Biggest surprise when you read the book...

[Khedrac]

Tombs was the best of the original three Earthsea books, with Wizard not far behind. Farthest Shore was OK (it had some good ideas, at any rate), but Tehanu was such a mess that I can barely remember anything about it, and it put me off the rest of the books.

I've only seen bits of Tales from Earthsea - it looked good, but it was clearly pulling bits from all of the books, and not really doing a very good job of putting them together.

Not seen the adaptations and I agree with you on the books, but iirc the last book wasn't too bad, but still probably in the "might have been better set standalone" category.

I think the problem is that LeGuin seemed to love writing something new, so had trouble when people demanded sequels. Quite a few excellent authors have similar problems, and even the sequel specialists (e.g. Anne McAffery) can run the well dry after a time and be better off ignoring the sequel demand.

[Mordar]

How many solo comic series or graphic novels have there been about Cyclops? How many about Wolverine? How many about Punisher?

There's your answer. Rorschach is an interesting and cool character precisely because he's an edgy vigilante, prone to violence, and with questionable methods. Whatever his personal flaws may be, he is unquestionably heroic, and refuses to give in, no matter what. There's something powerful about that, that "well, I'll go along with it, but maybe do something behind the scenes later on" with a side order of <insesrt appropriate collaborator label here> feel to it, can simply never approach.

You don't have to like the character of Rorschach, but he earns respect for making that choice. Dan is likeable, but "goes along" at the end. There's a reason why folks like that get labels like "sell out" applied to them. And sure. Maybe most people actually do associate the most with Dan, because maybe he's the most like most of us. But he's not the kind of person we want to be, even if maybe, most of the time, he's the person we are. We want our heroes to be more heroic than we are. Dan ain't that.

Personally, I liked/felt for Cyclops a lot, from way back in the issue 120 range. But, my peers generally considered him boring and not terribly engaging. Not because he wasn't edgelord-before-edgelord-was-cool, but because he represented order and most adolescent boys weren't always a fan of that. You know who we were all fans of? Spider-man. Yup, Wolverine, Punisher...they did well. Dredd and Lobo? Niche. Deadpool? Eventually huge. But while they were hot I don't know that they ever got the same peak market share of Batman, Spider-man, X-men team books, etc. (I think they certainly exceeded in gross circulation, but never close as a percentage of total circulation...but citation needed). They just really appealed to a slice of the comic-book market and a slice of the non-traditional comic book fan market.

Rorschach was, I thought, 1 part 'I hate how Batman is sooooo popular (and rich and attractive and successful) so I want to put "my spin" on that and be deconstructy' and 1 part 'I feel like I come from the edge of society and never really fit in and have all these strong feelings' and so became a pretty noteworthy example of an edgelord icon. With some pretty cool lines. And I think a clever name because people like us can see many different things in him, more reflective of us than of the character. Yeah, I don't like Moore, but was pretty darn good at what he did.

- M

[Sapphire Guard]

I got the impression that the ending of Watchmen was deliberately open. These are the perspectives of these people. Who you agree with, if anyone, is up to the reader. Does Veidt's plan work? Up to the reader. Does the New Frontiersman run the story, or the one about fluoride? Up to the reader.

So any sequel immediately runs into problem that it resolves things that were left up in the air on purpose.

The other notable thing is that back in the eighties no one knew that the Cold War was on its last legs, so the idea of nuclear armageddon is a lot more of an immediate concern, so it hits very different post cold war. So going back and looking at things with a modern perspective needs a good deal of caution if you're trying to determine creator intent.

[Cikomyr2]

Most people don't "identify" with Rorschach (though there are definitely some crazies out there) but it's hard not to sympathize with the guy who comes closest to making a difference and has principles he stands behind.

Im sorry, what?

Rorschach never made a difference except to individuals he saved/avenged.

He beat people and act righteous about it. That's the extent of his abilities, and hasn't moved the needle an iota toward a better world.

[Tyndmyr]

Rorschach beats people up, hoping to make the world a better place according to his self-righteous beliefs. Veidt blows up a city, hoping to make the world a better place according to his self-righteous beliefs. That seems like a difference of scale, more than anything else. Both of them have some impressive qualities, but I wouldn't call either of them heroic.

