The Watchmen comic is arguably a landmark work for the superhero world, and even won the Hugo Award in science fiction as a comic (yes, the one won by The Trisolaran). However, the profound metaphors in the comic are very many, and they are also obscure. I'm going to talk to you today about this long-standing comic, leaving aside the movie and just talking about the manga (if you want to see the movie commentary, you can go to see the commentary I published the other day).
First, let's popularize the worldview of the Watchmen world. In this world, the United States and the Soviet Union are still in the middle of the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union could at any time throw nuclear bombs at each other's territory as a sign of respect, no one knew if they would be able to eat the pancake fruit sold by the street mother tomorrow, and nuclear panic hung over everyone's head. Under this framework, the United States also has a group of superheroes who once helped the United States win the Vietnam War, but now the president wants to unload the donkey. The government stipulates that all masked heroes who do not want to fall under the jurisdiction of the government are bandits! All are going to roll the calves! Then, under the influence of this bill, a large number of superheroes chose to wash their hands and retire (for example, our blue naked male Dr. Manhattan defected to the government, and Rorschach did not want to return to the government and was wanted).
Against this somewhat extreme backdrop, Alain Moore (author) throws up a question that no one has ever thought of before: Superheroes regulate criminals, so who will supervise superheroes? If a superhero becomes a criminal, who can control it?
What is a superhero? Is a superhero with superpowers called a superhero? Most of the people in Watchmen don't have superpowers, except for Dr. Blue Manhattan, who has extremely powerful superpowers. And they're all what we call superheroes, and some are even poorly equipped (homeless Rorschach). Is saving people superheroes? How many people Manhattan killed in the Vietnam War. So, in this comic, there are no superheroes, and there are no superheroes in the world.
Among them, there are a total of 12 "Watchmen" comics, and the back cover of the comic is also very intriguing.
The piercing blood is drowning a clock from top to bottom, and the hands of the clock are moving towards 12 o'clock. This clock is the famous doomsday clock, which was fictionalized in the Journal of the Atomic Scientists in 1974, and nuclear war broke out at exactly 12 o'clock. Magazines change the position of the minute hand according to the shape of the world, which is used to remind people to face up to the world's problems. The end of the world is approaching, and superheroes are busy saving the world, but the world is competing for the destruction of the world.
The ambitions of superheroes have been shattered by reality, and those dreams have been gradually buried in the darkness. The Laughing Master was the first to realize this problem, so he began to fight the collapse of the world by self-defeating. Ignoring human life, he can shoot the demonstrators at will, or he can kill pregnant women who are pregnant with their own children. He also tried to rape his comrades-in-arms (the Silk Spirit Generation) and fell out with all his former teammates. The laughing master understands in his heart that when the world cannot be saved, who will save the superhero. The laughter understands that many times, the cause of chaos is because of the heroes' salvation. Justice saves lives, and destruction saves humanity. Saving this kind of thing is a big joke in itself, but the joker still miscalculated, and the madness of the world is even worse than he imagined.
The death of the laughing master leads to the entire manga. From Rorschach investigating the cause of Laughter's death, until the whole mystery is gradually solved. But Rorschach couldn't figure it out in any way, people who had apparently survived under the watchmen's protection in the past were now on the verge of destruction because of the watchmen. Rorschach couldn't figure it out anyway, and he definitely didn't approve of such a thing. In Rorschach's world, black is black, and it is impossible to transition to white. But now only millions of humans could save the world, and there was no such thing in Rosha's cognition. So at the end, Rorschach still took off his mask and cried out in pain to Dr. Manhattan, "What are you waiting for?" Do it! "In Rorschach's body, he has the most primitive concept of justice: punishing evil and promoting good. The norms of good and evil are all in his subjective mind, but this justice is too pure, the world is complex, and human nature is never black and white.
It can be said that Lao Wang was a genius, and he cleverly thought of how to save the world from nuclear panic. Pharaoh created an incomparably large alien monster, creating the illusion of alien creatures invading the earth, so that the whole world united against alien creatures. Pharaoh killed too many people to save the world. The former comrades-in-arms of the Laughingsmith (because the Laughingsmith knew about the Pharaoh's plan), and the people of New York City. But human civilization was preserved, and Pharaoh used the deaths of millions of people to build a utopian dream. Even if this dream is based on a fragile lie, now the earth is saved.
By the end of the story, it doesn't matter. The people who are still alive get everything they want, the world is at peace, Dr. Manhattan gets what he wants to go to a "not so complicated galaxy," and the second generation of night owls is with the second generation of silk spirits. It was destruction that saved the world, not the heroes. And what role does the hero in the comic play in real life? Before dying, the laughing master said, This is a joke, it's all a joke. ”
At the beginning of the story, the joker should understand the whole thing. He understood what was going to happen next, because that's how human nature is. So when watchmen were first formed, the joker always said the bad things that might happen as if they were joking, and no one would believe him. The Joker's bill of battling Nixon in exchange for his was only to allow his masked companions to walk in the sun, but their companions scoffed at him. The second generation of Si Ling was his daughter, but he couldn't even take care of her. Before he died, in the middle of the night, He ran to the home of his nemesis to talk and talk about a lot of inner words. Like the laughing master, Rorschach finally understood the whole thing, and chose to die uncompromisingly and generously. The Night Owl chose to compromise, he concealed the plot of the pharaoh, and continued to live a shameless life with The Spirit.
The Legend of the Black Cargo Ship is a darker manga than Watchmen, appearing several times in Watchmen comics. So next time I'll explain these two comics in the form of a video.
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