Rorschach's Journal Memorandum is a legal document authored in September 1, 2019 by Dale Petey of the Anti-Vigilante Task Force's Research Unit.
Summary[]
Dale Petey states on the record that he did not want to terminate the search for Adrian Veidt believing it would be a mistake to have him declared dead.
Petey is aware that the content he writes about could risk offending Agent Laurie Blake, since some the events are personal to her, though it is unknown if she actually reads any of his memos. Regardless, he states that Laurie's history is part of the history of American culture.
Petey is concerned over to appeal of Walter Joseph Kovacs, aka Rorschach, and reports that the reemergence of the Seventh Kavalry of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a white supremacist group who have appropriated Kovacs’ writings and mask and see their own warped ideology reflected on Rorschach's, would possibly take violent action if the FBI terminated the search for Veidt, as they believe Kovacs' disappearance is linked to him. Veidt had vanished off the face of the earth, and the lingering mystery of his absence continues to irritate his fanbase who worships him. Seventh Kavalry worships Rorschach, and want the man they believe to be responsible for his disappearance brought to justice. The basis for their views on both Kovacs and Veidt is Rorschach's journal.
Petey's purpose of the memo is to provide a comprehensive education and a threat assessment into Kovacs' toxic legacy, and proposes an alternative course of action that should mitigate any negative ramifications. He also asks his readers to consider forwarding this summary of facts to anyone who needs it
A Tale of Two Journals[]
Context[]
On October 21st, 1985, Walter Kovacs was apprehended by the New York City Police Department at the home of former costumed criminal, Edgar Jacobi, aka Moloch the Mystic, after an anonymous tip led detectives to an active crime scene where both victim (Jacobi, shot in the head) and apparent perpetrator (Kovacs) were present. It was a monumental event in the late century movement to curb vigilantism and deconstruct the public’s admiration of “costumed adventurers.” The only Alpha Class mask to refuse retirement after the Keene Act of 1977 made all forms of vigilantism illegal again, the capture of Rorschach—coming days after Doctor Manhattan abandoned Earth amid allegations (now disputed) that his electromagnetic energies were carcinogenic – augured an end to an era that began in 1938 with Hooded Justice and, for many, outstayed its welcome for decades.
Rorschach 101[]
Assessments filed by court appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Malcolm Long, who died in the Dimensional Incursion Event, indicated that Walter Kovacs was a profoundly alienated individual suffering from dissociative identity disorder, shaped by child abuse, multiple psychotic episodes, and abandonment trauma. It has been speculated by those in the Anti-Vigilante Task Force's Research Unit that Kovacs, a classic “lone nut” archetype, desired to see his former Alpha Class associates defy the Keene Act and return to vigilantism for personal reasons, either for companionship or for the validation. While these are admittedly sentimental conjectures, Kovacs is viewed as undeserving of them. Petey abhors the idea of “costumed adventurers” and that Kovacs, who he views as "pitiless murderer" and "a rabid dog with a deadly bite", as a prime example into why they were a terrible idea.
Kovacs was also an avid reader of New Frontiersman, a far-right tabloid prone to yellow journalism and Red Scare paranoia, whose editor, Hector Godfrey, is a vociferous supporter of masked vigilantes. Kovacs read the newspaper to the exclusion of any other source of news. It is believed that Kovacs merely collected the periodical for its glowing coverage of his war on crime.
Godfrey, who is a hideous racist, wrote an editorial published prior to Kovacs’ disappearance in which he took offense to Doug Roth's criticism of masked vigilantes (until then, a largely white male phenomenon) who compared them to a modern day Ku Klux Klan, Godfrey proceeded to defend the KKK: “[I] might point out that despite what some might view to be their later excesses, the Klan originally came into being because decent people had perfectly reasonable fears for the safety of their persons and belongings when forced into proximity with people from a culture far less morally advanced. No, the Klan were not strictly legal, but they did work voluntarily to preserve American culture in areas where there were very real dangers of that culture being overrun and mongrelized.”
While Petey considers the psychological details, ideological frames, and media habits incidental to an incisive understanding of Kovacs, they are still essential to any reckoning of Rorschach’s appeal and the writings attributed to him.
The First Journal[]
Following Walter Kovacs' arrest, the NYPD took possession of his journal. According to the arrest report, the pages were “filled with what is either an elaborate cipher or handwriting too cramped and eccentric to be legible.” In 1995, the NYPD ceded custody of the first journal to the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Division. In the present day, it is currently in the possession of the Anti-Vigilante Task Force. Dale Petey, despite his best efforts, has tried and failed to decipher it due to it's illegibility.
