Watchmen: Chapter 1: At Midnight, All the Agents… Summary & Analysis

“Rorschach’s journal. October 12th, 1985.” While a man hoses a large pool of blood off of a city sidewalk, Rorschach reflects that this city and its criminals fear him. They could follow in the footsteps of good men like his father or President Truman, but instead they choose to live in filth and follow the Communists. Someday, it will be too late for all of them. They’ll ask Rorschach to save them then, but he’ll refuse.

Two detectives look through Edward Blake’s apartment, a man who was recently murdered when an intruder threw him through the window of his high-rise apartment. In a brief flashback, Blake wears a smiley-face badge as he’s thrown through the window. A drop of his blood splatters across it. One of the detectives suspects it was a simple breaking and entering job, but the other is skeptical. Photos of Blake show that he is huge, like a weightlifter, and covered in scars. In his apartment, there’s a picture of him shaking President Ford’s hand—it seems he was some sort of American “diplomat.”

The detectives decide to continue their investigation discreetly so that “masked avengers” don’t get involved. One of them remarks that the Keene Act of 1977 outlawed most vigilantes, but Rorschach is still out in the streets, acting on his own, and he’s crazy. As the two detectives make their way out of the building, a doomsayer stands in the street, holding a sign that says, “The end is nigh.”

When the street is empty, a man wearing a trench coat, fedora, and white mask with black shapeless blots appears—Rorschach. He shoots a grappling hook from the street up into Blake’s shattered window and climbs up the side of the building. He looks through Blake’s apartment, his dresser and drawers. When he reaches the closet, he finds a button on the wall that slides a false panel away, revealing a hero costume adorned with a star and stripe, several guns and knives, and a framed photo of a group of masked avengers.

Daniel Dreiberg, a middle-aged man, talks with Hollis Mason, an older man, in Hollis’s home. They reminisce about their past days as heroes—they are both now retired. Hollis jokes that Daniel was the better Nite Owl of the the two of them. Daniel says it’s nearly midnight, so he should get going, but thanks Hollis for sharing a beer with him each week and catching up. He leaves and walks home through mostly empty streets. When he reaches his apartment, however, he sees a light on in the kitchen. Daniel enters and finds Rorschach in his kitchen, eating from a can of beans. Rorschach doesn’t take his mask off to eat, only pulls it up over his mouth.

Daniel seems shocked and nervous to find Rorschach there. Rorschach tosses him Blake’s blood-smeared smiley-face badge and tells him it belonged to the Comedian; someone threw him out his window. Daniel asks if they can talk in the basement, where they’ll be less exposed. The two men descend into a large, dusty room full of equipment covered in sheets. Daniel asks if the Comedian’s death might be a political assassination, since the government’s had him overthrowing South American Marxists since 1977.

Rorschach thinks it’s more likely that someone is killing “costumed heroes.” He mentions that Hollis said some critical things about the Comedian in his book, but Daniel says he’s wrong to think Hollis could be involved. Having warned Daniel, Rorschach starts to leave through a secret tunnel. Daniel says he misses the good old days, when they were partners. As he leaves, Rorschach snubs Daniel for quitting hero work. Daniel sits on a box, staring at the smiley-face badge. Next to him, a hero costume decorated like an owl hangs in an open locker.

“Rorschach’s journal. October 13th, 1985.” He sleeps through the day and sets off at night, reflecting on how much he hates the filthy people in this city. Rorschach wants information on the Comedian’s death, so he goes to a bar called Happy Harry’s. The bartender is terrified to see him and pleads with him not to kill anyone tonight. When a man makes a snide remark behind Rorschach’s back, Rorschach grabs him and starts breaking his fingers one at a time, demanding information on Blake’s murder. The other patrons are horrified but have no information. The lack of progress makes Rorschach “slightly depressed,” so he leaves the “human cockroaches” alone to go visit a “better class of person.”