Correct. Scale makes Veidt the villain.

In a story with no Veidt and people who were more empathetic, it would have been easy to cast Rorshach as the villain....after all, the villain stands out against the setting he is in, his evil is greater than the flaws of average people.

In this story, Rorschach is not uniquely evil. The flaws he has are not greater than those around him. The Comedian is a similar character, but with significantly fewer redeeming characters and more wrongs committed. Manhattan is almost wholly inhuman. Veidt outdoes everyone else. Yes, he is more mannered and proper, but the lawful evil villain that has a certain sense of style to go with grandiose evil schemes is an old, old trope. The person filling that role is almost invariably the big bad.

I mean Niteowl is right there. There's someone who also does his best to fight for what is right, without being a volatile homophobe and racist, who doesn't die needlessly when he realizes sometimes there isn't much one man can do against someone as powerful as Veidt.

Nite Owl is a pragmatist, not a hero. All heroes are idealistic. Villains can be pragmatic. Veidt is. His great evil is justified in straightforward utilitarian means. Pragmatists can also be simply bystanders, which is largely what Nite Owl ends up being. He's a great window to the story. He doesn't drive the story in any way, he mostly just reacts as it happens to him.

In the end, while Nite Owl and Manhattan do not particularly approve of Veidts actions, they tolerate them. This is contrary to the necessary actions of a hero, who must at least try to act when confronted with grave evil. If they don't do that...they're not heroic. We can love a hero that loses. We do not love the man who never fights.

[Batcathat]

Correct. Scale makes Veidt the villain.

In a story with no Veidt and people who were more empathetic, it would have been easy to cast Rorshach as the villain....after all, the villain stands out against the setting he is in, his evil is greater than the flaws of average people.

In this story, Rorschach is not uniquely evil. The flaws he has are not greater than those around him. The Comedian is a similar character, but with significantly fewer redeeming characters and more wrongs committed. Manhattan is almost wholly inhuman. Veidt outdoes everyone else. Yes, he is more mannered and proper, but the lawful evil villain that has a certain sense of style to go with grandiose evil schemes is an old, old trope. The person filling that role is almost invariably the big bad.

I can agree that scale makes Veidt the greater villain, but his actions doesn't make Rorschach more of a hero than Rorschach would be in a story without Veidt in it. There are plenty of examples in both fiction and real life of people we would label villains opposing each other, that doesn't mean either side is automatically heroic.

Nite Owl is a pragmatist, not a hero. All heroes are idealistic. Villains can be pragmatic. Veidt is. His great evil is justified in straightforward utilitarian means. Pragmatists can also be simply bystanders, which is largely what Nite Owl ends up being. He's a great window to the story. He doesn't drive the story in any way, he mostly just reacts as it happens to him.

In the end, while Nite Owl and Manhattan do not particularly approve of Veidts actions, they tolerate them. This is contrary to the necessary actions of a hero, who must at least try to act when confronted with grave evil. If they don't do that...they're not heroic. We can love a hero that loses. We do not love the man who never fights.

You seem to have a very specific definition of a hero, saying that they must be idealistic seems very strange to me.

[Cikomyr2]

In the end, while Nite Owl and Manhattan do not particularly approve of Veidts actions, they tolerate them. This is contrary to the necessary actions of a hero, who must at least try to act when confronted with grave evil. If they don't do that...they're not heroic. We can love a hero that loses. We do not love the man who never fights.

In the end, they didnt "tolerate" his actions, they just understood there was nothing that could be done to stop it, period.

Their choice was either stay silent to risk the crime to have been for nothing. They decided to not sabotage the plan when the blood had already been spilled.

[gbaji]

While I get what you mean, the old adage of "close only matters in horseshoes and hand grenades" comes to mind... and while it has admittedly been a while since I've read Watchmen, I feel like a lot of the stuff Rorschach stands so firmly for is also pretty ****ty. Like he'd for sure find me to be an inherently evil person simply by my personal existence.