“The Final Draft”[]
On October 31, 1985, Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl II (after his mentor Hollis Mason), and Laurie Blake (formerly known as Laurie Juspeczyck), aka Silk Spectre II (after her mother, Sally Jupiter) and, later, the Comedienne (after her father, Edward Blake) rescued Walter Kovacs from Sing-Sing (alternately known as New York State Penitentiary) in a deadly raid. Out of respect for Blake, who has consistently objected to the science of the Wertham Spectrum tool, Dale Petey refrains from diagnosing her. Kovacs disappeared after his escape, but his confirmed actions prior to his vanishing factor into the lore of his journal. Kovacs was last seen in the company of Dreiberg during the early morning hours of November 1, 1985. His landlord, Dolores Shairp, encountered Kovacs in his apartment ripping up floorboards and retrieving a spare costume and another diary, which she heard him describe as “final draft of journal [sic].” Kovacs and Dreiberg then visited Happy Harry’s Bar & Grill to interrogate the criminal element known to frequent the establishment. Kovacs was heard trying to acquire information about an incident that occurred on the day of his arrest, the attempted murder of Adrian Veidt by a contract killer, Roy Victor Chess, believed to have committed suicide with a cyanide pill to avoid capture.
Through physical torture, Kovacs induced a scattered (and thus potentially unreliable) confession from an unnamed man who described himself as an employee of Pyramid Deliveries; he was heard saying that he had delivered some envelopes to Chess at the request of his superior, whose identity also remains unknown. The activities of Kovacs and Dreiberg on the morning of November 1, 1985 were never thoroughly investigated because on the very next day the Dimensional Incursion Event occurred. Caught at ground zero of the D.I.E. at the intersection of 40th Street and Seventh Avenue was Steven Fine, the lead detective on the Rorschach case. In the months that followed, finding Kovacs became a low priority for an overwhelmed police department as half their employees died in the cataclysmic psychic shockwave unleashed by the E.D.B.E.. As New York City began its return to stability, few cared about a loose end of the past like Kovacs. The only anxiety that people had was the prospect of another E.B.D.E., a threat kept top of mind by random downpours of fetal cephalopods that no one, not even those with a credible physics degree, has ever been able to explain. It was into this culture of fear, combined with superstition and pseudoscience, that Rorschach’s journal materialized.
“The Scoop – and Scandal – of the Century”[]
Legitimate or Hoax?[]
On March 21, 1987, New Frontiersman began printing excerpts from a journal allegedly written by Walter Kovacs. Hector Godfrey couldn’t account for when or how he came to possess it. Godfrey's editorial assistant, Seymour David, discovered the leather-bound log book three months earlier near the top of a stack of submissions known internally as “the crank file.” They assume it arrived by post, but the envelope containing it—with its dated postmark, and, possibly, a return address—had been discarded.
The journal's publication was delayed due to a desire to verify the it's authenticity. Although fingerprints were found on the covers, the New York City Police Department—still operating according to President Richard Nixon's guidelines on FOIA—refused Godfrey’s petition to obtain the prints they had on file for a crosscheck. It was while dickering with police over their lack of cooperation that Godfrey learned of the indecipherable “First Journal.” Another FOIA request was filed to compare the two journals; another denial was given. There was nothing in Godfrey’s artifact—filled with neat handwriting on clean paper and containing only 23 months of entries (1/84-11/85)—to explain the existence of multiple, different editions. It is unknown if Kovacs kept journals of previous years as none were found in his apartment. Because of this, Godfrey could not prove that Kovacs had written Rorschach’s journal, nor could he disprove that it was a hoax.
These issues did not deter Godfrey’s ambitions in the slightest. The passages from Rorschach's journal published by New Frontiersman are described as thick with tangents, bitter rants about moral relativism and urban decay, and seething hate for “liberals and intellectuals and smooth-talkers.” The rhetoric was certainly on brand for New Frontiersman, and similar enough to Godfrey’s writing style as to be suspicious. The storytelling, however, does demonstrate the schizoid pathology diagnosed by Dr. Malcolm Long. The author of Rorschach’s Journal was clearly an individual who wholly and completely identified as Rorschach, a man who considered Walter Kovacs a mere disguise and his ink blot mask his true face.
