The Watchmen of HBO have made changes to Hooded Justice from Alan Moore’s comic

HBO’s Watchmen calls itself a sequel to the influential 1986 comic, not a remake, and has prevailed. With a story set 34 years after the events of the book, the show explored the episodes of Watchmen but did not directly interact with their story.

But all of that changes in the sixth episode of the series, “This Extraordinary Being,” in which Watchmen, the television program, Watchmen, makes a big change to comics – and that without really changing anything.

(Ed. Note: This track contains big spoilers for episode 6 by Watchmen.)

Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons / DC Comics

“This Extraordinary Being” reveals something that the original Guardian comic has stubbornly left a secret: The Identity of Hooded Justice. America’s first costumed crime fighter to inspire the other Minutemen to die for life was William Reeves, the survivor of the destruction of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Black Wall Street, and a black, strange man.

This is a great extension of the original source material. But what fascinates is not just the change itself, but how skillfully the people behind HBO’s Watchmen have included them in the canon of the Watchmen book.

Who was Hooded Justice in the comics?

For a character who was the very first “superhero” of her alternative history in the United States, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in her comic gave few details about Hooded Justice. He can only be seen in one scene in the 12 issue series, and most of what we know about him is a second-hand account: Under the Hood, the fictional essay by Hollis Mason, AKA Nite Owl. The title of Watchmen episode 6, “This Extraordinary Being,” is a direct quote from Under the Hood.

The rarity of these details can be summed up to what Hooded Justice was most famous for: he was the only costumed guard who never revealed his secret identity, even to other costumed guards.

What the comic told us

First, we have an idea of ​​how he began his career. In his book, Mason describes the first known performances by Hooded Justice, which inspired him to Crimefighter, and uses quotes from news sources. Watchmen TV inventor Damon Lindelof sees the text by Moore and Gibbons as sacred, so we can probably see this information as fairly reliable:

An attempted assault and robbery that took place in Queens, New York. A man and his girlfriend, who went home after a night in the theater, had been attacked by a gang of three gun-armed men. After freeing the couple from their valuables, the gang began beating and physically abusing the young man while threatening to indecently attack his girlfriend. At the time, the crime was interrupted by a figure who fell into the alley from above with something over his face and disarmed the three attackers before they were beaten to such a degree that all three had to be hospitalized and one was subsequently lost the use of both legs as a result of a spinal injury. ( .) And then, a week later, it happened again. ( .)

Thanks to the intervention of “A tall man, built like a wrestler wearing a black hood and a black cloak and also wearing a nose around his neck,” a jam in the supermarket had been prevented. This extraordinary creature had broken through the window of the supermarket during the robbery and attacked those responsible so violently and cruelly that those who were not immediately disabled, were only too willing to drop their weapons and surrender. The newspapers combined this occurrence of masked interference with their predecessor and continued the story under the heading “Hooded Justice”. The first masked adventurer outside of comics had received his name.

If you’ve seen “This Extraordinary Being,” you can see both incidents as scenes in the show.

“Reading and rereading this message,” says Mason, “I knew I had to be the second.” I had found my calling. “He goes on to explain that within 12 months of Hooded Justice’s first appearance on the news, nearly a dozen costumed heroes had begun to work.

We know that Hooded Justice was not one of the first to respond to Captain Metropolis’ call to found the Minutemen Alliance on Crime, but finally joined. During his tenure, he and the original Silk Specter, mother of Agent Blake, had a relationship – or at least tried to create the illusion of it.

“Oddly enough,” writes Mason, “although Sally would always hang on his arm, he never seemed to be very interested in her.” I do not think I’ve ever seen him kiss her, though maybe it was just his mask. ”

A scene with Silk Specter is the only time that Hooded Justice actually appears in Watchmen. After taking a commercial photograph of all the Minutemen together, Silk Specter changes her clothes, whereupon the comedian enters the room, making more and more sexual assaults on her, knocking her down and trying to rape her if she rejects her.

Hooded Justice interrupts:

This is the only panel in Watchmen where we can catch a glimpse of the color of Hooded Justice, hidden everywhere except in the eye sockets of his costume. This scene, along with Mason’s comments on his relationship with Silk Specter, is the source of the general belief that Hooded Justice was a gay man and a sexual sadist.

At least that’s an interpretation. Moore and Gibbons never go further into his motives.

We know that Hooded Justice remained with the Minutemen throughout the term of the group, until it disbanded in 1949 due to the changing American landscape. Then, in the 1950s, he, like other costumed crime fighters, was called to testify before the House’s UnAmerican Activities Committee – and to reveal to a representative of the House his true identity. He refused to expose himself and shortly thereafter “just disappeared”.