It's been a while since I read the series, but while he had lots of disparaging comments to make about a whole host of different people who didn't fit his own warped ideals, he only actually took action against those who were actively causing direct harm to other people. If you (or anyone else) were being mugged on the street, he would beat the crap out of the mugger and save you. Then he'd write something disparaging about how he was forced to save someone who <insert some negative identity targetted statement here>, perhaps with some side observation about how the world is becoming a cesspool and only he can save it from itself, etc, etc, etc...

Not at all a great person. But... within the story itself? It's not surprising that he was viewed as the most heroic character in the story. The irony is that the character who probably had the least care about "people", was the one character who acted the most in defense of those same people. And yes. A lot of that stemmed from his childhood and his mother, and creating very firm "these are the victims, and those are the perpetrators" kinds of rules is his mind. He was basically a serial killer, but instead of targeting the most vulnerable and weak, he intentially targeted the strongest and most aggressive towards that group. All the while hating the vulnerable and weak for being what they were in the first place.

Which, yeah, is a pretty warped personality. But, again, that's what makes him such a fascinating character.

Not seen the adaptations and I agree with you on the books, but iirc the last book wasn't too bad, but still probably in the "might have been better set standalone" category.

I think the problem is that LeGuin seemed to love writing something new, so had trouble when people demanded sequels. Quite a few excellent authors have similar problems, and even the sequel specialists (e.g. Anne McAffery) can run the well dry after a time and be better off ignoring the sequel demand.

Yeah. Agree on the whole sequel thing. The books tended to meander, and touch on previously established things, but weren't necessarily at all a linear story. The TV series thing, was "ok". But it was basically set using the backdrop of the setting itself, and some of the things that were only tangentially mentioned in the books, then built a story off of that, and dropped in some of the characters into it. If you'd read the books, then watched the series, you recognized the places, and references and names, but it was otherwise a very much tangential story. Kind of like someone reading Tolkien's appendixes, and building a story based on minor mentions of names, places, and events.

At least, that was the sense I got out of it. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't specifically about telling any of the actual stories in the books. It just kinda skipped across them instead, while telling a different story. Not a terrible approach IMO (and honestly not too much different from the approach in the books themselves). But not at all something where you could really compare one fo the other directly.

Rorschach never made a difference except to individuals he saved/avenged.

As opposed to the people who no one saved? I guess I don't see the logic in "I can't save the entire world, so there's no point in saving this one person right in front of me". We can certainly debate his motivations for what he was doing, and his own personal... er... "issues", but he was certainly making more of a difference than Nightowl, or any of the other retired heroes, over the same period of time.

And at the end of the day, whether Moore intended it or not, Rorschach was the primary protagonist/motivator for the entire story. If not for his paranoia and need to investigate and look for conspiracies, none of the other characters would have ever known any of what was going on (well, except Veidt). He may have been a crazy person, but in this case, he was right. There was a conspiracy going on. The broken clock was showing the correct time.

[Rodin]

In the end, they didnt "tolerate" his actions, they just understood there was nothing that could be done to stop it, period.

Their choice was either stay silent to risk the crime to have been for nothing. They decided to not sabotage the plan when the blood had already been spilled.

My reading of it has always been that armageddon was all but guaranteed if Veidt had not done what he did, barring some unknown event (like an actual alien attack or a natural disaster) jolting the two superpowers out of their narrowmindedness.

That leaves us with some very interesting character studies.

Veidt - the hero who is willing to become the worst imaginable villain in the cause of the greater good. A man who will kill millions to save billions.

Rorschach - the man who will not compromise in the face of armageddon. A crime has been committed, and it needs to be punished even if the world ends. A man who would kill billions to punish one criminal.

Nite Owl and Silk Spectre - everyday heroes who find themselves helpless, they are forced to conceal a massive crime for the greater good. How would you respond, in their place?

Dr. Manhattan - the one man with the power to provide an alternative solution to Veidt's plan...but without the humanity to care enough to fix things himself.

-----

If we assume that Veidt's plan was unnecessary, all of those character studies go out the window. Veidt is just another megalomaniac, and the correct answer is to rat him out as soon as everyone is back to civilization. After all, the Cold War is going to fall apart anyway, right?

I find Watchmen to be the most interesting if we assume that Veidt was right.

[Rynjin]

You seem to have a very specific definition of a hero, saying that they must be idealistic seems very strange to me.

