Last night, I decided to rewatch Watchmen instead of going to see X-Men:Origins.

I justified this by saying "well, Rorschach could wup Wolverine in a fight anyway..." - and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to illustrate this fight. Ignoring, of course, that the two can never exist in the same universe - not only because one is DC and the other Marvel, but because Dr. Manhattan is emphatically the only superpowered being in Rorschach's world. More than anything else, the idea was art practice in the world of the garish graphic novel.




Yet...Rorschach is obviously resourceful, has a talent for tactics and refuses to give up under any circumstance. But he's still human, and can be defeated by humans too. Within the Watchmen universe, Manhattan is obviously the most powerful hero, followed by Veidt. After that, well we could argue all night.

But Wolverine is superhuman, and presumably the world's coolest guy presents no more threat to him than the world's coolest termite. His senses are better, making him faster, and his strength and stamina are probably better too. This is even before you get to the fact he's Edward Scissorhands with a bad attitude.

He has been properly trained in combat - although Rorschach's unpredictability on that front is also one of his greatest strengths, so maybe that would balance out. He has the advantage of being able to heal quickly too, although the jury is out about just how quick that is. And similarly, Rorschach is about as hardass - he walks through the Antartic wearing only a trenchcoat and fedora. Rorschach is a fantastic tactician, but I'd estimate Wolverine was approximately equivalent.

What advantages does Rorschach actually have? Well, if he was on home ground he'd have a little chance - Calypso has already suggested a rubbish dump, which would give him a lot to work with in terms of props and places to hide. Occurring in a ring or empty room, he would be dead (c.f. A.V. again). Wolverine is capable of killing people, but not as capable. Yet this doesn't stem so much from his hesitance as Rorschach's enthusiasm. He's also a nutcase, which can only help if you're fighting someone sane.

To be honest, his biggest advantage is me leaning down to him and giving him the Lady's favour to carry with him into battle. Superhero fights have a HUGE element of authorial intervention governing them, more than any logic. I hold up as examples two of the great, great Batman novels: Hush and The Dark Knight Returns. In both of these, Batman bests Superman. Now, you can argue in one Superman was being controlled by Poison Ivy, and the other he had been weakened by a nuke, but the point still stands: strictly, Superman should have such an immense advantage he could win every time. Thus comic book authors can and do just tweak these things, and yet I hate comic book canon and its contradictions and refuse to be a part of it.

Initially, the problem was "can Rorschach could beat Wolverine in a fight?" Now, my pretty four-colour fantasy has evolved into "can Rorschach survive Wolverine in a fight?" If he stood and fought he'd be very dead, very quickly. His only chance would be to run for it, and get Wolverine into an improvised trap of some sort. And Wolverine is not as dumb as he looks. One of Wolverine's defining characteristics is his tendency to go bezerker, so if R. got him mad enough, maybe he'd stop paying attention enough to give R a slight upper hand - but he'd still need some way to survive while all that took place. I can visualise quite well the pair tearing across an urban wasteland, with Rorschach bouncing up buildings and staying just out the way of those claws.

I'm now sorely tempted to do an X-Men marathon, purely to size up Wolverine and work this one out - and if it does evolve into him tearing our favourite masked avenger into shreds, well, at least I'll be able to get his fighting style a little more personalised than the generic sketches I have at the moment.

So, folks, today's question: who wins? I do intend to draw and ink this one, so your votes count! And there's a comic book precendent for this too, when DC got readers to phone in to say whether they wanted Robin to survive or not. Curiously, they didn't get the answer they were looking for, and next week's issue saw the Joker batter him to death with an iron bar then blow him up. The worst thing is, I'm not exaggerating: I've read it, and it's shockingly nasty.

So who would triumph, and importantly, why? Add any important details, ideas or thoughts, and I'll incorporate them. Ideally both characters should survive. But accidents happen.



While we're talking about Watchmen, I dug up this great piece of art. I'm amused to see the artist has done exactly what I did with Rorschach, which was instantly give him an iron bar to work with. Rorschach vs. Batman? Now that's a close call, which Batman maybe would win - they're about equal on the smart, tactical, urban, batshit crazy front. But Bats is wearing body armour. That's the basis for that argument.

But the curious thing is the art is actually leading into a comic series called Multiversity. Quick lesson on the DC universe - there are 52 parallel worlds, created by "alternate version" characters. So Earth-3 Superman is evil, on Earth-172 Superman is Batman's adoptive brother, Earth-1938 in which Superman has averted WWII, an unnamed Earth where Superman is both black and president of the USA etc. Instead of just treating these like the one-shot absurdities they are, they've been incorporated into canon. Periodically, they've had matchups and crossovers featuring several of these Supermen interacting, and thus the same for all the other DC characters. Multiversity is a miny series focusing on seven of these worlds, featuring a plot somehow linking them: no one really knows anything yet.

Except the news regarding Earth 4, and that poster. Now Earth-4 is the designated home of the characters DC bought from Charlton Comics: the Question, Blue Beetle, Peacemaker, Captain Atom, and so on. If any of those names seem familiar, it's because Alan Moore originally intended to use them in Watchmen before DC realised most of their characters would end up dead and/or nuts. You can still see their very real influence: I've read the first volume of The Question, hated it for various reasons, but was creeped out by the Rorschachyness of it all.

And Earth-4 is one of the worlds that is going to be used. The phrase "Watchmen 2" is being bandied about, incorrectly, but it's still going to be an interesting exercise. They're pretending that the style of Watchmen is part of the internal tone and consistancy of Earth-4, so while you're going to be watching Question and Atom running around there, it is going to be very much the same universe with the same rules. Or, as Grant Morrison puts it:

"I thought it would be interesting to pick up on that sort of crystalline, self-reflecting storytelling method, so the mad notion I came up with was to do the Charlton characters in a story I'd construct as an update on that ludic Watchmen style - if Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons had pitched the Watchmen now, rooted in a contemporary political landscape but with the actual Charlton characters instead of analogues!"

Didn't think anyone would be so mad as to breathe on a sacred cow like that. Calypso has mentioned that she'd love to see a Minutemen spinoff: so say we all. But we learn everything we need to know from those slight hints in Watchmen. We don't need or, indeed, want it. It's a self contained entitity. Although I'm tempted to do some really corny old-style comics with them.

It's the closest thing we'll ever get. And I think, as a concept, it is fascinating. Bring it on! But I'm gonna wait for the trade...

PS - Wikipedia tells me Rorschach is also a municipality in Switzerland. If ever I go, I will buy so many tacky souveneers!