Walter Joseph Kovacs, also known as Rorschach, is a fictional antihero and one of the two main protagonists (alongside Nite Owl) of the graphic novel limited series Watchmen, published by DC Comics in 1986. Rorschach was created by writer Alan Moore with artist Dave Gibbons; as with most of the main characters in the series, he was an analogue for a Charlton Comics character; in this case, Steve Ditko's the Question. Moore also modeled Rorschach on Mr. A, another Steve Ditko creation on whom the Question was originally based.
While Watchmen has an ensemble cast, many consider Rorschach to be the primary protagonist as he drives most of the plot forward and serves as the series' narrator. In the beginning of the story, he is introduced as the only masked vigilante to remain active on his own terms and initiative, a criminal outlaw as opposed to other former superheroes now covertly employed by the U.S. government. A ruthless crime-fighter, Rorschach believes in moral absolutism—good and evil as pure ends, with no shades of gray—which compels him to seek to punish any evidence of evil at all costs. His mask displays a constantly morphing inkblot based on the ambiguous designs used in Rorschach inkblot tests, also his namesake, with the mask's black and white coloring consistent with his sense and view of morality.
The original character was positively received, with multiple references in other comic titles and appearances in other media. He reappears in the Before Watchmen comic book prequel including his own miniseries. Rorschach made his live-action debut in DC's 20th full-length live-action feature film Watchmen, played by Jackie Earle Haley, who also voices him in the video game Watchmen: The End Is Nigh.
A successor to the Rorschach mantle, named Reggie Long, debuted in the sequel limited series Doomsday Clock, which connects the Watchmen universe with the mainstream DC Universe. Another incarnation of Rorschach, Wil Myerson, appears in the DC Black Label limited series Rorschach, a standalone sequel to Watchmen.
Publication history
As with the rest of the main characters of Watchmen, Alan Moore based Rorschach on Charlton Comics characters, using them as a "starting point". The characters Rorschach was specifically based on were the Question (a Charlton character) and Mr. A, two comic book characters created by Steve Ditko.
Ditko, who was inspired by the writings of Ayn Rand's personal philosophy of Objectivism, created both the Question and Mr. A as followers of the ideology. Regarding Rand's philosophy, Moore said he personally found it "laughable". In spite of this, Moore had a healthy respect for Ditko despite having different views politically. Moore recalled that Ditko's very right-wing agenda was quite interesting to him at the time, and that "probably led to me portraying Rorschach as an extremely right-wing character".
In trying to create Rorschach, Moore said he was trying to "come up with this quintessential Steve Ditko character—someone who's got a funny name, whose surname begins with a 'K,' who's got an oddly designed mask". On how he decided Rorschach's name, Moore recalls:
The Question was used as the prototype for creating Rorschach, while Mr. A, being a far more radical right-wing character than the mainstream-suited Question, served as the main inspiration for Rorschach's right-wing views as well as his black-and-white morality. Moore came to view Rorschach as a logical extension of both Mr. A and the Question. On the other hand, upon being asked whether he had seen Watchmen, Ditko himself described Rorschach as being "like Mister A, except Rorschach is insane."
Moore stated that Rorschach was created as a way of exploring what an archetypical Batman-type character—a driven, vengeance-fueled vigilante—would be like in the real world. He concluded that the short answer was "a nutcase". Moore also stated that the tone of Rorschach's diary was inspired by the Son of Sam letters David Berkowitz sent to the newspapers, and that his speech patterns were based on Herbie the Fat Fury.
While Moore came up with Rorschach's name and descriptions, Dave Gibbons was in charge of the character's appearance. In Gibbons' initial designs, Rorschach wore white clothing which had inkblots not only on his head but all over his body. He also wore a large blue trench-coat, red gloves, red-blue hat and items that look like jodhpurs or spats over his boots. When designing the characters of the series, Gibbons said Rorschach was his favorite to draw due to his relatively simpler features. He described:
Moore said he did not foresee the death of Rorschach until the fourth issue when he realized that his refusal to compromise would result in his not surviving the story. He claimed that initially he knew a lot about the character's surface mannerisms, but did not realize what was inside him until he "started to dig." Moore added that Rorschach had a "king-sized" deathwish due to his psychologically troubled life, and actively wanted to die but in his own dignified and honorable way, no matter how "twisted" it might have been. In response to why he chose to have Rorschach take off his mask to face death at the end, Moore said that he thought it "just felt right". He believed that it "is not the mask talking, it's not Rorschach, it's the actual human being [Walter Kovacs] that is somewhere under there".