It's pretty much in the definition. A hero is someone who sees something wrong with the world and tries to change it. And so is a villain. Which is which depends on perspective.

There are many ways to be a hero. Save who you can, do good works, try to make a difference with whatever means are available to you.

But being passive is antithetical to heroism. Being content, and content with doing nothing is not heroism.

[Batcathat]

But being passive is antithetical to heroism. Being content, and content with doing nothing is not heroism.

Sure, but a pragmatist can be active in changing the world, so I don't see why being pragmatic would disqualify anyone from being a hero, which is what I questioned.

[Mordar]

Sure, but a pragmatist can be active in changing the world, so I don't see why being pragmatic would disqualify anyone from being a hero, which is what I questioned.

QFT. I like both flavors of hero very much. I like cosmic-scale and street-level, and that both flavors mix in both sub-genres. And I also like when there are heroes that span both flavors/sub-genres.

- M

[Rynjin]

Sure, but a pragmatist can be active in changing the world, so I don't see why being pragmatic would disqualify anyone from being a hero, which is what I questioned.

I don't think you can be a pragmatist and truly be a hero. An anti-hero, certainly, someone perhaps with good intentions, but a pragmatist by definition is devoted to a cause over principles, and has few limits on their behavior. It's difficult to be a hero when often the pragmatic thing IS to do nothing.

[Batcathat]

I don't think you can be a pragmatist and truly be a hero. An anti-hero, certainly, someone perhaps with good intentions, but a pragmatist by definition is devoted to a cause over principles, and has few limits on their behavior. It's difficult to be a hero when often the pragmatic thing IS to do nothing.

That's certainly one way of looking at it, but it's not the only one. Personally, I tend to prefer pragmatic heroes as they tend to be more effective at actually doing good, but that doesn't mean I think idealistic heroes aren't heroes.

Besides, it's not like people are normally 100 percent idealistic or 100 percent pragmatic, it's usually some mix of the two.

[Mordar]

I don't think you can be a pragmatist and truly be a hero. An anti-hero, certainly, someone perhaps with good intentions, but a pragmatist by definition is devoted to a cause over principles, and has few limits on their behavior. It's difficult to be a hero when often the pragmatic thing IS to do nothing.

I strongly disagree. I prefer the definition "Someone guided more by practical considerations than ideals". Pragmatic doesn't mean won't sacrifice/risk themselves...they'll do it because of the value equation. They'll do it because they have a chance at success, even if it isn't 100%.

You can be pragmatic and absolutely have limits on behavior and absolutely be a hero. I know TV Tropes says pragmatic heroes are anti-heroes, but I wouldn't think the tons of street-level (and higher powered) heroes aren't also pragmatic. Hawkeye (and Green Arrow), Cyclops (he crosses the flavors and the sub-genres IMO), Iron Fist (the real one, not that crappycombo version of RDJ Ironman and Spider-man we got last iteration), Spider-Man certainly has pragmatic elements, Thing, DareDevil, Banshee...

They recognize social law (and generally law law), limitations, scope of impact, work within their power sets, recognize that things are outside of their expertise...

But none of that would stop them from putting themselves at risk. None of that means they are passive. They're not generally going to stop the runaway train...but they'll do everything they can to minimize the damage and loss of life. The idealist might find themselves unable to chose a course of action, or having tried to save the runaway train passengers and only rescuing 20% fail to understand the great good that was done.

- M

[gbaji]

My reading of it has always been that armageddon was all but guaranteed if Veidt had not done what he did, barring some unknown event (like an actual alien attack or a natural disaster) jolting the two superpowers out of their narrowmindedness.

Yes. Veidt was presented as a super intellect, and we can presume he examined all of the alternatives and concluded that this was the best solution to the problem.

However, and this is where the whole hero vs villain bit comes in, it's unclear if this was the *only* solution. Which leaves us to speculate what criteria Veidt was using to determine what was "best" in the first place. It's a common feature of villains to treat people as just numbers on a ledger. Sure, maybe his plan achieved the goal of preventing WW3 with the least total number of deaths along the way, but it also removed the agency of those involved in the process almost entirely.

