Character Analysis Of Watchmen And Jimmy Corrig The...

The superhero archetype is traditionally a staple of the comic book medium. The Golden Age of comics, a period of comic publishing between the 1930s and early 1950s, was rife with larger-than-life super-human figures, who often served as an escape from the anxieties produced by war and everyday life. Superheroes like Superman, Batman, and Captain America function as cultural representations of idealism and the American Dream. However, representations of heroism in comic books has shifted significantly since the bright-eyed idealism and Romanticism of the Golden Age. In the Modern Age of comic publishing, contemporary comics tend to appropriate, adapt, and deconstruct tropes from the Golden and Silver Age of comics. Ultimately,†¦show more content†¦The text is wrought with nihilism, cynicism, and multiple characters who are affected by the power of the abyss. The Comedian s big joke is that there is no point to anything, and he does not really care. It is not a particularly f unny ‘joke’, but it ultimately speaks to the motif of nihilism within the comic. This sensation of nihilism is aligned with the corruption of the American Hero archetype. It is impossible to ignore the fact that the novel is constructed around a sort of alternative future/past, an alternate universe that functions within a political climate which exacerbates the tensions between America and other nations, as well as internally. There is a sort of anti-Romanticism about this text that renders the characters more human, despite the fact that they are supposed to be the hero figures. The inclusion of Hollis Mason’s Under The Hood, excerpts from a fictional extra-textual element of the story prove that chronicle the first wave of vigilante heroes, reveals that even the initial Minutemen began to realize to what extent they were only people, especially when their roles as heroes are trumped by the advent of the superhero, new powerful entities that alter the course of history. The traditional hero is displaced in the new social order of Watchmen, as well as in the contemporary genre of