A Vast and Insidious Conspiracy[]
The problematic relevancy of Rorschach’s journal rests in the passages summarizing a meandering investigation into the grisly murder of Edward Blake, aka The Comedian on October 12, 1985. At the time, it was not widely known that Blake was the Comedian though it was certainly a surprising revelation to the author of Rorschach's journal. The fact that the public now knows the truth about Blake does give Rorschach’s journal one proof of legitimacy. Like Doctor Manhattan, Blake had been in the employ of the U.S. military, which granted him exemption from the Keene Act and permitted him to conduct operations as a costumed adventurer. Along with Dr. Manhattan, the Comedian was a polarizing symbol of American authoritarianism and imperialism—of America as a Totalitarian Super-Power—and as such, he was simultaneously beloved and loathed. The author of Rorschach’s journal holds an empathetic bias toward Blake who holds him in high regard and deep grace. The detective work ascribed to Rorschach “paints a disturbing picture,” which Petey borrows phrasing from the final entry, dated November 1, 1985. The narrative portrays Rorschach as obsessed with the belief in a conspiracy determined to kill or neutralize other Alpha Class masks. His thinking connects a series of truly conspicuous events: the murder of Blake; the cancer scare that drove Dr. Manhattan into exile; the attempted murder of Adrian Veidt; and the murder of Edgar Jacobi, one of three people said to have gotten cancer from exposure to Dr. Manhattan. These actions were in service of either protecting or fulfilling a mysterious project, one that might have involved a private island staffed with artists, writers, and scientists. According to testimony given to Rorschach by Jacobi, Blake understood the goal of the project, and it disturbed him so much that it drove him to moral outrage and despair, ironic dispositions for a man known for being cold, glib, and nihilistic to his core. According to the official record, Blake’s official cause of death is listed as “suspected suicide.”
The Accusation Against Veidt[]
The most shocking claim in Rorschach’s journal is in the final entry. It presents as having been written on the fly while en route to Antarctica to confront the alleged mastermind behind the conspiracy, Adrian Veidt. Dan Dreiberg, who remains in federal custody, has steadfastly refused to speak to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about Rorschach’s journal or the conspiracy. Hector Godfrey speculates that the attempt on Veidt’s life was staged to deflect suspicion. Rorschach's journal contains no evidence to substantiate any of its charges against Veidt. The final entry portrays Rorschach as having been persuaded by Dreiberg of Veidt’s guilt, but none of Dreiberg’s proof is presented. Also in the final entry, Rorschach is convinced that confronting Veidt could end tragically for him. “Veidt. Cannot imagine more dangerous opponent. … Veidt is faster than Dreiberg, perhaps faster than me. Return from mission seems unlikely.”
Following the tenth and final installment of the series, Godfrey published a sum-up editorial that drew some wild and reckless conclusions. He claims that the Dimensional Incursion Event was a false flag operation financed and designed by Veidt; the E.D.B.E. was a sophisticated suicide bomb built from material cloned from the stolen brain of a dead psychic named Robert Deschaines; and that Veidt’s goal was born of his liberal politics, convictions that put him in opposition to almost all of his Alpha Level associates.
Godfrey’s infamous words: “Veidt is Red as the devil. I’m certain if one was to search his thick wallet, one would find his Commie card tucked between a pair of industrial strength condoms he must need for the carnal relations he must surely enjoy with the abomination that is his genetically engineered cat. This, reader, and only this, is why we live in a world robbed of our triune protectors, our big blue god [Manhattan], our greatest super-soldier [The Comedian], and our most spirited watchdog [Rorschach]. Behold the most diabolical plot against America ever designed: to destabilize the governance of righteous conservative rule, Veidt concocted a counterfeit cosmic cataclysm rendered with Hollywood magic and Satanic science for the purpose of turning the Stars and Stripes onto Hammers and Sickles. AND IT WORKED! The events of the past six months are proof! Our commander-in-chief has been frightened into brokering peace with the Kremlin for the sake of creating a “common defense” against a threat that doesn’t actually exist! (How SUSPICIOUSLY CONVENIENT of that pile of psychic seafood to melt into a puddle of harmless water and then evaporate away before science could study it. Dubious, I say! Dubious!) The Ruskies have gained a foothold on our sacred soil (Burgersn-Borscht anyone? I HOPE NOT!), and our glorious Manifest Destiny march toward global Democracy, Capitalism, and Christian Supremacy has been stalled. Now we cower as we wait for the next shoe to drop. You know what it is. It’s not another beastie from the outer limits of Dimension X, and it’s not the nuisance of spoiled shrimp sloshing from the sky. No, this jackbooted jabberwocky is the Anti-Christ masquerading as a bleeding heart cowboy, a bad actor on so many levels who seeks to re-educate us into slaves of Big Brother. IT’S A GODDAM LIBERAL PRESIDENT.” It continues on from there.