There could have been a dozen different ways to do this, some of which may have had better tangential outcomes than just "prevent WW3", but they didn't meet whatever criteria he was using. We don't know, and can't really say. And while I'm not at all a fan of the Watchmen TV series, the resulting "entire world is living in a lie sustained by those in power so as to keep the secret, leading to horrific abuse of power as a result", is arguably a really terrible outcome. And one that, other aspects of the series aside, was actually a pretty reasonable and logical one that Veidt should have know would happen. The "lie" he perpetrated, would have to be maintained, in order for any peace he created to be maintained.

It's quite arguable that choosing a path that, even if it resulted in more deaths in the short term, resulted in an actual real shift in political thinking away from war and oppression, would have been a much better route to go than the one he did choose, which merely shifted things from "use threat of nuclear war to hold control over everyone" to "use the threat of alien squid attack to hold control over everyone". But Veidt, in typical villain fashion, isn't thinking in terms of actually making the lives of the people who live in the world better. He's just counting up numbers and doing the math. He doesn't seem to care that this will almost require the entire population to live in a horrific authoritarian nightmare of a world as a result. He "saved the world", and that's all his egocentric self seems to care about.

I find Watchmen to be the most interesting if we assume that Veidt was right.

One can be right, without being the only one who is right though.

It's pretty much in the definition. A hero is someone who sees something wrong with the world and tries to change it. And so is a villain. Which is which depends on perspective.

There are many ways to be a hero. Save who you can, do good works, try to make a difference with whatever means are available to you.

But being passive is antithetical to heroism. Being content, and content with doing nothing is not heroism.

Yup. Both heroes and villains look at the world, see things they don't like about it, and work to change them. The core difference is that heroes have firm lines that they don't cross. They will not sacrifice an innocent life to save others, even if mathematically that may make sense. They will try their hardest to "find another way". And even if they fail, they at least fail as heroes. A villain, having made the decsion that some action is necessary and justifies the cost, does not concern themselves with the individuals caught up in that cost.

And yes, someone sitting on the sidelines and only acting when it's convenient, or fun, or doesn't mess with the status quo, isn't really either. It's not a perfect fit to Nightowl and Spectre, but they do spend most of the story basically following or reacting to other people, and not really acting on their own. The one thing they do, which can be said to be an independently taken heroic action is, ironically, to free Rorshcah, so he can tell them stuff and therefore direct their later actions in the story. They aren't really much in the way of independent actors in the story.

Arguably, only Veidt and Rorshach are. Which again leads us back to the intent with the characters. Moore may certainly have been intending for none of the characters to have been seen as heroic, but comic book readers are going to look for a hero in the story regardless of author intent. And, given that the entire plot rests effectively as a conflict between those two people, and one of them is absolutely presented as the villain of the story (Veidt), that kinda leave the opposed guy as the hero by default.

I also think a lot of people aren't really aware of the feel and style of some characters back at the time this was released (maybe not Moore either). Recall that just a few years prior, the Wolverine 4 part series was released. Shortly after Watchmen came out, The Dark Knight was released. Both of those other series had some pretty dark takes on the characters, and heavily featured internal monologue style, with gritty backdrops, etc (effectively identical to the style used to portray Rorschach). Given the Watchmen was released as a side/indie project (DC intentionally did not want it set in their own universe, and would not even release it under their brand), a lot of people actually read both of those other two, prior to reading Watchmen (I read Wolverine first, and actually read both Watchmen and Dark Knight at the same time, borrowing them from a friend who owned them). The similarities in style and focus is very much there, so it's not at all surprising that readers would associate the "dark hero" aspect of the character with those of the other two.

Maybe Moore should have had a few conversations with Frank Miller and he might not have been so surprised at the reception of that character.

[Tyndmyr]

You seem to have a very specific definition of a hero, saying that they must be idealistic seems very strange to me.

Can you find counter-examples?

Are there popular cultural heroes that say things like "oh, this is bad, but fighting it would be difficult or impossible, so we just wont?" A hero is known for what they do, not for what they just stand by and watch.

In the end, they didnt "tolerate" his actions, they just understood there was nothing that could be done to stop it, period.

They couldn't undo it. They could expose it. Manhattan certainly chose not to, and explicitly says he neither condones nor condemns it. That's...pretty straightforward toleration.

