scans_daily | Before Watchmen: Comedian #3

... he still shot the woman who carried his BABY!

He's not a nice guy but he's still a fairly tragic and complex character IMO.

Yeah, but it hard to actually have sympathy for this guy after remembering what he has done to his actual friends and "love ones". The only redeeming factor to his character that he could have approach Laurie at any time and drop the drama-bomb on her, but he didn't: I haven't exactly read Watchmen so I am sorry if I am dead wrong: but he knows how much bad her life is with her mother and step-dad alone, she REALLY doesn't need to part of the constant horror that is a single NIGHT that is the Comedian's life; so while he is tempted to approach her, he loves the daughter he actually has enough NOT to be in his life... I mean, that's a horror filled "What If" story right there, one that would be worthy of the twist to "Chinatown"....

Well there's also the scene where he appears at Moloch's bedside and breaks down after discovering that Veidt's about to destroy New York (hope that's not a spoiler but I take it you're at least familiar with the basics)

Edited 2012-09-15 04:28 (UTC)

As I mentioned elsewhere, this is what makes the Comedian possibly the most fascinating character in WATCHMEN. He is genuinely tragic in the strict sense of the term. He is a very bad man who sees himself as damned. (and therefore able to do the things that others are not damned enough to do--partly so they don't have to, in his view) But there is enough good in him for him to KNOW this. And he knows that he made one good thing in his life: Laurie. And I think he clung to that one thing as the only reason to not put a gun to his head.

And yes, he did kill a woman carrying his baby. And I think that moment haunted him forever(as did his attempt to rape Sally--something he did when he was a stupid kid, but that he was adult enough to not be able to excuse himself for later). And also proved to him life was a joke. Because the closest thing he ever knew to God was standing right there and let him. As he said himself at the time.

This. I think the way he basically yells about Manhattan losing his own humanity in that scene in Vietnam serves two purposes; One, it's a warning sign about exactly where Manhattan's going, and two, it's meant to be a sign of how far gone the Comedian actually is. It reads exactly like an argument a real person might make where, irrationally, everyone's to blame but him.

And you could even interpret it as a cry for help. "If it's wrong, why won't you STOP ME?" And remember, this all comes after Manhattan has basically taken away a whole country's free will. And probably killed lots and lots of Vietnamese(while American soldiers remained unharmed). So you could say, "Well, you just basically committed genocide but you wouldn't stop me from killing one innocent woman?" Which is a point only someone so far gone to the dark side--and aware of it--like Blake could make. Someone, too, who's more an assassin, a symbol of a tactical, black ops kind of war--kill a few key people to prevent greater slaughter. Manhattan is more representative of wholesale megadeath like the Bomb.

And Manhattan let him do it.

But the Comedian is the one who did.

But Manhattan could have stopped him, or stopped the woman from cutting his face open without any effort.

And yet that still doesn't absolve the Comedian from killing a woman and her unborn child... because he didnt feel like dealing with them at the time.

Manhattan's inaction has very little to do with how this colours the Comedian. He's no saint, but he's going through a lot more than the comedian, he didn't stop it, because to him, it already happened, he sees time all at once. Still, I just think he's being a tad dramatic there too.

And yet does that absolve the Comedian? Nobody made him want to pull the trigger. He could have been the bigger man and just walked it off, he could have done something significantly less lethal like slap her (although that would, of course, still be bad), but his FIRST INSTINCT is to gun her down. To kill her. And no-one's to blame but HIM.

In the story, I don't think he was trying to absolve himself - I think he was just making the point that Dr. Manhattan was no better than he for simply watching it happen, and thus certainly in no position to make moral judgements.

In that sense, the scene is also a religious one - as Doc steadily becomes more God-like over the course of Moore's series, you can see the Comedian as a representation of Man against God - "You judge me for the terrible things I've done. But you're all-powerful and all-knowing! You could have stopped them just as easily as I could have, if not more so!".

It's also why I hate that JMS has been put on the Dr. Manhattan book, by the by. He also tackled the argument of "If you're so powerful, why can't you save everyone?" in the most hackneyed manner possible, at the beginning of the "Superman: Grounded" arc, as the motivation for the entire arc. I don't think he quite gets that this is the sort of argument usually asked by complete dicks, not grief-stricken widows (See also: Richard Dawkins).

Excellent points, but I still think the Comedian has a tendency to avoid blame if and when he can, partly because he enjoys the life his actions give him and partly because he doesn't know any better. See also the scene where he's confronted by Laurie over raping her mother, and he responds 'only the once', or something along those lines; Granted, it ties into the revelation that comes later for Laurie, about him being her father and the fact that her mother actually hooked up with him after that pretty vicious assault, but that kind of answer doesn't exactly strike me as good.

I do think the later scene with the woman in Vietnam is tied to his raping Sally earlier in the story - in that instance, Hooded Justice stops him, and in Vietnam, Manhattan does not, so I don't know.. On one level I'm not sure if the Comedian expected some manner of intervention before he went to far, and simply didn't receive it. I don't think it excuses him entirely, if at all.

But.. Yeah. I think the tragedy of Jon in the main story was his increasing apathy toward things; The big argument with Jon isn't 'why can't you save everyone', but 'why AREN'T you saving everyone' - or at least, that seems to be what the Comedian levels Jon with in Vietnam. That does get solved in due course by Moore, of course, but I don't think JMS is particularly the best person to be handling the character.

You hit it on the head - can't instead of aren't. I mean, that's what I was just trying to get across, I suppose I just phrased it poorly.

Just as you relate the Laurie/HJ attack to the Vietnam woman/Doc attack, so do I also think that the "Only Once" scene was partly coloured by his dialogue immediately before, where he's joking around about possibly having assassinated JFK. It's not just that he's trying to defend his character with the double meaning of "Only Once" (he's referring not to his track record with ALL women, but with this particular woman), but he's also been a government agent all his life, scarred both mentally and physically - he sticks to the story.

His entire life has been about sticking to this 'screw you' narrative, about life being a joke and it being every man for himself and cynicism being the only sane viewpoint - and then Ozymandias' plan completely upsets that ideal by presenting him with a CALCULATED mass murder. Not "life's shit and then you die", not "everything's a joke", but someone actually plotting out and planning the mass deaths of millions to achieve a result.

In one way, he's the anti-Spider-Man: completely adverse to any sense of responsibility. The only times he's caught off guard are the "Only Once" scene and the above flashback with Moloch - both times when he's forced to take responsibility. In the former situation, the result of his twisted relationship with Sally is staring him right in the face, demanding to know why he hurt the woman who loved him; in the latter, he's attempting to deal not only with Ozymandias' total lack of remorse or hesitation towards his actions, but also with the fact that he just might have inspired the whole thing, years ago, with his "Smartest man on the cinder" comments.

A complex character, indeed - but one characterised by an inherently selfish viewpoint. The ultimate Libertarian, if you will.

Brilliant stuff. I honestly couldn't put it any better.

A'thank you. You can graduate the student in Comp. Lit., but you can't graduate Comp. Lit. in the student. Or something less clumsily phrased.

Before Watchmen: Comedian #3

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