Pronounced "Raw Shock"

Found myself watching The Watchmen last night. I liked it better, much better in some ways, than I thought I would. While I continue to be surprised at the latent, well, fascism in much contemporary comic superhero legend (something that was also very much the case in Sin City), worlds in which stereotypically liberal values have resulted in nothing but societal passivity in the face of truly existential archetypes of chaos and evil - I also continue to be surprised at how effective this backdrop remains for modern-day myth-making.

I also continue to be surprised at the role of "The Wound" in the making of the superhero. Superman and Batman the orphans. Spiderman, the Hulk, Dr, Manhattan, Wolverine and a host of other innocents caught up in a dark nexus of unimaginable science and indifferent fate. Most mesmerizing in The Watchmen, to me, is the story's narrator, Rorschach who - at least as far as I can tell - is the unwanted son of a whore.
The idea of The Wound is one I first ran into decades ago (!) in John Gardner's book, On Becoming a Novelist:

A psychological wound is helpful, if it can be kept in partial control, to keep the novelist driven. Some fatal childhood accident for which one feels responsible and can never fully forgive oneself; a sense that one never quite earned one's parents' love; shame about one's origins - belligerent defensive guilt about one's race or country upbringing or the physical handicaps of one's parents - or embarassment about one's own physical appearance: all these are promising signs ... insofar as guilt or shame bend the sould inward they are likely, under the right conditions (neither too little discomfort nor too much), to serve the writer's project.

Substitute novelist or writer for artist, martial artist or - in the tragic case of Rorschach - superhero and I think you're saying the same thing every time.

In any event, a film worth seeing for me to be sure, given where I'm calling from these days.