Doomsday Clock is the slow of dull burning . Its big mysteries — like just where Dr. Manhattan is in the DC Universe , orhow the hell a mime can mimic himself a lethal weapon — still rest barely explored , let alone solved . But it ’s at long last pop to elevate the lid on one of its most challenging addition : the new person underneath Rorschach ’s mask .
The parallels between Geoff Johns , Gary Frank , and Brad Anderson ’s Doomsday Clock and its legendary forerunner Watchmen think that having a new , African American Rorschach as the driving heart of the new serial publication should be no surprise , afford Walter Kovacs ’ central role in the original . But over the trend of the first three issues , the role ’s want of link to the original Watchmen , both the team and the graphic novel , has made this Rorschach feel more or less untethered from the story , even though he ’s clearly be something unknown .
Yes , he ’s skulked around the same jacket crown and masquerade as Kovacs , and yes he gets looped into Ozmandiyas / Adrian Veidt ’s plans to discover Dr. Manhattan and terminate the world from terminate itself again . But he ’s been a certain distance get rid of , an foreigner appear in on the ramifications and side effect of a series we bang more closely at this point than Kovacs had been . But last , the fourth and latest upshot of Doomsday Clock has identify the person who has taken the shifting mask of the vigilante , and revealed the character has a much deep and in many ways more tragic connection to the original series than anyone surmise .
While the previous issues hinted at a entrancing backstory for the new Rorschach — one of the thousands who survived Veidt ’s psychic monster attack on New York , irrevocably mentally scarred instead of kill in an insistent — Doomsday Clock # 4 , mostly told through flashback , bring out his life before that moment . The Modern Rorschach is a young military man identify Reggie Long , and he ’s the son of Dr. Malcolm Long . Yes , that Dr. Long .
That should be a intimate name to fans of the original series . Dr. Long dally a modest yet important role in Watchmen , specifically in the 6th egress , when he is called in to psychologically evaluate Kovacs while he ’s lag at Sing Sing . In the original Watchmen , we see Dr. Long and his wife Gloria as Long becomes steady more and more engrossed in his seek to help Kovacs , and ultimately witness his worldview changed by the awful story of how Kovacs became Rorschach in the first place . We see the couple again in Watchmen # 11 , as immediate victim of the arrival of Veidt ’s psychic alien in New York . But what Doomsday Clock sum up to Watchmen and the Longs ’ story is that they had a son , Reggie , an only child who at the time of Watchmen ’s events was out at college .
When stress between the US and the Soviets rose to a fever sales talk , Reggie returned to New York to be with his family ( he did n’t know that his parents ’ human relationship had broken down after his founder ’s clash with Kovacs ) in case atomic war really cave in out — only to be on the edges of the metropolis stick by in dealings when Veidt ’s goliath aggress . He was far enough away to not be brutally massacre by its screams , but close enough to be driven harebrained by its psychical dying throe and grimly committed to Fitzgerald Mental Home .
Doomsday Clock # 4 ties Reggie into Watchmen ’s legacy of costumed heroes beyond his male parent . One of his fellow inmates at Fitzgerald is actually Byron Lewis , formerly the hero Mothman , and a member of the Minutemen in short featured in the original comics . Committed to Fitzgerald after long time of alcoholic drink and drug abuse triggered by the pain of his vigilante employment , Byron becomes close admirer with Reggie , and apply his rebuilt Mothman annex to now and again break out of the institute and smuggle in contraband for the two — including Dr. Long ’s files , full of note about Kovacs . Byron even starts teach Reggie how to fight , using technique he see during his time in the Minutemen .
But it ’s Dr. Long ’s file that really set Reggie on the path to becoming Rorschach . As the revelation that Veidt created the psychic monster that decimate New York City eventually became public , Reggie get himself , like his Fatherhood before him , enthralled by Kovacs ’ worldview . It ’s another parallel to the original series , but with a twist : While Dr. Long found himself leaning to Kovacs ’ solitary , predestinarian worldview after their face-off , his son pluck up on Kovacs ’ rage , as it ’s so similar to the one already brewing inside him . It causes him to point Veidt , the man he now knows is responsible for his parents ’ death . Escaping Fitzgerald on a mission of vengeance , and now armed with Rorschach ’s mask and his stilted , murmured way of speaking as a symbolic continuance of Kovacs ’ ire at the world , Reggie made his elbow room to Antarctica to toss off the now - globally - reviled Veidt … only to find that he ca n’t land himself to do it .
That ’s because the Veidt he receive is not the Veidt he had angrily imagined in the clip he spent at Fitzgerald , but a homo haunted by his ill-conceived attempt to save the world — and a man , as previously revealed , tardily dying from genus Cancer . For all the connections he has to the original Watchmen story , the heavy difference between Reggie and Kovacs in the closing is that even with all he ’s gone through , Reggie still has a broader sight of morals that has more to it Kovacs ’s utmost duality of either wholly serious or wholly evil . Like Dr. Long before him , deep down under the layers of psychic trauma Reggie have intercourse that anyone who does wrong can still be capable of redemption . And so the villain he became obsessed with killing became the human he begrudgingly crop with to try and blockade the world from end all over again .
There ’s a dramatic irony in the fact that a humans who is now so intimately familiar with the truth of what Adrian Veidt did in the climax of Watchmen — the truth that Walter Kovacs was so unprepared to hide from the world he expect to die instead of keep it a secluded — is now working with him to try and preclude another apocalyptic event bechance Watchmen ’s humans . Time will tell what comes of their family relationship ; after all , there ’s still another eight issues of Doomsday Clock to go . But already , even in a world of preternaturally deadly mimes and nuclear warfare , the reforging of the rugged man behind Rorschach ’s masquerade is one of the most captivating aspects of the series .
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