Not sabotaging the villain's plan isn't a heroic choice.

Rorschach - the man who will not compromise in the face of armageddon. A crime has been committed, and it needs to be punished even if the world ends. A man who would kill billions to punish one criminal.

The expose wouldn't kill anyone, save perhaps for Veidt. Russia would not nuke the US over a US billionare blowing up New York. The US would be really pissed at Veidt, certainly.

As for if the plan ends well, Manhattan is clear enough when he denies Veidt his justification. "Nothing ever ends."

I think the book is quite clear in that the threat of nuclear war is very real. The world as portrayed there is deeply damaged, but the Comedian's skepticism that Veidt is able to fix them is perhaps more accurate. The world is dysfunctional prior to Veidt's plan. The world is dysfunctional after. Veidt did what he thought was necessary, yes. We are given no assurance he is correct. He is given no assurance that he is correct. All he is working on is his ego. The man clearly is smart, but we are absolutely not guaranteed that teleporting a psychic squid is the rational solution to nuclear war.

The world arming for an alien invasion might, perhaps, distract them in the short term. But there are not aliens invading. The nature of humanity isn't changed, humanity is simply sold a lie, a lie that will certainly cause them to seek even greater firepower. Eventually the lie will fail. Perhaps it is revealed, perhaps humanity simply goes long enough without any alien invasion to stop caring about it. The old divisions return. We are not being told a story with a happily ever after. That would contradict the entire theme of the comics.

In particular, I think the Black Freighter tale is relevant. Where fear makes a man become a monster that inflicts the very disaster he feared. What does this allegory point to with regards to our main plot, and Veidt?

Hawkeye (and Green Arrow)

Green Arrow is ludicrously idealistic. Spiderman is defined by ideals. With great power comes great responsibility and all that. The canonical example of him sitting by and choosing to watch is very blatantly portrayed as the wrong decision, and not heroic whatsoever. It is a mistake that he learns from.

[Peelee]

Can you find counter-examples?

On this note, i highly recommend the criminally underrated 1992 filmed Hero with Dustin Hoffman. A hero can be non-idealistic. A hero can be incredibly pessimistic. A hero can be, frankly, a complete *******.

[gbaji]

On this note, i highly recommend the criminally underrated 1992 filmed Hero with Dustin Hoffman. A hero can be non-idealistic. A hero can be incredibly pessimistic. A hero can be, frankly, a complete *******.

Hah. I'd forgotten about that film. Really liked it back in the day. Very interesting take on the idea of "what makes someone a hero?" (and more relevantly, "what does the public expect their heroes to be like?").

And yeah. The look on Hoffman's face as he's like "Ok. Fine. I guess I have to save you too". Priceless.

[Peelee]

Hah. I'd forgotten about that film. Really liked it back in the day. Very interesting take on the idea of "what makes someone a hero?" (and more relevantly, "what does the public expect their heroes to be like?").

And yeah. The look on Hoffman's face as he's like "Ok. Fine. I guess I have to save you too". Priceless.

Yeah, the execution could have been better and it's pretty dated but I really vibed with the idea that Bubber was the perfect person to be the hero for the public and actually used his fame and fortune to do good pretty much immediately, while Bernie would almost certainly have thrown everything at hookers and blow, to use the parlance of that time. But, at the same time, Bernie actually had it in him to be a hero, even if a thoroughly unpleasant one (and this was an actual trait, not just a one-off, as the admittedly super cheesy ending shows us), while Bubber impulsively acted out of selfishness. Great characters done by two actors who really were able to pull off the subtleties of who you really are in a moment of crisis.

I'm a sucker for a good character study.

[Lord Raziere]

If we assume that Veidt's plan was unnecessary, all of those character studies go out the window. Veidt is just another megalomaniac, and the correct answer is to rat him out as soon as everyone is back to civilization. After all, the Cold War is going to fall apart anyway, right?

I find Watchmen to be the most interesting if we assume that Veidt was right.

Interesting does not necessarily mean relevant or accurate, or.....good.

and even if we go down this hypothetical.....what does it say? what value IS there to him being "right"? Even if he is right to do what he did, what does that show us other than a really extreme exception to normal morality and how we should handle this?