Fictional character biography Before Watchmen Walter Joseph Kovacs was born on March 21, 1940, the son of Sylvia Kovacs, who was a prostitute, and an unknown father only known to Kovacs as "Charlie". His mother was frequently abusive and condescending towards him. In July 1951, at the age of 11, Kovacs became involved in a violent fight with two older bullies; subsequently, his living conditions were finally looked into. After his home was investigated, Kovacs was removed from his mother's care and put in "The Lillian Charlton Home for Problem Children" in New Jersey, where he rapidly seemed to improve, excelling at schoolwork as well as gymnastics and amateur boxing. In 1956, after leaving the Charlton Home when he was 16, Kovacs took a job as a garment worker in a dress shop, which he found "bearable but unpleasant" partly because he had to handle women's clothing; it was here that he acquired a certain dress fabric that he would later fashion into the mask he wears as Rorschach. His mother was brutally murdered by her pimp, George Paterson, who forced her to drink Drano cleaning fluid and dumped her body in the back alleyway. In 1962, Kovacs scavenged the material from a rejected dress that had been special-ordered by a young woman with an Italian name. Though Kovacs learned how to cut and fashion the material successfully with heated implements, he soon grew bored with it, as it served him no real purpose at the time.
Two years later when buying a newspaper on his way to work in March 1964, Kovacs read about the rape and murder of Kitty Genovese, who he believed was the Italian woman who had rejected the dress. Ashamed by what he read about the unresponsiveness of her neighbors, Kovacs became disillusioned with the underlying apathy that he saw as inherent in most people. Inspired by Genovese's fate, Kovacs returned home, made "a face [he] could bear to look at in the mirror" from the dress's fabric, and began fighting crime as the vigilante Rorschach. Initially, Kovacs left criminals alive, but bloodied, for the police to arrest, leaving a calling card in the form of a Rorschach test at every crime scene. In the mid 1960s, he teamed up with Nite Owl II, a partnership which proved highly successful at battling organized crime.
In 1975, an investigation into the kidnapping of a young girl named Blair Roche led to the transformation of the "soft" Kovacs into the ruthlessly uncompromising Rorschach. He tracked the kidnapping to a man named Gerald Grice. At Grice's shack, Kovacs found evidence Grice had killed the girl and had fed her remains to his dogs. Discovering this, Rorschach suffered a psychotic breakdown, killed the dogs with Grice's meat cleaver and waited for his arrival. When Grice returned, Rorschach hurled the corpses of the dogs through his windows, handcuffed him to a stove, and poured kerosene around him. Leaving Grice a hacksaw, Rorschach told him that his only chance to escape would be by cutting off his hand. Rorschach then set the shack on fire and left. No one emerged. During a later psychological evaluation, the vigilante stated that Kovacs went into the shack, but that Rorschach came out.
When the Keene Act was passed in 1977 to outlaw vigilantes, Rorschach responded by killing a wanted serial rapist and leaving his body outside a police station with a note bearing one word: "never!"
In Watchmen By 1985 and the events of Watchmen, Rorschach is the vigilante who continues to operate in defiance of the Keene Act, the rest having retired or become government operatives. He investigates the murder of a man named Edward Blake, discovering that he is the Comedian. He believes that someone is picking off costumed superheroes, a view that strengthens when Doctor Manhattan is forced into exile and when Adrian Veidt, the former vigilante known as Ozymandias, is targeted in an assassination attempt. Rorschach questions Moloch, a former supervillain who unexpectedly attends Blake's funeral, who tells him what little he knows. Later, after reading a note written by Moloch telling him to come over for more information, Rorschach visits him again, only to find him dead, shot through the head. The police, tipped off anonymously over the phone, surround the house. Rorschach scolds himself for falling into such an obvious trap, and is arrested after a fight, in which Rorschach tries to escape by jumping through a window, but is unmasked. After the unmasking, Rorschach is revealed to be the red-haired man who, in addition to being the first character to appear in the series, was shown several times in the early chapters carrying a sign reading "THE END IS NIGH".
Rorschach is sent to a prison where many of its inmates are criminals he put away, including Big Figure, a dwarf crime boss who is hungry for Rorschach's blood. During his incarceration, he is interviewed by the prison psychologist Dr. Malcolm Long. Long believes he can help rehabilitate him; instead, Rorschach's explanation of his life and his justifications for his uncompromising worldview lead Long to question his own views.
One day during lunch, one of the inmates attempts to attack Rorschach with a shiv, whereupon Rorschach throws the boiling-oil contents of a deep-fryer into his face in self-defense. As the guards grab and begin to beat him, Rorschach hoarsely yells at the watching crowd, "None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me." After the inmate dies, the prison breaks out in a riot. The Big Figure and two of his associates try to kill Rorschach, but he outwits and ultimately kills them all in rapid succession. Rorschach's two former colleagues, Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II, begin to take his "mask killer" theory seriously and break him out of jail to follow up on it.
After the prison break, Doctor Manhattan comes back from his self-exile to transport Silk Spectre II to Mars. After acquiring a spare costume from his apartment, Rorschach, along with Nite Owl, enters underworld bars to find out who ordered the assassination attempt on Veidt. They obtain a name, a company called Pyramid Deliveries, and then break into Veidt's office. Nite Owl correctly deduces Veidt's password and finds that he runs Pyramid Deliveries. Rorschach, who has been keeping a journal throughout the duration of the novel, realizes that they may be no match for Veidt. He makes one last entry in his journal, stating his certainty that Veidt is responsible for whatever might happen next, and drops it into a mailbox.