Rorschach - Dead and Reborn

Name: (Rorschach - the name he chose as his real name. Walter Joseph Kovacs - full name)

Gender: (Male)

Height: (170cm)

Weight: (63kg)

Age: (35)

Species: (Human)

Occupation: ( Vigilante + ex member of The Watchmen + Detective + ex Inmate of Sing Sing Prison)

Outfit: (Rorschach wears brown trench coat with matching fedora hat that has a light white stripe. Another additional part of his attire is white scarf he wears around his neck in cold weather. However, Rorschach's most defining feature of his costume is his ink-blotted mask.

Rorschach's mask, which he considers his true "face", is a piece of fabric made from a material derived from the technologies of Dr. Manhattan, and it is blank except on the front, where two viscous liquids, one black and one white, are between two layers of latex. The liquids continually shift in response to heat and pressure, which explains why the liquid only animates when Rorschach puts it on his face. The black liquids form symmetrical patterns like those of a Rorschach inkblot test while never mixing with the white color of the mask, thus never producing a gray color, much like Rorschach's view of morality and the world)

Hair: (Rorschach has short dark ginger hair that are often messy and greasy because Rorschach barely washes them)

Eyes: (Rorschach has dim grey eyes. His gaze is often furrowed and focused - he never loses his concentration. Only strong events or shocks can make some sort of emotion appear in them. His gaze slightly softens when he talks with people he finds pleasant or considers his friends - Daniel, The Night Owl was one of them. When Rorschach performs his duties as a hero in mask and brings justice upon the criminals his gaze gains unnerving intensity bordering on the line of maniacal obsession. The same can be said about the rare moments of vulnerability - Rorschach never cries but in his eyes it is possibly to see true despair that makes one feel as if Rorschach is going to breakdown at any moment)

Body and appearance: (Rorschach is a highly trained fighter but he is also a homeless and wanted person. Because of that he always stands on the edge of starvation which is obvious when you look at how pale his skin is or how small weight he actually has. Despite that, he has a respectful amount of muscles and great stamina bordering on the limits of human capabilities.

Also one of the reasons Rorschach wears his mask and even considers it his "real" face is the fact that many people were telling Rorschach that his face is ugly with it's sharp features, multiple freckles and constant bruises . So he hides it behind the mask)

Scent: (Rorschach never had a place that he could actually call home. Because of that he hides his attire in trash cans and hidden places in dark alleyways and sleeps wherever fate brings him. So the smell Rorschach carries with himself isn't very... pleasant)

Speech: (Rorschach has a dry, husk, hoarse voice. Most part of the time he sounds firm but uninterested. Rarely signs of dark irony appear in his speech in a form of a small jokes. And even rarer it is possible to hear true maniacal obsession in Rorschach's voice)

Personality: (During his childhood, he was described as bright, and excelled in literature, mathematics, and religious education. Rorschach considers his mask his true "face" and his unmasked persona to be his "disguise". He continues his one-man battle against crime long after superheroes have become both detested and illegal. Moore depicted Rorschach as being extremely right-wing, and morally uncompromising, a viewpoint that has alienated him from the rest of society, even among other superheroes. He is often described as being mentally ill.

He has taken on the persona of Rorschach in every part of his life and hates being referred to by his birth name. Rorschach has deep levels of hatred for humanity, immoral behavior (or at least his perception of such) and is openly derogatory towards any other vigilante who does not share his unwavering views, deriding them as "soft". Rorschach presents his views on right and wrong as starkly black and white with no room for compromise.