Legacy and Conclusions[]
Immediate Aftermath[]
While "Rorschach's Journal" sold thousands of copies of New Frontiersman, for most people, it wasn’t apocalyptic revelation. The public viewed it as nothing more but outrageous entertainment from an dubious outlet that provided entertainment and brief distraction from extra-dimensional anxiety. The mainstream media refused to acknowledge Hector Godfrey’s “scoop,” given their negative view of New Frontiersman, which, under Godfrey, was as disreputable as the Weekly World News. Even if “Rorschach’s Journal” was written by Walter Kovacs—if it was “The Final Draft” fetched from his apartment on the night of his disappearance—his words still couldn’t be trusted because Kovacs was diagnostically insane. When Adrian Veidt himself was asked about “Rorschach’s Journal” in an interview with Nova Express, he laughed away the conspiracy theory as a failure to engage terrifying truths: “What do you call something like that? ‘Blotting out reality,’ perhaps?” He added: “I knew Rorschach. I worked with Rorschach. And while we had our differences, he had my sympathy, because he was a damaged human being, and he had my admiration, too, as no one in our fraternity was more dedicated to making our world safer than Walter was. If we are to remember him at all as we move into the future, let us remember him for those qualities, not this fabrication baring his name. It is, quite literally, fake news.”
“Rorschach’s Journal” As Counter Culture Classic[]
“Rorschach’s Journal” nearly faded into obscurity had it not been for two events, the “Blue Wave” of 1992 and the arrest of Dan Dreiberg and Laurie Blake in 1995 for violating the Keene Act. Their capture reignited cultural fascination with costumed adventurers, and to capitalize on that curiosity, New Frontiersman published “Rorschach’s Journal” in its entirety titled The Rorschach Journal. The bookazine became a best-seller that appealed to a wide variety of curiosities, including right wing extremists. Some take it as a history book, others, devotional literature. For them, “Rorschach’s Journal”—and Hector Godfrey’s interpretation of it—challenges the new, heretical orthodoxy that makes them feel marginalized and obsolete, written by a revolutionary they revere as a saint. It rationalizes their conviction that Robert Redford is an illegitimate president, brought to power because of the E.D.B.E., which, again, per the convoluted logic of Godfrey’s conspiracy theory, was essentially an insidious coup concocted the embittered liberal elite, as the ramifications of the DIE paved the way for the Blue Wave of ‘92. This belief is the justification for any number of anti-social behaviors, from the formation of drop-out communities known as “Nixonvilles,” to domestic terrorists like the aforementioned Seventh Kavalry, who protest the president by committing violence against symbols of the executive branch, including law enforcement. The legacy of “Rorschach’s Journal” is evident in every garden variety “anti-hero” vigilante that the Anti-Vigilante Task Force has confronted, the wannabe local hero who puts on an idiosyncratic costume to live out their solipsism and inflict their yawp on society. Most of them proceed from the ingrained belief that government—especially an interventionist government, with its emphasis on controlled growth through increased regulation—is woefully inefficient or unworthy of trust. Their cynicism is further nurtured by the administration’s controversial efforts to manage our popular culture with warning labels on entertainment and prohibitions on depictions of the D.I.E. that might trigger those with 11/2 PTSD or stoke paranoid thinking about it. Staunch believers are already prone to think that cultural institutions are rigged to demonize them. For example, the first season of American Hero Story, which turned Rorschach, now a conservative/libertarian icon, into a withering deconstruction of pathology that implicitly shamed anyone who ever found him or his kind admirable or noble.
Recommendations[]
In conclusion, Dale Petey voices his concern about the decision to close the case on Adrian Veidt’s disappearance. After seven consecutive terms, Robert Redford has announced that he won’t be running for an eighth term, and tensions are now running high. To finally declare Veidt dead eight years after his vanishing will evoke a singular question from every conspiracy theorist in America: “Why NOW?”
Quitting the search for Veidt and declaring him deceased risks antagonizing and activating Rorschach-inspired extremists who express their distrust of government with maverick vigilantism or brazen attacks on law enforcement or both; it will play to them like a cover-up. Fans of Rorschach, such as members of the Seventh Kavalry, believe that Veidt was behind their hero’s disappearance.) if Veidt’s own disappearance remains the subject of inquiry -- or at least designated “unresolved”—perhaps their suspicions can be checked, and over time, they, like the rest of popular culture, will eventually lose interest in him.
The FBI also runs the risk of Veidt miraculously reappearing, which would be a huge embarrassment for the Bureau, especially since the Elvis Presley debacle two decades prior. Presley, who supposedly died in 1977, wandered into a nightclub in Hanoi on VVN Night and performed every one of his songs with “Blue” in the title (there are fifteen). Petey believes that Veidt, through his vast resources and massive ego, is probably planning a show-stopping comeback of his own. As such, he recommends that the FBI should do absolutely nothing since Veidt had disappeared from the public consciousness even before he disappeared from Karnak. He understands that publicly, the FBI still needs to present the appearance of action, which is why the ideal move would be for the Anti-Vigilante Task Force to take custody of the case and announce that the investigation remains ongoing. The mere appearance of due diligence could mitigate the negative ramifications of giving up on Veidt, and Petey would be happy to take on the responsibility of continuing to write lengthy memos no one will ever read to demonstrate said diligence.
Gallery[]
