Personality
During his childhood Walter Kovacs was described as bright, and excelled in literature, mathematics, and religious education. Kovacs continues his one-man battle against crime long after superheroes have become both detested and illegal, eventually replacing his Kovacs identity with the persona of Rorschach. Rorschach considers his mask his true "face" and his unmasked persona to be his "disguise," refusing to answer to his birth name during his trial and psyciatric sessions. Moore depicted Rorschach as being extremely right-wing, and morally uncompromising, a viewpoint that has alienated him from the rest of society, even among other superheroes. Rorschach presents his views on right and wrong as starkly black and white with no room for compromise, with the exception of his respect for the Comedian causing him to excuse the attempt of rape of the first Silk Spectre as a "moral lapse." He holds deep contempt for behavior he considers immoral and is openly derogative of heroes who do not share his unwavering views, deriding them as "soft". Moore stated in an interview that he was already deep into writing the book before he realized that Rorschach's refusal to compromise meant the character would have to die.
Rorschach displays a discomfort with female sexuality as a result of his early childhood, although the crimes that most affected him spiritually were against women: the murders of Kitty Genovese and Blair Roche. Moore has said that the character's real name, Walter Kovacs, was inspired by Ditko's tendency to give his characters names beginning with the letter K. Rorschach is often described as being mentally ill by other characters in the comic. In an interview for the BBC's Comics Britannia, Moore stated that Rorschach was created as a way of exploring what an archetypical Batman-type character—a driven, vengeance-fueled vigilante—would be like in the real world. He concluded that the short answer was "a nutcase."
Read more about this topic: Rorschach (comics)
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