But what if that adventure consumed his entire life? Wouldn't that "grounding" then become something akin to a burial? Parker's activities as Spider-Man enable him to lead a more genuine life--but those activities themselves are most emphatically not "life". Web-swinging is more like meditation, or an exorcism--it's not Peter's "true self" unleashed. And if he got trapped in that condition, he wouldn't be a "free spirit", he'd be more like a wrathful ghost. He'd be like Rorschach, in fact.
When Walter Kovacs gives up his dual identity, he upsets a delicate balance. No longer grounded, he goes underground--and his capacity to relate to the world rots away. Rorschach's strange destiny is to become the undead embodiment of his own moral law. He is absolutely immune to all power relationships. Even when he is locked up in the ultimate Foucaultian structure--a modern penitentiary--he is not defined by it. He deftly manipulates the prying psychiatrist and he stands off an army of thugs--reacting mechanically to each situation, as if hovering above it all. And, of course, he is. We're told again and again that Rorschach smells like a corpse, and we know he is destined to be disintegrated by Dr. Manhattan. It all makes perfect sense--at a certain point, Kovacs the man became indistinguishable from his moral judgements of the world. As Rorschach, he is synonomous with the observations and meditations in the journal he keeps, and it is quite fitting that, in the final panel of the series, this book resurfaces--the cremated remains of Rorschach--to render the final judgement upon the world and the characters that Moore has presented us with...
Watchmen IV (I think he fights the Russian guy in that one!)
Sean Collins responds to my musings on the function of Peter Parker's nightlife--and I think he's right when he argues that the post-Ditko comics and (especially) the film reject my formulation in favor of a more simplistic equation: "webswinging=liberated id"... I enjoyed the film (but certainly did not love it) on its' own terms, but I must say I think they really crossed the line with that upside-down half-masked kiss thing--there's no way that those kinds of perks should come with the "great power"... At the same time, I think it was a mistake to have Peter reject MJ (and the whole question of a romantic relationship) in order to protect the purity of his "mission"--it's not supposed to be an either/or proposition! That's Superman stuff (and really, the whole film structures its' relationships a la Big S).
Article comments
1 - Al Barger
Co-incidentally, I just re-discovered my old Watchmen book buried in storage - and accidentally ran into a groovy little internet tidbit -- an unproduced 1989 screenplay for a Watchmen movie.