Where does that lead other than a plot of people keeping a secret for the world's good? glorifying a regime of lies and deceit to use a scapegoat and force through the death of innocents to keep people from fighting each other? what does that say other than "tyranny is correct actually"? it doesn't seem like an avenue worth going down. it reduces Watchmen to the level where it says nothing but "man, it'd sure be screwed up if this atrocity was actually necessary wouldn't it?" if you assume that it is necessary. so many bad things would happen because of it, people would be so shocked that they have to go along with it, I guess, wow, I am so smart, the world gets worse if we assume an atrocity is necessary for its survival, what a revelation.

doesn't actually seem all that interesting the more I think about it.

[Cikomyr2]

My reading of it has always been that armageddon was all but guaranteed if Veidt had not done what he did, barring some unknown event (like an actual alien attack or a natural disaster) jolting the two superpowers out of their narrowmindedness.

Technically, Veidt believed it to be true. That was his conclusion, and he did what he did with that knowledge in mind.

That doesnt automatically means he was right or that his belief that it was the "only" way to prevent it to be right. There is a lot of subtext offered (especially the Tale of the Black Freighter) that highlights how Veidt may have been ultimately just blinded by his own certitude of being right.

They couldn't undo it. They could expose it. Manhattan certainly chose not to, and explicitly says he neither condones nor condemns it. That's...pretty straightforward toleration.

Not sabotaging the villain's plan isn't a heroic choice.

What you wrote is all nonsense to me.

Exposing Veidt would have destroyed his plan. Everyone would have realized Earth is not under threat by a third party, it was merely the action of an egotistical megalomaniac. There's nothing to stop the USSR and USA to continue on their path to self annihilation.

And theres a difference between sabotaging the villains' plan and sabotaging the only potential good outcome of said plan after the "cost" has already been paid. Exposing Veidt wouldn't have brought back the people dead in New York, but would have risked the effort Veidt made in preventing a nuclear annihilation to having been in vain.

What you are saying is that the "heroes" should have risked nuclear Armageddon over principles. Not even in the name of "saving lives", the people to die were already dead. Purely in the name of principle, they'd have thrown away the already set path toward detente between the two nuclear superpowers on Earth.

If they had made that choice, and the comic had ended on the end of all life on earth by mutually assured destruction, would you have called them heroic? They denounced the bad guy!! Hurray for the heroes!!!

[Batcathat]

Can you find counter-examples?

Are there popular cultural heroes that say things like "oh, this is bad, but fighting it would be difficult or impossible, so we just wont?" A hero is known for what they do, not for what they just stand by and watch.

Yes, that wouldn't be very heroic, but that's also a very narrow definition of "pragmatic". Idealistic versus pragmatic isn't just whether or not to act.

[Cikomyr2]

Yes, that wouldn't be very heroic, but that's also a very narrow definition of "pragmatic". Idealistic versus pragmatic isn't just whether or not to act.

But its a false choice that he posits. The heroes at the end of Watchman aren't given a choice between "fighting it" or "letting it happen". It already happened. Before they knew it happened, they were fighting it.

No, the heroes are given the opportunity to spoil his plan. They are done fighting it, but they knew they couldnt stop him, because it had already happened.

I agree that popular culture doesnt have much story about people giving the choice between spoiling the bad guy's plan. But that's because we like simplistic morality tales, so the story is never allowed to reach that point.

[Metastachydium]

I mean Niteowl is right there. There's someone who also does his best to fight for what is right, without being a volatile homophobe and racist, who doesn't die needlessly when he realizes sometimes there isn't much one man can do against someone as powerful as Veidt.

It's telling people don't go for him, the person we actually are in a situation like this, and instead devolve into Rorschach's screaming lunacy. This is what Moore is confused about- not that people aren't siding with Veidt, but that people are so willing to dehumanize into a creature of violence and anti-thought instead of recognizing themselves in the shlubby guy who was just too late.

While Dan (and Mason before him, in the first roster) are really the most well-adjusted of the lot, and are massively underappreciated as the perfetly normal and yet perfectly competent ones (who both have a BIRDY theme, which is very important (sue me!)), whereas Rorschach certainly is full of scary excrement, I don't think being racist or hateful towards sexual minorities is really an important part of who or what he is. Racism was Captain Metropolis's fatal flaw and the impact of heteronormative social conventions was also chiefly explored through the non-reaction of the Minutemen in general and him and executioner guy in particular to the Silhouette being freakin' murdered.

