Alan Moore talks, pt. II

-Watchmen-

The Superhero Genre

It was so easy to have an effect because the mayority of the writters that had come before us had never thought of challenging any of these assumptions regarding the superheroe genre. They had though that, perhaps at best, it might be a cynical joke about superheroes. But, yes, there is that quality in stuff like Watchmen; there is that element of wouldn't these characters be a joke in the real world?, but there's also a poignant's to the characters, wouldn't these characters be somehow kind of sad and touching in the real world, and there's no reason why we can't exploit all of these things.

A new perspective

When you look at these familiar characters from a new perspective, you can actually see things that are true about the characters right from their very inseption in the thirties that nobody had applied, a political interpetation to them or a sexual interpretation.

Sign of the Times

Well,what Watchmen became was, entirely, a meditation about power. We were thinking about how each of these characters, to some degreee, represented different sorts of power. We have; the global situation unwinding and unfolding behind them; were you've got different sorts of superpowers that alt with each other; an escalating situation in Afghanistan and various other bits of bad world news that suggest that the nuclear doomsday clock is getting closer to the midnight mark. To some degree, if you're talking about superheroes it's very likely to become a meditation about power.

A new kind of Batman

You find that, yes, superheroes in the real world are kind of funny, they're also kind of scary because, actually, a person dressing in a mask and going around beating criminals is a vigilante psicopath. That's what Batman is, um, in essence. And we came up with the character of Rorscharch as a way of exploring what that Batman-type driven, vengance fueled vigilante would be like in the real world. And the short answer is: a nut-case.

A king sized death wish

I mean, it wasn't until half-way through that we realized that Rorscharch would not survive the book. It just became obvious. We realized that this was a character, if ever there was a character, who's got a king-sized death-wish. He was in pain, psycological pain, every moment of his life and he wanted out of it, but with honor; in whatever his own twisted standards of honor might have been.

Rorscharch's Journal

(A.M. lee un fragmento)

Rorscharch journal, October 16th, 1985: 42nd Street, women's breasts draped across every billboard, every display, litering the sidewalk. Was offered Swedish love and French love...but not American love; like Coke in green glass bottles... they don't make it anymore. Thought about Moloch's story on the way to the cementery. Could be all lies. Could all be part of revenge scheme, planned during his decade behind bars. But if true, then what? Puzzuling reference to an island. And also Dr.Manhattan. Might be in risk in some way? So many questions. Never mind. Answers soon. Nothing is insoluble. Nothing is hopeless. Not while there's life