Comic Book Anti-Heroes Essay Example for Free

Comic carry Anti-Heroes set aboutThe frequently talked about, critically celebrated and to some extent excessively hyped comic book miniseries Watchmen is most very much described as a revisionist take on superhero conventions and narratives, and with good reason. Now retroactively referred to as a graphic novel, Watchmen sees writer-artist team Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons deal with costumed adventurers or superheroes and attempt to place them within a realist context. Moore and Gibbons do not appear to denigrate superheroes so much as purge them of the conceits that consecrate become required for comic book readers to be able to suspend their disbelief. Watchmen takes place in an alternate reality of 1985, where rimy War tensions are at their highest and multiple term extensions come allowed Richard Nixon to remain President of the united States. Furthermore, the United States has a long and troubled relationship with costumed adventurers dating back to the late 1930s. charm the receptive nature of costumed adventurers acquire much admiration in the initial decades of their appearance, public sentiment turns strongly against them and by 1977, the government passes the Keane Act, which outlaws vigilante heroism.As a result, the protagonists of Watchmen are divided evenly among those costumed adventurers who have retired and those who have not. In the former category lies the perpetually bored ornithologist named Dan Dreiberg, formerly the gadget dependent Nite Owl, Laurie Juspeczyk, a halt feminist with assertion issues who was formerly the martial arts oriented Silk subtlety and Adrian Veidt, a genius-level intellect and self-perfected athlete once kn birth as Ozymandias and now channels his talents towards a zillion dollar business empire and ren suffered philanthropy.Those adventurers who have continued to affiance despite the Keane Act proffer the most fertile area for ethical and moral analysis, especially in the context of the hist oric accentuate that Moore and Gibbons have constructed. These include Edward Blake, a brutally gung-ho superpatriot known as The comedian, Jon Osterman, a former physicist saturnine emotionally detached god-like being code-named by the U. S. government as revive Manhattan and Walter Kovacs, an uncompromising moral absolutist and the all sensation who operates without government sanction as the cruel vigilante called Rorschach.Rorschach, The Comedian and limit Manhattan effectively function as anti-heroes in the sense that although their adventuring careers have persisted beyond the Keane Act, they are far take from the heroic intentions that have been the traditional property of costumed adventurers in comic book literature. Furthermore, the morality and ethics which governs their activities is shaded with far darker tones than the unwavering idealism of a Superman or the commitment to vigilance that oddballizes a Batman.However, their anti-heroism character is owed in l arge part to the ways that they evoke the characteristics of traditional superhero archetypes. This is not an entirely unfounded observation. It is no secret that the characters of Watchmen originate with characters from a relatively obscure comic publishing company known as Charlton Comics. Pustz (146-147) and Jensen (47) both recount that the genesis of Watchmen was in a request made by Dick Giordano, so executive editor of DC Comics, that Moore apply his talents to characters that DC had just acquired from Charlton.Moore was selected primarily because of the revisionist skills he had displayed in books such(prenominal)(prenominal) as Swamp Thing and Marvelman. In the former, Moore turned a formulaic horror series into a melancholy drama with an environmentalist streak while in the latter, he toyed with what was a British skipper Marvel knock-off and subverted into an existentialist look at relationship between superhero and alter ego.Because Watchmen presented superheroes as se xually frustrated, politically emasculated and psychologically unstable, it would have presented problems for the commercial longevity of the Charlton characters, making them unusable for future stories. As a result, Moore was instructed to re-write his story with original characters, and the Charlton characters were ultimately re-introduced by DC Comics through different means. This meant that the specific histories of the Charlton characters no perennial imposed any limitations on the story that Moore and collaborator Gibbons had chosen to tell.Pustz (147) observes that this was for the better fewer readers would have the previous knowledge necessary to appreciating the Charlton characters than those who would appreciate original characters. However, for these original characters to resonate properly with audiences on a correspondent level as established characters it became necessary for Moore and Gibbons to develop them beyond what could be communicated in a exhaustible numbe r of comic book panels, even when allowing for flashbacks and copious amounts of background detail.To do so, Moore and Gibbons made use of dissimilar fictional documents such as a report on the political implications of Doctor Manhattans super-powered reality and the autobiography of Hollis Mason, the first Nite Owl and predecessor to Dan Dreiberg. The characters of Watchmen, as already suggested above, ended up being remindful of superhero archetypes. As Pustz notes Dr. Manhattan echoes every omnipotent superhero from Superman to Miracleman to the Spectre.The Comedian refers to patriotic heroes such as Captain the States and superspies such as Marvels Nick Fury. Rorschach is every other obsessed vigilante from Batman to the Punisher. (Pustz 147) By converging the evocation of superhero archetypes with a dysfunctional alternate history, Moore and Gibbons impose profound effects on the psychology of Watchmens protagonists. Simply put, Watchmens protagonists really are anti-her oes in multiple senses of the word.This is because what Moore and Gibbons have do is make it impossible for their characters to sustain a heroic purity over the course of their careers, especially in the face of history. Many of the longest-running comic book series are those that feature superheroes, and require a moderate suspension of disbelief that allows them to persist in a constant state of present tense. Therefore, in rise to power to a diminished aging rate (if any at all), the psychological and political organic evolution of the characters is especial(a) in order to allow them to sustain continued adventuring careers.Thus, while the Spider-Man of the 1960s hangs out with his pals at popping parlors and the Captain America of the 21st century faces personalised uncertainty in the face of international anti-American sentiment, neither never fully achieve any personal disillusionment or psychological resolving that would end their stories. By contrast, the costumed her oes in the Watchmen dry land do not and cannot possess the static personalities that have allowed the likes of Captain America or Batman to function continuously in their own