Rorschach… He is a product of his age, certainly, and an extremist, but he hates pretty much everyone and as for sexuality, he has a trauma-driven violent aversion to it in much any form, regardless of orientation. What really stands out is his stance on prostitution, but that's mostly just his childhood coming back to haunt him.

But its a false choice that he posits. The heroes at the end of Watchman aren't given a choice between "fighting it" or "letting it happen". It already happened. Before they knew it happened, they were fighting it.

No, the heroes are given the opportunity to spoil his plan. They are done fighting it, but they knew they couldnt stop him, because it had already happened.

Yep. It's a choice between sucking it up and maybe playing damage control or making everything even worse (let's not forget that even if nuclear war was not going to go online, the Soviets were, at the very least, on the brink of just flat out invading Pakistan).

[Saph]

There's also another issue with Watchmen's ending, which is that while the story tries to present Veidt's plan as a carefully-thought out scheme that has a good chance of working, anyone with a three-digit IQ who stops to think about it for 30 seconds can see that it's pants-on-head crazy. "Nuke a city and blame it on aliens" is the kind of insane-troll-logic solution that you'd expect to see in a sci-fi comedy like Futurama or Spaceballs. Veidt is supposed to be the smartest man in the world, but there's a difference between declaring your character is a genius and convincingly portraying them that way.

The threat of mutually assured destruction in nuclear war is a real-life problem that a lot of real-life people have spent a lot of time thinking about. For some strange reason, said people typically do not conclude that the best way to address this problem would be to nuke New York.

[Cikomyr2]

Yep. It's a choice between sucking it up and maybe playing damage control or making everything even worse (let's not forget that even if nuclear war was not going to go online, the Soviets were, at the very least, on the brink of just flat out invading Pakistan).

*Afghanistan.

Since at the time it was written, the USSR invasion of Afghanistan was a real thing happening, i think Moore was trying to make the point that the US threatening nuclear war over the soviet invasion of Afghanistan to be a symptom of Nixon's riding on 4 terms of successful international foreign policy on the back of Dr Manhattan, and was leading his government in such an inflexible way they were going to provoke mutually assured destruction.

Moore wanted to say "superheroes are cool but look how it would actually impact real world life-or-death geopolitics after 40 years."

[Metastachydium]

*Afghanistan.

I didn't misspeak. Afghanistan is not on the brink of it; the Soviets overrun it basically the moment Manhattan disappears and make rapid advances. Pakistan is officially calling for US military aid chapters before the Squid is fired up and with the Soviets actually getting really close to the Pakistani border, everyone treats it as a given that Pakistan is next.

[Cikomyr2]

I didn't misspeak. Afghanistan is not on the brink of it; the Soviets overrun it basically the moment Manhattan disappears and make rapid advances. Pakistan is officially calling for US military aid chapters before the Squid is fired up and with the Soviets actually getting really close to the Pakistani border, everyone treats it as a given that Pakistan is next.

Ah that makes sense! Apologies!

Although i find funny the notion Soviets would just steamroll through Afghanistan and have the capacity to mount an invasion through the mountains that quickly. But that's comic book logic to you 😅

[GloatingSwine]

There's also another issue with Watchmen's ending, which is that while the story tries to present Veidt's plan as a carefully-thought out scheme that has a good chance of working, anyone with a three-digit IQ who stops to think about it for 30 seconds can see that it's pants-on-head crazy. "Nuke a city and blame it on aliens" is the kind of insane-troll-logic solution that you'd expect to see in a sci-fi comedy like Futurama or Spaceballs. Veidt is supposed to be the smartest man in the world, but there's a difference between declaring your character is a genius and convincingly portraying them that way.

The threat of mutually assured destruction in nuclear war is a real-life problem that a lot of real-life people have spent a lot of time thinking about. For some strange reason, said people typically do not conclude that the best way to address this problem would be to nuke New York.

Which is why the ending of the movie sucks, but the comic version does present a giant psychic alien corpse to capture the attention.