“At least that’s how it seemed,” Mason writes. “Disappearance is not a big problem if you’re a costume hero – you just take your costume off.” It seemed quite likely that Hooded Justice had simply opted to retire rather than reveal his identity, and the authorities were completely satisfied seemed to be. ”

Apart from these facts, we have only the writings of Hollis Mason, which, while not necessarily lying, contain a lot of speculation that is not confirmed elsewhere in the book.

Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons / DC Comics

For example, he said he had “heard the hooded justice openly approving of the activities of Hitler’s Third Reich,” which seems to contradict the notion that hooded justice is a black man fighting for the safety of black life , But it can also be the smoke screen of a black man attempting to disguise his true heritage – or a misinterpreted statement by a man whose only connection to his parents was a piece of propaganda for the First World War, that of black-soldier forced recruits aimed. Next up is a panel discussion in which Hooded Justice tells the comedian that the Minutemen should avoid political situations after the latter suggests that America should meddle in the European war.

Mason’s account is least meaningful when he talks about his theories of Hooded Justice identity and presumed death. It links the disappearance of Hooded Justice to the death of a “known circus star” named Rolf Müller, as reported by Watchmen’s infamous pre-owned weekly rag, The Newfrontiersman. Mason simply associates Müller with Hooded Justice on the basis that they share the same general build and disappear at the same time.

“Whether the body washed up on the Boston coast belonged to Muller or not, neither he nor Hooded Justice were ever seen or heard again,” writes Mason. “Were you the same man? If so, were they really dead? If they were dead, who would have killed them? Did Hooded Justice really work for the Reds? I dont know. Real life is chaotic, inconsistent, and it rarely happens that anything is ever really solved. ”

Mark Hill / HBO

The Watchmen by HBO give Hooded Justice a functional history

The show cleverly fits new information into the gaps left by the book. Like Hollis Mason, William Reeves is a young cop who grew up on pulp serial movies and amuses himself about the new pulp genre of superhero comics. After a formative incident in which he is almost lynched by his colleagues, he rescues a white couple from the robbery, still wearing a hood and a noose over their heads.

When the papers call him heroes, Reeves decides to continue, but on the advice of his wife, he paints the only piece of skin exposed by his costume, the color of a white man’s skin – and explains exactly why in the only one Close-up of his face in Guardian comic, his skin appears pale. In public, he becomes a hero and inspires imitators.

Captain Metropolis, the founder of the Minutemen, obviously wants to join the costumed hero who looks up to the rest of his potential recruits. As Mason puts it in his book: “Dressing up a costume requires a very extreme personality, and the likelihood of having eight such personalities together was 75 million to one.”

He advises Reeves to keep his race a secret. None of the Minutemen would exist without him, but they never really know him. In the intimate relationship that the comedian has plainly picked up, Captain Metropolis Hooded Justice believes the Minutemen would help him tear down the ring of clan members who want to murder hundreds of innocent blacks. As soon as they take care of all these advertising-friendly super villains.

But Watchmen is not the only superhero context for Hooded Justice.

Jerry Seigel, Joe Shuster / DC Comics

The Watchmen series turns Hooded Justice on superman

People say that Doctor Manhattan is the Superman of the Guardians, but there is one important aspect of the Man of Steel that Manhattan lacks. In the DC Universe, Superman is the superhero whose appearance inspired everyone else and kicked off the show “Age of Heroes.” Hooded Justice takes over this role in the production of Watchmen and in “This Extraordinary Being”, only the Watchmen television series ties him closer to DC’s flagship hero.

A scene in which Reeves reads Action Comics # 1, the first time Superman appears, reflects a scene in Mason’s memoir, in which he notices that kids are crazy about comics, borrowing one from a kid, and instantly Superman are in love. But it is also hammering home that Reeves and Superman share the same lineage: children who were sent home by parents who could not escape themselves, on the brink of destruction.

Heck, Reeves’ wife is even a newspaper journalist, which makes her a parallel to Lois Lane.

“Sex stuff”

The biggest distraction that HBO’s unveiling of Hooded Justice is from the original Watchmen is to call a superhero who is sincerely motivated to see justice, rather than cynicism, ego, or because they find it sexually arousing. The episode even gives a good grade to this main theme of the source material in its first scene, as a raw FBI agent recklessly implies that (a fictional version of) Hooded Justice wears a noose for “sex stuff”.

“This extraordinary being” places something different and simple in the foreground: there are situations in which it is not about personal satisfaction or the desire for fame, but about the survival of the community, to distrust the law.