In Rorschach #11 by Tom King and Jorge Fornés, the series’ big mystery is finally solved, and another character adopts the Rorschach identity.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Rorschach #11, available now from DC.
The Black Label series Rorschach takes place more than 35 years after the events of the original Watchmen series by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons and John Higgins, as it continues to examine the lasting impact of the title character in the present day. While Walter Kovacs was killed at the end of Watchmen, his specter looms incredibly large in Rorschach. And while the character himself may not appear in the sequel series, several people ended up putting on the ink-blotted mask of the vigilante to assume his identity.
So far, all of the characters who “became” Rorschach have had relatively short stints as the superhero. But in Rorschach #11 by Tom King, Jorge Fornés, Dave Stewart and Clayton Cowles, we may finally see a change in that trend. In the series’ penultimate issue, yet another character appears to adopt the identity of Rorschach — and this time, it’s a transformation that might actually last.
At the start of Rorschach, an unnamed detective was hired to discover who was responsible for attempting to kill presidential candidate Turley. At the time of the attack, the assailant was wearing a Rorschach costume, and the detective eventually found out that it was not Walter Kovacs miraculously back from the dead. In truth, the would-be assassin was an aging comic book artist named Wil Myerson. As the detective continued his investigation, he learned more about Myerson and his young sidekick, Laura Cummings, aka The Kid.
Throughout the series, he learned that Myerson wasn’t the only one who had worn the Rorschach mask. In fact, one of Laura’s circus friends, a strongman named Muscles, had been convinced that he was Rorschach reincarnated. Muscles was eventually arrested after killing multiple people, but the investigator would then come across someone else wearing the Rorschach mask: an accomplice of Wil and Laura, famed comic book creator Frank Miller.
For ten issues, Rorschach has been unraveling a mystery involving the Watchman’s identity. But all of these characters may have been stepping stones to the real deal: a new Rorschach.
In Rorschach #11, the detective finally puts all the pieces of the central mystery together. He figures out that Alan, the man from the Turley administration who hired him in the first place, knew about everything, and that he basically used the investigator to uncover a piece of evidence that would falsely implicate President Redford. Myerson and The Kid both played the investigator as well — in a posthumous manner. Indeed, they left a trail of clues that would lead the investigator down their own interpretation of the assassination attempt — one fueled by their belief that the Watchmen superheroes have been reincarnated in other people to stop the alien squids from taking over the world.
With the full picture revealed, the detective is forced to make a choice. He needs to decide what he believes in and whose side he is on. For the entirety of the issue, the investigator appears to unravel as he wrestles with the weight of all he has uncovered. While he puts the puzzle together, he sheds more and more articles of clothing, an act that appears to mirror a change in his personality as he prepares to become something else — or rather, someone else.
As Rorschach #11 comes to a close, the investigator has made his choice: he sets out to visit presidential candidate Turley, seemingly ready to finish what Myerson and his sidekick started. As he embarks on an elevator, another man keeps talking to him, and the detective only answers with Rorschach’s trademark grumble.
He may not be wearing an ink-blotted mask, but he doesn’t need to — the grumble is all we need to understand that the investigator is the latest to follow in the footsteps of Rorschach. And given that the Black Label series is about the reach its conclusion, it’s possible that it will end with the detective actually becoming the official new Rorschach. It would certainly explain why we have yet to find out his name. Perhaps the mystery of this character is the entire point.
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