Rorschach speaks with Adrian Veidt in Veidt’s penthouse apartment. Veidt is surprised to hear of the Comedian’s death but wonders if it could have been a political assassination. Rorschach thinks this unlikely, since no country would dare challenge America while they have Dr. Manhattan on their side. Veidt thinks the Comedian was “practically a Nazi,” but Rorschach defends the Comedian’s honor, arguing that he never retired, never cashed in on his reputation or sold action figures of himself like the ones Veidt has of himself strewn about his desk. Veidt defends himself, saying he chose to retire of his own will, two years before the police strike and Keene Act demanded it. Rorschach clearly despises Veidt and leaves, rappelling out of a high window.

“Rorschach’s journal. October 13th, 1985. 8:30 p.m.” Rorschach feels disgusted after meeting with Veidt and thinks he is “pampered,” “liberal,” and “shallow,” perhaps a “homosexual.” He mentally runs through a list of all the old heroes, all of whom are now retired (which Rorschach mentions with disgust), living in obscurity, or dead, except for two who live at the Rockefeller Military Research Center. Rorschach decides to visit them and warn them about the murder.

Rorschach finds Laurie Juspeczyk and Dr. Manhattan in a large military facility. Laurie is a normal middle-aged woman, but Dr. Manhattan is blue-skinned, naked, and 30 feet tall. Laurie is not happy to see Rorschach and mentions that he’s wanted by the police. Rorschach tells them of Edward Blake’s murder, but Dr. Manhattan—shrinking down to human size—tells him that since he and the Comedian are the only heroes employed by the government, he was already informed. Laurie is not sad to hear that Blake died. She says the man was a monster who tried to rape her mother, as Hollis wrote in his book. Rorschach blows off the event as a patriot’s “moral lapse,” which infuriates Laurie. Dr. Manhattan, whom Laurie calls Jon, tells Rorschach he must leave, and teleports him outside into an empty field.

Back in the military station, the confrontation with Rorschach still bothers Laurie—she thinks Rorschach is “sick inside his mind.” Jon is doing something with a complicated machine. Laurie tells Jon that she needs a night out and asks him if he’d mind if she asked Daniel Dreiberg out for a drink. Jon says he doesn’t mind, since he is too preoccupied with his science experiments; he doesn’t even look up. Laurie calls Daniel and arranges to go out with him later that night.

“Rorschach’s journal. October 13th, 1985. 11:30 p.m.” Rorschach walks the New York City streets, reflecting on how no one seems to care that the Comedian was murdered. Rorschach thinks war is coming and millions will die soon, and wonders if one man’s death means anything in the midst of it. He decides that it must—there are good people and evil people, and evil must be punished “even in the face of Armageddon.” There are so many who deserve punishment and so little time to deliver it.

Laurie and Daniel have dinner and drinks together. Laurie insists on paying for the meal, stating that if the government insists on her being a “kept woman” for their best weapon, they can afford to pay for dinner now and then. The pair leave and walk out to a rooftop garden, reminiscing about their old hero days. Laurie thinks that dressing up in costumes and running around was a stupid way to spend their youth, and that the Keene Act was the best thing for them. Daniel lightly agrees. They swap stories and laugh a bit, remarking that there seems to be less laughter around lately.

The next section is an excerpt from Hollis Mason’s Under the Hood. A fellow writer told Hollis to start his book with the saddest thing he remembers. Hollis states that his saddest memory is set to “The Ride of the Valkyries.” When he is a kid, after his family moves to New York from Montana, he and his dad work in an auto shop for a man named Moe Vernon. Moe is a jokester and loves opera music. One day, while Moe is wearing a pair of foam breasts to get a laugh from the postman, he receives a telegram from his wife that she’s stolen all his money and run off with one of Moe’s top employees. Moe bursts out of the office with his foam breasts, “Ride of the Valkyries” blaring from the stereo, and he announces his tragedy. All his employees laugh at the sight. That night, Moe kills himself.

Hollis describes how he graduates the police academy and becomes a cop when he is 23, in 1939. Compared to his country-boy sensibilities, New York seems desperately immoral. He thinks that his years spent dressing as an owl and fighting crime begin with his fascination with pulp adventure fiction and comic books, which clearly and conveniently define good and evil. They appeal to his childhood fantasies of rescuing beautiful women and having courageous adventures. When Hollis starts seeing stories in the newspapers about costumed crime fighters, they stir his romantic sensibilities and he decides he must become one.