United by Paranoia: Batman and Watchmen

I was roughly five pages into The Dark Knight Returns when I was stuck by the thought that the story, the setting, the themes must have been cribbed from Watchmen. Obviously I was wrong; the two novels were written independently, but the similarities between the two are almost overwhelming. First, The Dark Knight begins with the newspaper clipping about aged superheroes. Watchmen tackles a similar vein of the post-glory days superhero community. And of course, Watchmen very skillfully weaves into its narrative fragments of newspaper clippings, personal correspondences, biographies, and the pirate comic, to name a few. More prominently, certain characters in each of the novels were also surprisingly akin to one another. The new-wave neo-punk youths, the naive and over-trusting psychologist, and the cynical media figures are a few that populate the background of both novels, but I think the comparison can even be extended to more of the main characters. The Joker and the Comedian are alike in more than just name. Both have a deep understanding of the madness and brutality of the human condition and twist it into dark mockery through their casual amorality. This dark picture of humanity is shared by Rorschach and Batman, who both bear psychological scars and a conviction that people will follow their worst impulses if not corrected. Their ideologies make no room for moral gray areas; they uphold the law through vigilante justice that incorporates at least some degree of violence. They are Randian ideals and perhaps even pseudo-fascists to an extent. On the opposite end of the scale are Superman and Night Owl, who both prove to be manipulable in their desire to do the best for people. Night Owl's impotence is an ironic reversal of Superman's superhuman abilities, but both are past their prime, stuck in their glory days, remnants of the bygone type of superhero. These comparisons rely to some extent on archetype, or maybe even stereotype, but are nevertheless prevalent and hard to ignore.

The similarities were, to me obvious and overpowering. However, the two stories were completely independent and I was left wondering what could have produced two such thematically similar works. I think the answer might lie in the time period: both novels are saturated with the kind of paranoia and insecurity associated with the 1980s Cold War mentality. Superheroes have outlived their usefulness with the rise of the nuclear era. With the possibility of 'godlike' figures comes the battle for political ownership, complicated further by the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall, and all the other borders between 'us' and 'them.' One quote in Watchmen lays out the problematic dynamic: "I never said 'The superman exists and he's American.' What I said was 'God exists and he's American.'" Navigating these politically charged boundaries in a climate of hostility and distrust, when once-venerated icons of security like the church or the law were being eroded, gives rise to the charged atmosphere that engenders most of the thematic similarities between the two books. One moment in particular drove this home for me. When the nuclear missile Superman diverts over the ocean explodes, Commissioner Gordon shields a child from the blast with his body. When Ozymandias' creature releases its psychic shockwave, Bernard (the newsstand man) protects Bernie (the kid reading the pirate comic) from the fallout. These two moments, separate but undeniably linked by the overriding fear of human extinction at the hands of our own weapons, are proof to me of literature's constant struggle to define the cultural fears and forces that shape our understanding of the human conditions.