The Perfect Superhero

Image Credit: Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Chapter 1 in Who Watches the Watchmen?

New Chapters every Friday

Heroes are complicated and weird people. In Watchmen by Alan Moore, the “Crime Busters” are a group of heroes and crimefighters who struggle with their conflicting personalities and different attitudes. The Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan are two heroes who show many similarities and many differences. Their relationships, morals, and intelligence tie them together. By the end of the book they have both become two very different people who are now in opposite positions.

Dr. Manhattan and the Nite Owl are isolated characters. They are both misunderstood by the other heroes and are lonely despite their relationships with Laurie and other adventurers. After she has broken up with Jon and is settled at Dan’s house, he lies alone in bed and says, “Hell and damnation” (Moore V. xix.7). This not only shows his longing for Laurie but his own desperation for any human connection. Even with Laurie just steps away from his room, he still feels miserable and alone. Earlier in the restaurant when he was trying to convince Laurie to stay at his place, he was trying to show that he understood her pain of being kicked out of the military base after Jon’s disappearance. She talks about her frustration and the stress of some of her financial accounts being closed and Dan tells her, “We’re both leftovers” (Moore V. x. 7).  Dan feels like a leftover because of his helplessness when he is not in costume. Dan at this point is doing something that Jon was never able to do successfully, understand, relate and listen to Laurie’s pain and frustration. Dan enjoys the connections he makes with other characters. This is why he never pushes Rorschach away and why he visits Hollis Mason every week. Jon is isolated as well but not lonely. He is frustrated with the way people are and longs for a quieter way of life. He says, “I am tired of this world; these people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives” (Moore IV. xxv. 6). Jon, unlike Dan, prefers being alone and away from the rest of the world. Jon says, “This deserted planet: it is so wonderfully, completely silent” (Moore IV. xxii. 1). He does not value life on Earth any more as he feels it is too messy and only causes destruction and conflict. This is why he chooses to go to Mars. He creates his watch tower of glass and is content being by himself.

Both of these superheroes have a relationship with Laurie Juspeczyk. At the start of the book, Laurie is dating and living with Jon but is often frustrated by his passive manner. Jon had left his last girlfriend, Janey Slater, for Laurie. When he cheated on Janey while on patrol with Laurie he says, “She’s beautiful. After each long kiss, she plants a smaller gentler kiss one upon my lips, like a signature” (Moore IV. xvii. 5). Laurie is younger than he is and had originally met him during the first and only Crime Busters’ meeting, when she was still a teenager. Both of Jon’s girlfriend’s, Janey and Laurie were often frustrated with Jon and his lack of emotion. While being interviewed to blame Jon for giving people cancer, Janey says, “He couldn’t relate to me. Not emotionally. Certainly not sexually. Within three years he’d dumped me for some 16-year-old who ran around in her underwear” (Moore III. vi. 1). After being frustrated with him because he was working while they were having sex, Laurie leaves him and goes to Dan’s house. She says to Dan, “Thanks for looking out for me, Dan. You’re like a big brother, you know that?” (Moore V. xix. 3)  She only sees him as a very close friend, but Dan really likes her. By the end of the book Jon is alone while Laurie and Dan are together. After the Squid attack Laurie says to Dan, “I want you to love me. I want you to love me because we are not dead” (Moore XII. xxii. 4). Dan was able to create a deeper connection with her and the other characters, something that Jon was incapable of doing.

Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan are both intelligent and eccentric. Jon has worked with physics since his father heard about the bomb in World War II. During his flashback on Mars, Jon remembers, “It is 1948, and I am arriving at Princeton University. It is 1958, and I am graduating with a PH. D in atomic physics” (Moore IV. iii. 9). He was forced into this line of work by his father and throughout the book he is obsesses over it. He feels that Laurie does not really understand how important his work is and fails to see his perspective. When trying to explain to Laurie how he sees the world he says, “I read atoms, Laurie. I see the ancient spectacle that birthed the rubble. Beside this human life is brief and mundane” (Moore IX. xvii. 1). His intelligence and capability to see all these things make him think human life is unimportant, and makes his character come off as strange and cold. This differs from Dan who works mainly with birds and flight. He says, “Finally, I mastered in aeronautics and zoology at Harvard. Guess it helped me design this jalopy here” (Moore VII. v. 7). His education has helped him redesign the Nite Owl character with different technology and accessories, but he is not very impressed with himself. Laurie compliments him on all the technology he has in his workshop. She says, “I mean all these gadgets you designed… If that was me, I’d feel proud” (Moore VII. ix. 3. In this aspect, Dan is much humbler than Jon. He realizes his intelligence, but his lack of self-confidence stops him showing off. 

Both of these characters show their emotion differently. Dan expresses his emotions more than Jon does, but has a hard time telling Laurie how he really feels about her; however, as the plot progresses, they each find it easier to confide in one another. Dan says about himself, “Yeah. I guess it figures… y’know, being a crimefighter and everything it was just this adolescent, romantic thing” (Moore VII. vi. 7). Unlike Jon, Dan can see and admit his own flaws, which makes Laurie form a deeper connection with him.  After having sex with her, he says, “I feel so confident it’s like I’m on fire” (Moore VII. xxvii. 4). After this, their trust in each other has grown along with a passion that Laurie seeks at the end of the book. Many of the other characters in the book feel frustrated trying to get their feelings through to Jon. He seems angry once he Laurie confirms that she is with Dan, but he doesn’t really do anything to try to win her back. Instead he says, “I said, often, that you were my only link, my only concern with the world. When you left me, I left Earth. Does that not say something?” (Moore IX. viii. 8). Since he can see his own future, he probably knows that he will not be able to change anything, and this is why he does not make an effort. This disconnected him from Laurie and from everyone else. With Janey he shows the same curt attitude. He seems cold and indifferent as he remembers, “Outside, Janey accuses me of ‘chasing jailbait’ she bursts into angry tears, asking if it’s because she’s getting older. It’s true. She’s aging more noticeably every day…” (Moore IV. xvii. 7). After the accident, his new perspective changed the way he acted towards people and himself and caused tension with the other characters.

Dan and Jon are two very different characters, but their differences end up putting a pause to nuclear fallout. Jon, Dan, and Laurie all agree to keep Veidt’s secret in order to save the world. By the end of the book Jon and Dan are in opposite places. Dan is with Laurie and continues to be a hero. Meanwhile, Jon is alone on Mars contemplating creating life for himself as now he finds humanity and life in general fascinating.

Works Cited

Moore, Alan and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen, New York: DC Comics, 2005.