Rorschach #3 Review: Making Icons Out Of Idiots

Back in the much more innocent days of 2005, writer John Rogers captured a conversation with a friend who coined the term "crazification factor," which in short theorizes that at least 27% of any given population are best summed up as such: "Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half is the core of the Crazification — either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy." Rorschach #3, like a post-election article in a major newspaper of record, to humanize people who are threats not only to others but to themselves as well.

The Kid is a sharpshooter named Laura who grows up under the watchful eye of her father, a military veteran charged with the relatively easy federal job of watching over a graveyard created to compensate for a mine accident in the early 20th century. The destruction of New York orchestrated by former adventurer Ozymandias radicalized him against the threat of mind-controlling squids from space. He spent most of his free time with his daughter, drilling target practice weapons maintenance with her. His radicalization led him to believe some pretty wild things, isolating him with Laura and a small group called the Miner's Militia. With limited socialization available, she threw herself into impressing her father, likewise becoming radicalized to their cause and distinguishing herself as a lethally accurate markswoman before the age of 12.

Tom King's script draws a pretty straight line from "little girl vying for her father's approval" to "would-be presidential assassin," doing a lot of heavy lifting in humanizing someone who does something historically horrible. Likewise, the placid, almost Breaking Bad-ish visual tableaus in Rorschach #3 laid out by Jorge Fornes, Dave Stewart (probably not the one from the Eurythmics), and Clayton Cowles makes clear the limited information and opportunity of some communities left behind by the twenty-first century, yearning for a "simpler time."

The question, of course, is should this work do so much to humanize people who see murder as a tool for political advancement, people willing to step outside the law to enforce their vision of the nation? Does that, in fact, help us as a nation or instead sensationalize and proliferate the aforementioned crazification factor, making icons out of idiots, lionizing those not capable of leading the pride? Your own answer to that may determine your enjoyment of Rorschach #3, which has a very high standard of craft and production values but perhaps has a skewed take on how those tools should be applied.

Then again, maybe Alan Moore was right, like Hall & Oates, and some words are better left unspoken. RATING: MEH.