comic books, despite the changes in cultural and political zeitgeist.Even if their personalities werent so troubled and their motivations so void of nobility, the forces of history would soothe have gradually eroded the initial foundations of their adventuring careers, which they do. As such, the relationship between detestation fighting and union changes radically in the decades between 1938, when costumed heroes make their first appearance, and the year 1985, which is when the primary events take place.Klock notes that ahistorical conditions are necessary to reinforcing stimulus the superhero narrative, opining that superheroes only make sense in world where masked opponents support their fantasy, and masked opponents only exist to fight superheroes, but because history and personality carry greater pit ch in Watchmen than they traditionally do in other superhero narratives. As a result, Watchmens protagonists en mountain chain vary levels of cynicism, neuroticism and societal alienation. They become anti-heroes simply because it is impossible to for their heroism to remain pure at all.It is from this tap that Moore and Gibbons proceed to interrogate the effect of history on the individual viewpoints of costumed adventurers and superheroes, as well as their effects upon history itself. In addition to the geopolitical implications of Doctor Manhattans nigh omnipotence, Moore and Gibbons examine how personal humanity is profoundly altered by nigh omniscient awareness of history, whilst the Comedian is the expression of how historical tumult and a life of violence has corrupting effects on the patriotic character, rendering an nearly ir pitchable cynicism.In the case of Rorschach, who is Watchmens most (dis)reputable anti-hero, he experiences constant exposure to the endurance of genial and cultural malaise which serves to only harden his moral and ethical absolutism. The result is an unwavering dedication to the following of justice, one which would ordinarily and unquestionably admirable in traditional superheroes, but not in one who ultimately comes across as a fascist.Jackie Earle Haley, the actor who is to portray Rorschach in a feature film adaptation of Watchmen, notes that Rorschachs personality centers around his contention with the oft-declared complexity of the world that is maintained as the excuse for its ills and woes Rorschachs complexity is an attacking complexity. He tries to simplify the world in black and white. Rorschach thinks that youre not what you say you mean, youre what you do. You are your behavior That sort of oblige me to look at my own behavior, to ask myself, Whos my behavior victimizing today? We justify our behavior with complexity. not for Rorschach. (Adler 2008) Thus, it is not Rorschachs relentless commitment to th e pursuit of justice that gives him his anti-heroic character, as it is a whole tone he shares with Batman. Although portrayals of Batman have varied over the decades in both print and film, his ideals are not close linked with his view of society, giving him a sense of ambivalency towards societys collective responsibilities to its own welfare.Rorschach on the other hand, views the world with utter scorn, with little faith in its ability to redeem itself. His moral absolutism originates from humanitys consistent inability to live up to the nobility it ascribes to itself. His development as a vigilante stems from humanitys failure and inaction. In the case of a charwoman who had been raped, tortured and killed outside her own apartment building, he remembers that Nobody did anything. Nobody called cops. Some of them even watched. Do you understand?I knew what people were then, behind all the evasions, all the self-deception. Ashamed for humanity I went home. I took the remains o f her unwanted dress and made a face that I could bear to look at in the mirror. Traditional superheroes do not view the world with this much contempt, but Rorschach does. His contempt for humanity is most strongly articulated when he declares, This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate who butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs.Its us. While Rorschach articulates the most complex relationship between an individuals ideals and his perception of society, Doctor Manhattan expresses how ambivalence towards the cling to of human affairs leads to a sense of detachment that reduces an individuals moral compass down to dehumanized utilitarianism. This is not to suggest that Manhattans nigh-omnipotence makes him morally apathetic. Rather, it alters his ethical code in such a fashion that the welfare of a numerical majority takes precedence, regardless of the cost.This is made most plain when he teleports an angry mob, which is a peaceful means of negating conflict, but it also leads to two shock-induced heart attacks. Manhattan maintains that this is statistically preferable to the larger number of casualties that would have been caused by mob violence. Towards the end of Watchmen, Manhattan becomes even more extraneous towards the redemption of humanity, opining that despite the attempts of individuals such as Ozymandias to bring about a peaceful new world order, nothing ever ends. While Rorschachs desire is to impose his will and scrawl his own design on this morally blank world, and Manhattan dismisses the notion that human problems can ever be resolved, The Comedian simply doesnt care. As a nihilist, the Comedian shares Rorschachs belief that there is no moral or ethical principle which guides the universe. Despite the fact that he fought for the U. S. during the Vietnam War, he concludes that its outcome matters only to Americans and holds no meaning to the average Vietnamese .The Comedian is so utterly devoid of delusions about the moral value of geopolitical affairs, and his participation stems primarily from his loyalty to Uncle Sam rather than from any sense of idealism. His credo is that earthly concern is one big joke, and hes one of the few who is in on the gag. These three Rorschach, Doctor Manhattan, The Comedian are antiheroes not because they are devoid of any heroism, but rather because they express how a purity of ideals will always be shaped by the forces which history exerts upon them.They do not operate from a corrupt morality let alone from villainy several moments reveal deeply obscured or twisted nobility within them all. Instead, they are anti-heroic because the gritty realities of society and the debilitating effects of continued crime fighting take hold upon them in ways that are denied to their conventional counterparts. Works Cited Pustz, Matthew J. Comic Book Culture Fanboys and True Believers. Jackson, Mississippi University Press of Mississippi, 1999.Klock, Geoff. Who Watches the Watchmen? SF Crowsnest, April 2003. Retrieved December 17, 2008 from http//www. sfcrowsnest. com/sfnews2/03_april/news0403_6. shtml Adler, Shawn. Is Rorschach Watchmens Most Heroic component? Jackie Earle Haley Thinks So. MTV Splash Page, 21 August 2008. Retrieved December 17, 2008 from http//splashpage. mtv. com/2008/08/21/is-rorschach-watchmens-most-heroic-character-jackie-earle-haley-thinks-so/