Deep inside Rorschach is a very dangerous, merciless and callous person with a very dark sense of humour and irony. The only thing that keeps him "in line" is his deep sense of justice. Rorschach would never hurt those who don't deserve it. But those who do... they would be lucky to walk away alive. Yes, Rorschach is surely a traumatized and unhealthy person. But he doesn't need help. Not anymore. There is no "fixing him" - he made his principles and traumas the pillars of his personality. Without them... he sees no point in living)

Skills: (Like most members of the Watchmen, Rorschach has no obvious "super powers". He merely has his will, physical strength, and skills. Rorschach is extremely resourceful, adapting ordinary household objects into tools or weapons, such as pepper to blind a police officer and the use of hairspray in combination with a match to set fire to another police officer, during a confrontation at Moloch's house.

During the series he is shown to use cooking fat, a toilet bowl, a cigarette, a fork and his jacket all as weapons; he is also shown using a coat hanger as a makeshift measuring device. He owns a gas-powered grappling gun, which he uses to climb buildings (and once as a makeshift harpoon gun against a police officer) which was designed and built by Nite Owl II.

Rorschach is well versed in street combat, gymnastics, traditional karate, taekwondo, and boxing. He is also skilled at lock picking, where a running gag throughout the series has him breaking into Nite Owl's home to talk to him.

Despite his mental instability, Rorschach was described as "tactically brilliant, and unpredictable" by Nite Owl, and possesses surprisingly good detective skills, as displayed when he is able to locate the Comedian's costume in his apartment when the police could not)

Habits/Interesting facts: (1. Rorschach's stressful life caused him to grow a habit of eating quickly and not having any tastes in food. He never warms up his food eating it cold. It's one of the small things he slightly regrets - he lives in constant rush and hurry and because of that Rorschach misses a lot of small pleasant things

2. Unexpectedly, Rorschach was a very bright student in school. His favourite subjects were history, math and literature. For example, he really liked stories of ancient Egypt and pharaohs.

3. Though, even when he was living in the orphanage and studying in the school it was already visible that Rorschach has problems with social interactions. He couldn't set a steady contact with his peers and was especially afraid of girls.

4. Rorschach displays a discomfort with female sexuality as a result of his early childhood, although the crimes that most affected him spiritually were against women: the murders of Kitty Genovese who got killed at the street and no one bothered and Blair Roche who was kidnapped and fed to the dogs by her killer.

5. There were only few things that managed to shaken Rorschach in his life causing him to lose his temper, betray his principles and suffer an immense breakdown. First was the death of the Blair Rouche. Second was his last encounter with Ozymandias and discovering of his plan to kill 15 millions of people with the reactor that imitated Doctor Manhattan's energy. And third was his last encounter with Doctor Manhattan when Rorschach realised that he is going to die for trying to reveal the truth about Ozymandias's plan.

6. After being taken away from his mother and living in the orphanage, Rorschach didn't know the fate of his mother. And when he was told that she died he only said "Okay." being completely unbothered by her death. Which is no surprise considering how she treated him.

7. When Doctor Manhattan exploded him, Rorschach didn't feel anything except a sudden burst of his chest like his heart got exploded. This memory rises very conflicted emotions within him and partly he is afraid of those memories.

8. Unlike his world, in the place Rorschach found himself in hippie revolution was successful, America lost Vietnam war and there were no Watchmen. Rorschach feels conflicted about this new reality and struggles to understand his place in this new world. Should he continue his crime fighting? Is there any point to this? Why protect reality that isn't his? He doesn't know what to do anymore.

9. Rorschach rarely takes off his mask but when he needs to eat, smoke or drink he lifts up the bottom part a bit to open his mouth. He has to do so because the mask has no holes for eyes or mouth.

10. Rorschach had only one real friend in his life - Second Night Owl, Daniel M. "Dan" Dreiberg. Unlike Rorschach, he was a more naive person with a strong feeling of justice and no-kill principle. That was the difference between them. But Rorschach still valued Daniel and considered him his only friend. His faith found proofs when Daniel broke into the prison to save Rorschach. But when Ozymandias revealed his plan, Daniel reluctantly decided to accept his terms while Rorschach was ready to die for the truth. Daniel was the only one to witness Rorschach's death. And despite all their quarrels, Rorschach still has very good memories about him.

