I agree with this explanation. I don’t have the book in front of me either but I am sure the Comedian is supposed to realize who is responsible. The whole plot isn’t something most people are capable of, and if you look back on it there are plenty of hints Ozy is responsible. Pyramid Deliveries, for crying out loud? What an inconspicuous name. The Comedian also sees the ‘cancer list,’ doesn’t he?
[The Jimmy Olsen character is named Wally Weaver, by the way.]
Fenris is right that some of the elements of Ozy’s plan could be independently verifiable. Many of them sound crazy even if you verify them and Rorschach is a lunatic, so most people wouldn’t believe it no matter what. But then again, how to explain all the tachyon generators?
There’s maybe some miscommunicating between us, but this right here is straight-up disagreement.
I don’t see Eddie as a not-too-bright troglodyte by any stretch; he’s the almost inhumanly perceptive guy who stops Hooded Justice cold with a deft observation, keeps the Crimebusters from ever getting off the ground with a well-timed insight that impresses even Ozzy, sets Doc straight on real-world counterfactuals in Vietnam, and is the only man on the planet who spots activity on the uncharted island located right where it could have been a Nicaraguan base of operations. He got away with murder to save Nixon’s presidency by covering up the Watergate break-in and then set to knocking over governments in between silencing his critics by rescuing all those hostages on the other side of the world.
Rorschach is much smarter? I’m not seeing it.
The big question, as you put it, is how? I’d of course be willing to grant that Eddie is unusually perceptive – but, failing that, I’d pretty much have to figure that Veidt did on the island what he did at his office: left the plans around where anyone could find 'em and some superhero did. Either way, once that first-hand evidence is no longer there to get eyeballed, no one else can/could do what Eddie did.
Well, as per the GN you’re 100% rejecting Veidt’s explanation: that (a) Eddie didn’t include it in a report because the alternative was more horrifying, but that (b) the deaths of millions of innocents was too much even for Eddie’s practiced cynicism.
Actually, that’s pretty much how it goes down with Nite Owl: Rorschach explains that he was routinely investigating the homicide of some guy named Ed Blake, who as it turns out was the Comedian. Dan apparently hadn’t known Blake was the Comedian, and apparently hadn’t even known there was a diplomat named Ed Blake; Doc knew because they both work for the Pentagon, and Adrian knew because of his investigation into Hooded Justice’s disappearance – but all evidence is that Nite Owl and Rorschach hadn’t known.
In all fairness, though, that’s what the CIA concludes, and what Nite Owl concludes once he finds out what Rorschach learned, and it’s also the conclusion Doctor Manhattan relays, as well as the conclusion Adrian Veidt helpfully suggests; when Rorschach suggests the mask-killer theory, Veidt shrugs and plays along with that incorrect conclusion just as readily.
What’s key is leaving it open for anyone. Was it a political killing? Was it Libyans? Was it South Americans? Was it just a burglar? All those hypotheses get floated, and none can be disproven; the killer left no evidence for the authorities or the vigilantes to work with, and so everyone just goes with the path of least resistance, which means no one suspects Ozzy. The key is just making sure there’s a killer who can get the job done and get away clean.
He can’t be 100% sure anyone won’t leave a clue. As it happens, though, we know he didn’t leave any clues; possibly someone else could match him on competence, possibly not, but no one could do better than the superathlete who leaves trained detectives convinced that it must have been multiple assailants.
He’d not have been worried about DNA evidence. This was 1985; such was not in existence in the real world then, and though genetic engineering is obviously quite advanced in the Watchmenverse, I think we can infer that they haven’t mastered using DNA for forensic purposes as we do.
I think the point to it was that there was enough in there that it would cause people to rethink what happened. Ozy’s plan is pretty weak and is not going to stand up to a lot of scrutiny. Especially if it comes out that there is no follow up. Without the fear of an outside threat to unite against everything Ozy did is for nothing. Granted, sooner or later someone is going to figure out that there is not further threat and it falls apart anyway, but I think Ozy’s plan was intended to be a shock that pulls the world back from a nuclear brink rather then a full scale plan for permanent world peace. Rorschach’s journal will just unravel it sooner than ozy planned.
Isn’t that pretty much what Ozzy says, even? “I did it. I DID IT! I saved earth from hell. Next, I’ll help her toward utopia.” We don’t know just what he’s planning to do next, but he’s explicitly planning on doing something next; he specifies that his new world merely requires a different kind of heroism, but for all that still needs heroes exactly as badly as before.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Ozy tried to unite the world in a one world government…with him as the leader. This way, he would do what his hero Alexander never could quite manage: rule the entire world.
