Rorschach

**Rorschach** (Real name Walter Kovacs) was one of the central protagonists of Alan Moore's ***Watchmen***.

## History

As with the rest of the main characters of *Watchmen*, Alan Moore based Rorschach I on Charlton Comics characters, using them as a "starting point". The characters Rorschach was specifically based on were the The Question which was 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".

## Biograhpy

**Early Life**

Rorschach's real name is **Walter Joseph Kovacs** and he was born on March 21, 1940 to Sylvia Kovacs and her semi-permanent lover. While Sylvia was pregnant, everybody told her to have an abortion but nonetheless she gave birth. His father had left her 2 months earlier, and all that Walter knew about him was the name "Charlie", and that he and his mother would argue about politics as he supported President Harry S. Truman (apparently this explanation was made up by Sylvia, as Charlie had disappeared 5 years before Truman's term).

Due to his mother's explanation, Walter fantasized an exaggeration to his father's admiration, thinking that he was a sort of aide to the President Truman, and probably out of the country during the World War II on a type of mission. He imagined him a man of justice, perhaps an ideal model for his own beliefs, and supposed that he might have been killed by Nazis, which would explain why he had never returned to them.

Sylvia started working as a prostitute in order to survive but also abused him for interfering with her business. In one incident, possibly at the age of ten (or younger), Walter heard his mother having sex with a client, and approached, thinking he was hurting her. As he entered the room, the man became angry and left only five dollars, far less than she anticipated. In her rage, she began to beat Walter, calling him an 'ugly little bastard' shouting that she should have listened to everybody and had an abortion.

In the July of 1951, at the age of 10, Walter went to get something from the grocery for his mother. He was stopped by two older bullies who called him whore-son. One smashed a fruit in his face, and the other, joking that he had some sort of disease, told him to pull his pants down so they could give him an examination. Walter snatched the cigarette from Richie's mouth and stuck it in his eye partially blinding him, then tackled the other, viciously tugging his hair and biting his face. The people near on the street pulled him off, referring to his wildness as that of a mad dog. When questioned about the incident, Walter refused to talk about his motivation for attacking the boys, leaving others to presume the assault was unprovoked.

Due to this event, the circumstances of Walter's life at home were investigated and it was revealed that he had been regularly beaten and exposed to the worst excesses of a prostitute's lifestyle, thus it was decided for him to be put under state care.

He was admitted to the Lillian Charlton Home for Problem Children in New Jersey. Away from his mother's negative influence, it was noted that Walter proved to be intelligent and stable, doing very well at schoolwork, excelling particularly in the fields of literature and religious education. He possessed also impressive skill in the areas of gymnastics and amateur boxing. Although he engaged in interesting discussions with his classmates and teachers, he was shy and withdrawn, especially towards girls.

At the age of eleven he wrote an essay on the subject *My Parents*. In which he barely mentions his mother, only discussing the absence of his father and who he thinks his father was. Walter went on to say how he liked President Truman and thought that by dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima he had saved millions of lives, because had he not done so, many more people would have died from war.

On May 27, 1953, while thirteen, Walter told one of the employees about a nightmare he suffered and they wrote a transcription of the verbal recounting. He describes that a man was with his mom and they were eating stuff like raw dough. His mother choked on a piece and the man tried to fish it out of her throat. He told Walter to get a doctor and he looked but realized there was no doctor in his home. When walking down one of the hallways he saw the man and his mom dancing without clothes on. When he got nearer he saw that they were squashed together, joined at the face, chest and stomach. He recalls the way they were blended together and how they started towards him like a crab, and he looked down to see trousers and underwear wrapped around their feet. Then he woke up, explaining that the dream upset him, 'physically'.

During his years at school, Sylvia never attempted to make contact with her son. In 1956 his mother was found in an alleyway in the South Bronx, murdered through the forced ingestion of 'Drano cleaning fluid' by her pimp. When the news was broken to Walter, at the age of 16, he said just one word: "Good".