11. Rorschach's principles can be explained in one simple phrase he told to his friend Daniel before his death from the hands of Doctor Manhattan. "Never compromise - not even at the face of armageddon". That is the essence of Rorschach's principles - no compromises in crime fighting. If you fight, do it till the end. No mater how high the cost might be. No matter how cruel and vicious your methods are. The only way to make this world at least slightly better is to cut all evil out of it like a cancer. And if it makes you look like a psycho, so be it.

12. Despite his cruelty and lack of empathy, Rorschach has a very strong sense of loyalty. He's fine with killing criminals, torturing them for the information. But he doesn't want anyone else to get their hands dirty like he does. For example, when Daniel got to know about Hollis Mason's - first Nite Owl - death and began to viciously beat one of the criminals in the bar, Rorschach stopped him and said that he shouldn't do that in front of the civilians. Even though he considered Daniels's beliefs very naive, Rorschach still respected them and didn't want his friend to look like a bad guy in front of the people.

13. Rorschach was always afraid of Doctor Manhattan's and his god-like powers. But he was also always disgusted by his lack of empathy and humanity. In his last moments Rorschach blamed Doctor Manhattan for Veidt's massacre saying that "If you'd cared from the start, none of this would've happened". Still despite the fear, Rorschach embraced his death as bravely as he could shouting at Manhattan to finally do it and kill him)

Backstory: (Walter Kovacs is the son of Sylvia Kovacs, a narcicist prostitute, and "Charlie" (surname unknown). His mother was frequently abusive and condescending toward her son. In July 1951, at the age of ten, Kovacs became involved in a violent fight with two older bullies, in which he partly blinded one with a cigarette and took a large bite out of the other's cheek in a blind rage. Once his living conditions were finally looked into, he was removed from his mother's care and put in "The Lillian Charlton Home for Problem Children" in New Jersey until 1956, where he rapidly seemed to improve, excelling at scholastics as well as gymnastics and amateur boxing.

After leaving the Home for Problem Children when he was sixteen, Kovacs took a job as a garment worker in a dress shop, which he found "bearable but unpleasant" partly because he had to handle women's clothing, and it was here that he acquired the fabric that he would later fashion into the mask he wears as Rorschach. The fabric, inspired by Doctor Manhattan, contained two heat and pressure-sensitive viscous fluids between layers of latex, creating a shifting black-on-white color effect without mixing to form gray, mirroring his own strict black and white view of the world.

Two years later when buying a newspaper on his way to work in March 1964, Walter read about the rape and murder of Kitty Genovese (he later told his prison psychologist Dr. Long "The woman who ordered dress. Kitty Genovese. I'm sure that was the woman's name."). Ashamed by what he read about the unresponsiveness of her neighbors, Kovacs became disillusioned with the underlying apathy that he saw as inherent in most people. Inspired by Genovese's fate, Kovacs returned home, made "a face he could bear to look at in the mirror" from the dress' fabric, and began fighting crime as the vigilante Rorschach. Initially, Kovacs left criminals alive, but bloodied, for the police to arrest. In the mid 1960s, he teamed up with the second Nite Owl, a partnership which proved highly successful at battling organized crime.

In 1975, he investigated the kidnapping of a young girl named Blair Roche after promising her parents that he would return her alive and well. After beating through fifteen criminals, he received the name of an abandoned dressmaker shop, where he found a little girl's underwear in the stove and two dogs gnawing on a human bone. Convinced that its occupant, a man named Gerald Grice, had killed Roche and fed her remains to his dogs as scraps, Kovacs killed the dogs with Grice's meat cleaver and waited for his arrival. When Grice returned, Kovacs surprised Grice by throwing his dead dog's bodies at him and handcuffed him to a stove. As Grice insisted he had not been involved in the kidnapping, Rorschach lost his temper and murdered Grice telling that "People gets arrested. Dogs get put down.". That event left him deeply traumatized changing Rorschach's not-killing principle into the opposite one.

