How Doomsday Clock's Rorschach is Connected to Watchmen

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Doomsday Clock #4 by Geoff Johns, Gary Frank, Brad Anderson and Rob Leigh, on sale now.

One of the most surprising things about Doomsday Clock is that it didn’t just bring back Rorschach, it gave us an all-new Rorschach. It’s a very “superhero comic” thing to do to invoke the concept of legacy, and to be honest, it's not unprecedented in Watchmen lore, as Alan Moore and Dave gIbbons' story featured its own legacy characters in Nite-Owl and Silk Spectre. From the start, Rorschach II’s identity was shrouded in mystery, and that alone was enough to tell us that it was likely someone we already knew, or someone with a connection to someone we knew.

This week’s release of Doomsday Clock #4 confirms that theory, as we get the full origin of the new Rorschach, including his connection to the original Watchmen series and how he came to follow in Walter Kovacs’ blood-stained shoes.

World’s Best Dad

It’s been speculated for a number of months, and Doomsday Clock #4 confirms right out of the gate that Rorschach II is Reggie Long, son of Gloria and Dr. Malcolm Long. Dr. Long was the psychiatrist assigned to Walter Kovacs when the first Rorschach was arrested and imprisoned in Sing Sing, and his sessions with the vigilante gave readers of Watchmen more of an insight into his troubled mind. Reggie never appears himself in the pages of Watchmen, but a panel highlighting Dr. Long’s desk in Watchmen #6 featured a mug simply labelled “DAD,” suggesting the existence of a child.

Malcolm Long and Gloria’s marriage suffered due to the intensity of the former’s work with the infamous vigilante, and though they came close to reconciling, Gloria gave Malcolm an ultimatum between his vocation and his family. In many ways, Dr. Malcolm Long represents the good still present in the world as he turns his back on his wife to intervene in an assault occurring on the same street corner. His final words to Gloria sum up his character arc in Watchmen: “I’m sorry. It’s this world. I can’t run from it.” Malcolm's intervention breaks the bystander effect and causes other people to lend their help too, but moments later there’s a flash of white and Ozyamandias’ monster lands in New York, killing everyone.

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The latest issue of Doomsday Clock reveals not only the existence of Reggie, but gives us a more rounded look at who he was before he became Rorschach. Growing up, he looked up to his father and was inspired by his drive to do good. He attended college, presumably to follow in his father’s footsteps, considering we see him finding his Psych 101 class is canceled. His mother kept him up to date on his father’s work with Walter Kovacs, informing her son, or rather lying to him, that Malcolm was making progress with Kovacs and that they’d become friends during his treatment.

Having left home for college, Reggie wasn’t in New York when Ozymandais' fabricated beast landed, but he was one of the many victims who were driven instantly insane by the psychic attack triggered by the monster’s death. Committed to an institution as many people were, he became friends with Byron Lewis, one of the original costumed adventurers better known as Mothman. Lewis would cobble together wings out of sheets and bedsprings and periodically escape, only to return with contraband he would share with his new friend.

Lewis took a shining to Reggie, training him as best he could with everything he learned from the original wave of heroes, turning him into a “One-Man Minutemen”. As a favor to Reggie, he visited his father’s apartment and collected as much he could, including files of Rorschach and the “DAD” mug, which Reggie pored over night-after-night, becoming more and more obsessed with the vigilante his father had studied and attempted to help. Reggie saw his father as a good man, and if his father saw something worth saving in Walter Kovacs, then Rorschach couldn’t be all that bad himself.

Hurm

Reggie’s time at the institution was not without conflict, as one particularly violent guard would assault him and other patients with little provocation, going so far as to shatter the mug that once belonged to his father. When rumors started to spread that Adrian Veidt was responsible for the monster that killed Manhattan, those affected were set to be transferred to a more secure government location but when it was confirmed, Reggie finally had someone to blame and somewhere to channel his anger. Using all of the training he learned from Mothman, Reggie planned his escape but Byron stayed behind, walking into the light of the burning asylum.

Byron left Reggie one final gift, tickets and a map that would take him where he needed to go; Karnak, the hidden Antarctic base of Adrian Veidt. Travelling on a freighter named the Percy Bysshe — after Percy Bysshe Shelley, the poet who wrote Ozymandias, for which Adrian is named — he confronted the smartest man on Earth and was prepared to kill him, but Veidt convinced him there was another way. Instead of killing Veidt, Reggie chose to be more like his father, “a good man helping troubled people”. The pair set out to save the world, but to do that they needed to recruit Marionette, bringing us full circle to Doomsday Clock #1.

Reggie Long’s role as Rorschach II makes him the first of a third generation of heroes from the Watchmen world, following in the footsteps of the Minutemen and the would-be Crimebusters. Despite his illness and his temperament, he has good intentions; he abandoned his quest for vengeance to follow a more heroic path and his time in the DC Universe may help develop that into something workable. It’s hard not be inspired when you’re standing face-to-face with Superman, and once Doomsday Clock is complete, Rorschach may actually be able to return to his world with a more optimistic outlook and message to inspire a new generation of heroes.

CBR

Doomsday Clock Reveals The Origin (And Identity) Of The New Rorschach

World’s Best Dad

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Hurm