Now that I think about it, I don’t believe the Comedian would be so shocked by Veidt’s master plan. Kill 5 million people to scam the world into a new era of peace? The Comedian didn’t mind Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden or the bombing of Vietnam, all mass killings of innocents for higher goals. In fact most people don’t mind those deaths, not unless they’re forcefully reminded and hectored a bit, and even then …
Of course Veidt’s body count is higher, but the Comedian doesn’t mind shooting a woman pregnant with his own child if she gets in his face. If the ordinary person is, at most, regretful and occasionally troubled by politically motivated aerial slaughter, then I would expect the Comedian could keep his soul together in the face of even an extra-size jumbo slaying like that engineered by Veidt. At least I don’t see any reason to assume otherwise unless you feel like doing Alan Moore and his script a favor. It’s quite a big gimme at the heart of a classic.
UPDATE: Another note of disgruntlement about the Comedian. His keynote line goes as follows:
“What happened to the American dream? You’re looking at it — it came true.”
I guess the idea is that America’s all about kicking ass when the other guy can’t kick back, and a case could be made highlighting that particular strain of the American experience. But I’ve always seen the phrase itself, “American dream,” used this way: In America you can work in a factory and earn enough to raise your kids in a house and then send them to college so they can become middle class. The idea managed to be true for a couple of decades but has since hit the wobbles. Still, nothing to do with shooting protesters.
I wonder if state sponsorship makes a difference? Also, the fact that the bomb was being dropped on Americans and not on a bunch of semi-anonymous non-Caucasian foreigners might well matter. September 11 freaked people in the U.S. out way, way more than Hiroshima or than, oh, say, the Khmer Rouge holocaust, though both of those were worse by many orders of magnitude. I don't think it's all that unreasonable to assume that Blake would have been much more disturbed by the destruction of 5 million New Yorkers (including his daughter, and presumably other people he cared about) than he was by other objectively comparable atrocities.
He shot his own child in the mother's stomach! Also, he could assume Laurie would be safe since she was with Dr. Manhattan.
And a nihilist who cares about which side of a national border a mass murder takes place — no, I don't buy it. There are lots of people who do think that way. In fact, I would guess most people thru history would react as you describe. But the Comedian isn't like most people, or at least not until Moore's plot requires him to be.
But he was planning to leave that child and its mother and never see them again. He clearly had no emotional investment to begin with.
I think he knew that Veidt was planning to get rid of Dr. Manhattan also, didn't he?
Blake was a nihilist to some degree…but there were certainly other chinks in his armor. He seems genuinely upset that Sally won't let him talk to his daughter, for example. I don't think it's especially a reach to think that he'd react to genocide in much the same way most people would…i.e, it matters if it's your people affected a lot more than if it's occurring halfway around the world.
Blake, in a drunken stupor, has a few minutes of regret about all of his previous doings and gets emotional about the future. He "confesses" to Moloch because he knows it will never come out and Moloch won't know what the hell he's talking about. Is there any indication that Blake then let this future trauma bother him more than the previous traumas he caused/witnessed? I think the scene is more about showing Blake was human (a crucial element of the story and its various "messages"). Yes…certainly he seemed inordinately callous in a lot of situations–but he was human in all of them, I believe is the point. So…yes, I've questioned that scene as well on the level of believability–but I think the whole point is that if the Comedian did the things he did–and _wasn't_ affected by Veidt's plan (and Blake's own earlier crimes), that would be even less "believable."
I also found the Comedian's breakdown a bit difficult to square with his behaviour in the rest of the story. Why would he find Veidt's plot a shock to the system? Surely it confirms everything he professes to believe?
The above explanations make sense. Demonstrating the Comedian's humanity is essential to Watchmen's grey ethical stance. But I don't think Moore quite pulls it off. So I'm with Tom on this one. It's the one weak link in an otherwise perfect piece of work.
There's also the point that the Comedian thought the world was going to get blown up by atomic war and that he considered this a big joke. But arrange for 5 million people to die, and he breaks.
"Is there any indication that Blake then let this future trauma bother him more than the previous traumas he caused/witnessed? I think the scene is more about showing Blake was human"
The scene alone is indication that the Veidt plot bothered him far more than anything else that we have seen him react to. After all, he's not upset because he's drunk, he's drunk because he's upset. I wouldn't think that every time the Comedian drank too much he would come unglued. At least there's nothing to indicate that in the story.
You do raise another plot point. Why did he tell only Moloch and not the Nixon administration?
I think the "American Dream" can also refer to freedom and justice, which is what I think the Comedian was riffing on.
I don't know…as long as I'm defending Moore, I might as well go all out. I think people's reactions to traumatic events can be somewhat random and unexpected. I mean, you might say, "well, Blake's a hard case and he wouldn't care if 5 million people got killed"…but maybe it just struck him the wrong way, you know?
Also, he didn't tell the Nixon administration because he was morally checkmated. He knew this was the only way to avoid war, so he was unwilling to undermine the plan. (That's an actual plot point, as opposed to the other stuff which is more me trying to win a no-prize.)
Here's my theory on the Comedian, that I'm sure has a few holes in it: The Comedian was crying for himself.
Blake's idea of the American Dream is that everyone has the opportunity to control their own fate, if they have the balls to do so. Blake thought he was the ultimate expression of that Dream, because he could do whatever he wanted, including murder and rape, with little consequence to himself. Even though the Comedian worked for the government, he probably felt it was on his terms. When things went bad for him, including the scar to his face, it was his own fault.
Viecht's plan reduced Blake to tears because he realized he is no longer the master of his own destiny, and probably never was. This also caused the Comedian to call into doubt his entire belief system, including whatever internal justifications he made for his actions. That's why he was crying and asking for his mother's forgiveness in Moloch's apartment.
I really like that explanation, Bryan. In part because it dovetails with the book's politics in fun ways. The Comedian is the amoral realpolitik libertarian nutcase; Veidt's the one-world socialist. The Comedian suddenly realizes that he's a squishy idealist compared to the ruthless effete liberal, and so he falls apart.
I'm not sure that that's exactly what it's about, but I would like it to be true.
Yeah, Bryan, that's a good one. It addresses both my caveats and fits with Blake's character as shown in the rest of the book. I still don't buy it though. My theory is that Moore just didn't think things thru.
I just realized fate and destiny aren't the words I should have used, since at the Crimebuster's meeting, Blake is clearly fatalistic about a nuclear war.
Fortune, as it applies to success or failure in life, is probably a better word. Blake thought he controlled his own fortunes in life.
Tom, you're probably right, but as a Star Trek fan, I am required by law to at least make at least one attempt at reconciling story points that don't make sense because the creative team didn't think things through. I'm still working out a reason why there's a sign for Deck 78 in Star Trek V, when everyone knows Kirk's Enterprise has only 21 decks.
It's one thing to be fatalistic about the abstract possibility of a nuclear war, and quite another to see concrete plans for a mass murder about to take place in your city. Is it really surprising that the Comedian's 'mask' slipped when confronted by that?