Well thats how I view it.
But this is half of what Moore is going for.
Watchmen is a direct attack not just on superhero comics but also their fans. He knows there's going to be a percentage of people so deeply rooted in the genre they can't break free of the conditioning. I'm not saying you are one of these people, but you're probably not making this argument on a Ted Bundy message board.
There's a reason why all the characters in Watchmen are archetypes. We immediately grab on to them. And then Moore deconstructs the imagery and traditions that have built up over the course of superhero comic publishing. So
of course the Captain America figure would be in Nam. The ultimate capitalist, thinking nothing of violence for money. Then it goes farther. He's a rapist. A murderer. A man who would rather kill the mother of his child than "interact" or have any kind of meaningful relationship with another human being. And killed not just because he could expose Ozymandias' plan, but because there's just no room for "heroes" like him in the new world order. They're counterproductive.
It's the ultimate joke in some ways, because Moore knows there will
still be some people so conditioned by superheroes that even being shown these things, they still make excuses and buy Comedian action figures. I don't know. Maybe those people are buying Ted Bundy figures too. Maybe they're making excuses for Hitler in history class, because he probably cried during the long dark tea time of the soul too.
But I doubt it.
What's your take on Rorschach, barbelith? Certainly the man has snapped and suffers from mental illness but how insane is he? He is aware of both the nature and quality of his actions and he knows that society views his brutality as wrong and illegal.
But
he doesn't view his actions as wrong, and so he tumbles into the abyss. This is a guy who drops people down elevator shafts. A guy who casually tortures someone
who may be completely unrelated to his case to investigate his case. We might feel sympathy for his downward spiral, but we're certainly not supposed to
like him.
Remember too that Rorshach was sane whilst adventuring with Nite Owl in the past. The Rorshach we see in the present sequences is insane.
Is there anyone or anything in the story to admire, emulate or point to as being "cool"?
This depends on how we define cool. I would say no in the colloquial sense. But I think Dan emerges reasonably well all things considered. He's the one guy to reach out to Rorshach through the illness. He's the one guy who came to adventuring through innocence; his gadgets are fun and defensive. His costume has become a fetish and I don't deny he's rather sad in a way.
But I think largely the
entire point of Watchmen is to tell comic readers that superheroes are outdated relics their fans are dysfunctional. It's incredibly contemporary in a way, because many of its themes are directly tied to US torture operations and the way we perceive our imperialist foreign policy today. Moore wants us to take the mask off more than the characters.