Soon after Walter left the Charlton Home, he started living in a series of low-rent apartments. He took up full employment in a menial capacity as an unskilled manual worker within the garment industry. He described to Malcolm Long, "Job bearable but unpleasant. Had to handle female clothing." In 1962 there was a special order for a dress in a new Doctor Manhattan spin-off fabric. The customer was a young girl with an Italian name, Kitty Genovese, who didn't accept it saying that the dress looked ugly. Walter thought otherwise, and since no one had wanted the dress, he believed it was meant for him, so he took it home and learned how to cut it using heated implements to reseal the latex. Soon he became bored and thought the fabric had no use, leaving it in his trunk and forgetting about it.

Two years afterward, in March of 1964, he bought a newspaper and saw that the customer had been raped and tortured outside of her apartment building while her neighbors just watched, not calling the police. Because of this Kovacs learned what people were behind all the evasions and self-deception. Being ashamed for humanity, he took the remains of her unwanted dress and made a face he claimed that he "...could bear to look at in the mirror."

### **Becoming *Rorschach***

Wearing his 'new  face', Kovacs decided to become a Costumed adventurer by the name of 'Rorschach', taken from Hermann Rorschach, who created the Rorschach inkblot test. Continuing his work in the garment factory, Walter started his nocturnal lifestyle by fighting crime. The next year, 1965, he partnered with fellow costumed vigilante, Nite Owl, whose technical skills and resources complemented his own skills as an investigator. Rorschach's grappling hook was designed and built for him by Nite Owl. During that time they fought against the gangs and were successful against Underboss and Big Figur

The next year, April 1966, Nelson Gardner, otherwise known as Captain Metropolis, the same man to begin the Minutemen, attempted to form a new group of superheroes called the Crimebusters. When discussing the group's creation, with Rorshach, his partner Nite Owl, Comedian, Doctor Manhattan, Ozymandias and Silk Spectre, Rorschach commented that while he had success with Nite Owl, a group that size seemed more like a 'publicity exercise', and was "too big and unwieldy." Rorschach felt admiration for the Comedian's forceful personality and his courage to face reality as it is. The participants left the mansion, and Rorschach sneaked behind the bushes.

For a long time Rorschach described himself as 'soft', "Soft on scum. Too young to know any better. Molly-coddled them. Let them live." His pattern continued until 1975, when Blair Roche, six years old, was kidnapped because Gerald Anthony Grice thought she had been connected to the Roche Chemical fortune. Roche's father was a bus driver and the family was not in any way wealthy. Rorschach had "personal reasons," for taking the case and he intervened, promising the parents he'd return her unharmed. He visited underworld bars, putting fourteen people in the hospital needlessly, but the fifteenth gave him an address to Modern Modes, an unused dressmaker's shop in Brooklyn.

He arrived at the unlit building at dusk while Grice was out. He checked the backyard and saw two attack dogs, German Shepherds named Fred and Barney, fighting over a knob of bone. He went in through the front door and examined the house. The furnace had a piece of children's clothing. One of the cabinets was filled with meat hacking utensils and in the kitchen was a large cutting slab with thick cuts graved into it. He peered out the window, out at the dogs, and looked at the bone they were still fighting over. It was a femur, a human bone. He went into the yard and cut one dog's head open with a meat cleaver. It was at that moment, when he closed his eyes and opened them again, that he claimed to no longer be Walter Kovacs; he was now Rorschach. Then he used the meat cleaver to kill the other dog.

Grice was out drinking when he entered, and returned at 10:45 that night. When he walked into the house, Rorschach threw the bloody corpse of one, then the other of the dogs at him through the window, knocking him to the ground. Silently, Rorschach grabbed and handcuffed him to the furnace while he screamed that there was no evidence about what he did. Rorschach leaves a hacksaw by his hand, then starts to pour kerosene throughout the house and pulls out a match, leaving him to saw his hand off to escape. (at this point, Rorschach word balloons are curly) He dropped the match and stood outside, watching the house burn to the ground for an hour, and realized the emptiness of human existence.