Project Text: Homework Three - Annotated Bibliography

Gibney, Christian. “Profile of a Hero: Rorschach.” University of Connecticut. 23 April 2012. Web. <freshmanenglish.uconn.edu/students/10.Gibney.pdf>.

In this essay, Gibney explores the scale of who chooses our heroes, who watches our heroes, and who watches the Watchmen. While he acknowledges that we choose our heroes, he expresses how heroes fight for justice and will risk their lives to protect all of those that justice protects, the good people in our society. He also emphasizes that a hero will do the unpopular task in order to make sure good prevails. Clearly, his idea of a hero, is someone who is willing to risk the opinion of the public eye in order to preserve righteousness. Gibney gets his point across by analyzing Watchmen’s Rorschach, a man with a mysterious ink-blot mask and even more mysterious persona, who represents justice in its purest form and will go to any length to make sure that it is carried out. Ultimately, yielding the idea that anyone can be heroic and all it takes is an idea and a will to fight; which he claims Rorschach embodies.

    Although his primary focus for writing is to expose how Rorschach could be considered a hero, he also cites several other sources. Gibney also places the debate about controversial heroes over the course of history, and the many public figures that have been scrutinized for heroic actions that some have deemed controversial. He cites several characters throughout history, such as Charles Darwin, President Harry Truman, and gangster John Dillinger. Although those characters are really bizarre and exceedingly diverse, all of these characters, in his view, share a common characteristic concerning their heroic lore: “the controversy surrounding the decisions they have made continues to resonate throughout society.” In short, Gibney concludes the characters he cited, are not just people who just went out and encapsulated “good,” but instead went out and made a change in the world armed with only their minds.

Hughes, Jamie A. "“ ‘Who Watches the Watchmen?’: Ideology and ‘Real World’ Superheroes " The Journal of Popular Culture 39.4 (2006): 546-57. Print.

In this journal, Hughes explores how the word “superhero” conjures up a very specific image in the minds of many readers: the archetypal visions of “the good guy.” She acknowledges that superheroes like Batman and Superman, despite their various powers and realms, have one thing in common, they are “good guys.” Contrary to that, she explores how the Watchmen characters are the complete opposite of these heroes. Superman, Batman, Flash, and the rest of the traditional good guys become superheroes for some central responsibility. As oppose to those heroes, there’s the unusual Watchmen characters who choose not to do it for much more routine reasons such as money and power, but rather to promote their own ideology.

    In chorus, in the graphic novel, it is easy to see how Moore and Gibbons have created superheroes who are nothing more than individuals caught up in an ideology. These characters are viewed as half-crazed people who care little for society, and just for their ideology. Hughes maps out how the characters are not up to some grand scheme, but rather just regular people trying to fight for something. She concludes that we are all subject to the same power, which is that of ideology.