Continued from epilogue, page 2...

The main female character, Silk Spectre really has little meat to her role. She seems not to represent much of anything, seeming to act only as a foil or enabler for other characters. In fact, Moore is quoted as saying she is only in there so that they had a requisite female character. Sadly, she seems treated that way, too. This makes her Mother's rape seem gratuitous and all about The Comedian's character development instead of either of the Spectres'. We are left with feeling that this rape story line was only added to make the story seem "adult" oriented. Of course, it could be a commentary on the supposed ill treatment of women in western society, too... but somehow it seems such a subtlety is not one that could have occurred to Moore as the rape was merely meant to titillate on one hand and add to the cruelty of The Comedian on the other.

Ozymandias represents megalomania at its worst, most messianic form. So sure is he that he knows better that he takes away the very thing that makes man a sentient human being; choice. The ability to choose our fate, choose our reactions, and direct our own lives is overridden by Ozymandias' "better" future.

Lastly is the character of Rorschach. As a child, this character¹s prostitute mother told him that she should have aborted him. He was repeatedly abused and eventually snapped, turning violent. Once he snapped, he found that his wild violence fixed things for him and made people fear him. As an adult in his superhero life, he uses unbridled violence to elicit information from underworld figures and thinks nothing of casually breaking fingers to insure cooperation. He attacks a caner riddled old man to get info and basically roams about the city intimidating and causing harm to people. His main part in the comic is to act as an unbalanced mockery of justice.

Unfortunately, the series ends up being just another way to tear down standards, another way to complain about the old ways while offering nothing with which to replace them. That being the case, nothing new has been learned in the Watchmen. The only thing "new" is the forum in which the questions are being raised; a comic book. And this might go a long way to answering to one of Moore's chief complaints about the comics that Watchmen influenced.

Moore lamented to Barry Kavanagh that Watchmen spawned too many knock-off attempts. "... what happened was that it just started a whole genre of pretentious comics or miserable comics - or you could even see, you look at the Image comics of the early '90s, and you could see people who were predominantly superhero artists who hadn't got much of a grasp of writing, trying to sort of lift riffs from Watchmen, Dark Knight, you know, those mid-'80s books. It was like looking at your deformed bastard grandchildren or something like that."

In that same interview, he went on to complain, "... when I saw the actual effect of Watchmen upon comics [which] was probably a kind of deleterious effect, which is not surprizing [sic] I guess. Often the better works in any medium have the most negative effect." 15

That dose of arrogance aside, Moore's lament is a perfect example of human nature in a capitalist society. What is hailed as a success becomes fodder for emulation. And this is a chief complaint of mine, going back to the question that started this whole essay off. Why does art have to be so dark? The author had the choice to be uplifting with his art, or take the low road in subject and philosophy and, in this case, he took the low road.

One wishes that writer, Moore, could have used his considerable talents to produce uplift as opposed to depression, to reach for the sublime instead of the prosaic, to inspire by taking the high road instead of the low. But, unfortunately, with the influence of the political view from the left upon him all he could do was take the low road. If all one can do is see the worst in man, claim nothing is ever worth the effort, and that western ideas have destroyed any vestige of light in man then you are doomed to stay on that low road. So, as we end up with despair and darkness in our art, too many artists continue to take the low road.

Just as sadly, we see that the political Left hasn't learned much since 1986. They still see the west as causing all of the world's problems, still see capitulation to our enemies as the right course of action, and still feel that Patriotism and right and wrong are words with meaningless distinctions or, worse, even dangerous concepts.

Moore has lamented that his work with Watchmen had "started a whole genre of pretentious comics or miserable comics," but since he insisted on taking that low road himself, what could he expect? His politics, if emulated, ends up at this very place.

But, laments aside, Moore's epic comic book does do one thing very successfully. It reveals the empty moralizing and faulty logic of his flavor of political thinking. Nearly every political point that Moore tries to sell coupled with his philosophical premises all have been tried by successive generations of humanity and with the all the same results. Utter failure has been that result. Yet, here is Watchmen subtly trying to sell the same failed concepts -- and often murderously so -- that have proven so dangerous to mankind. In the end, we cannot help but realize that the Left, so sure that they are the ones qualified to "watch the watchers," fail to see that it is they, rather than others, who need the watching.

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To email the author, email: igcolonel@hotmail.com

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