By 1985 and the events of Watchmen, Rorschach is the vigilante who continues to operate in defiance of the Keene Act, the rest having retired or become government operatives. He investigates the murder of a man named Edward Blake, discovering that he is the Comedian. He believes that someone is picking off costumed superheroes, a view that strengthens when Doctor Manhattan is forced into exile and when Adrian Veidt, the former vigilante known as Ozymandias, is targeted in an assassination attempt. Rorschach questions Moloch, a former supervillain who unexpectedly attends Blake's funeral, who tells him what little he knows.

Later, after reading a note written by Moloch telling him to come over for more information, Rorschach visits him again, only to find him dead, shot through the head. The police, tipped off anonymously over the phone, surround the house. Rorschach scolds himself for falling into such an obvious trap, and is arrested after a fight, in which Rorschach tries to escape by jumping through a window, but is unmasked.

Rorschach is sent to a prison where many of its inmates are criminals he put away, including Big Figure, a dwarf crime boss who is hungry for Rorschach's blood. During his incarceration, he is interviewed by the prison psychologist Dr. Malcolm Long. Long believes he can help rehabilitate him; instead, Rorschach's explanation of his life and his justifications for his uncompromising worldview lead Long to question his own views.

One day during lunch, one of the inmates attempts to attack Rorschach with a shiv, whereupon Rorschach throws the boiling-oil contents of a deep-fryer into his face in self-defense.[ As the guards grab and begin to beat him, Rorschach hoarsely yells at the watching crowd, "None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me." After the inmate dies, the prison breaks out in a riot. The Big Figure and two of his associates try to kill Rorschach, but he outwits and ultimately kills them all in rapid succession. Rorschach's two former colleagues, Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II, begin to take his "mask killer" theory seriously and break him out of jail to follow up on it.

After the prison break, Doctor Manhattan comes back from his self-exile to transport Silk Spectre II to Mars. After acquiring a spare costume from his apartment, Rorschach, along with Nite Owl, enters underworld bars to find out who ordered the assassination attempt on Veidt. They obtain a name, a company called Pyramid Deliveries, and then break into Veidt's office. Nite Owl correctly deduces Veidt's password and finds that he runs Pyramid Deliveries. Rorschach, who has been keeping a journal throughout the duration of the novel, realizes that they may be no match for Veidt. He makes one last entry in his journal, stating his certainty that Veidt is responsible for whatever might happen next, and drops it into a mailbox.

Nite Owl and Rorschach fly out to Antarctica. There they learn the true nature of the conspiracy and Veidt's motivations: to unite the world against a perceived alien threat and stop the possibility of a nuclear holocaust. Veidt then reveals that he set his plan into motion well before they arrived. Doctor Manhattan and Silk Spectre II arrive at the base after viewing the carnage Veidt's reactor that imitated Doctor Manhattan's power caused at the city erasing New-York, Hong-Kong, Moscow and few other capitals with combined lives of 15 millions people.

Despite their mutual horror, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre II and Doctor Manhattan all agree to keep quiet about the true nature of the events when the United States surprisingly does enter into a peace accord with the Soviet Union.

Rorschach states the others must be joking, and leaves to tell the world. Dr. Manhattan confronts him outside, telling him he cannot allow Rorschach to reveal the truth. Refusing to compromise his principles, Rorschach understands he will be killed. He removes his mask and demands that Manhattan just "do it", which he does by exploding Rorschach's body. Unbeknownst to the remaining Watchmen, Rorschach has been writing all events of past several weeks in his journal that he left in one small publishment right before his death.

Unexpectedly, Rorschach didn't die but found himself in a dark alleyway in the world that as he soon realised wasn't his anymore. No one here knew about The Watchmen or Veidt International or anything else. This world was different from the one Rorschach was born in. But changes were mostly historical. All the filth and injustice were all the same)