to the Show

Thematically, Rorschach’s character embodies the general paranoia of Cold War social and political life. Rorschach appears without a mask during several early scenes, dressed instead as a doomsday prophesier, a tatterdemalion holding a sign: “the end is nigh.”

Rorschach’s conspiratorial attitude finds validation in the right-wing newspaper he reads. Politically, he’s a nationalist. Though his chosen mask implies a kind of radical subjectiveness, the character remains staunchly absolutist: there is good and there is bad; there are good men and there are bad men. Punishment and retribution are twin pillars of Rorschach’s sense of justice—giving him a legal and moral attitude that seems particularly American: Rorschach sees his job as bringing bad men of the world to justice.

The plaid, Rorschach-mask-wearing men in HBO’s trailer embody a kind of Rorschach cult, perhaps formed after the events of the novel. They also seem to resemble a right-wing ultranationalist group, which may be consistent with a modernized Rorschach character.

Whoever they are, it’s clear Rorschach’s character and ideas live on, perhaps to the detriment of his crime-fighting endeavor. Only time will tell. Tick tock.

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