Rorschach served as Watchmen’s ever-present harbinger of doom with his “The End is Nigh” sign. But Before Watchmen: Nite Owl #4 reveals the real reason Rorschach is so attached to the iconic warning.
Throughout the original Watchmen story, a man can be spotted in the first several issues brandishing a message of warning for the coming apocalypse. It’s revealed midway through the series that the street prophet is actually Walter Kovacs, the secret identity of Rorschach. While Rorschach stops carrying the sign after his arrest, the sign remains quite an identifiable image from the comic. Much like the Comedian’s button in Watchmen, the sign serves as a personal symbol for Rorschach. It embodies the vigilante’s belief in the rapid decay of society being a driving force toward’s humanity’s inevitable doom. The sign also helps Kovacs blend into the streets and keep an eye on the world around him when not acting as Rorschach.
Thanks to Watchmen’s prequel series, fans can actually discover where Walter first acquired the sign. In Before Watchmen: Nite Owl by J. Michael Straczynski and John Higgins, the early days of Rorschach’s partnership with Nite Owl is explored. However, the two have a brief falling out after Nite Owl seems to fall for the local vice queen, Twilight Lady. In his civilian life, Rorschach attends a local church service led by Reverend Dean who preaches on the ‘sinful’ ways of society and uses the “End is Nigh” sign to illustrate his point. Walter begins doing some light work for the church, until he discovers Reverend Dean has been abducting and killing sex workers. Walter becomes Rorschach to make Dean pay for his crimes. Taking the sign, Rorschach drives the wooden stake through the Reverend’s heart and leaves, taking the sign with him.
What “The End Is Nigh” Means For Rorschach
Every time Walter Kovacs is seen in Watchmen when not in his Rorschach disguise, he’s always carrying his sign. From walking the streets, to visiting the newsstands and even passing by the Comedian’s funeral, Kovacs keeps the message “The End is Nigh” constantly in the minds of readers. After the street prophet is revealed to be Rorschach, the sign seems to reinforce the paranoid beliefs on display in the vigilante’s journal. But seeing the origin of Kovacs’ sign puts the item in an entirely new light.
Like the mask he wears as Rorschach, Walter faces the world with a black-and-white mentality. As a moral absolutist, Watchmen’s Rorschach believes in an objective right and wrong and that it’s up to people like him to enforce those principles. In Rorschach’s eyes, Reverend Dean needed to pay for his streak of murders with his own life. Killing Dean with his own sign isn’t just ironic, it reinforces Rorschach’s uncompromising beliefs. While the sign still holds an apocalyptic tone in Watchmen, it also symbolizes Rorschach’s commitment to making crime pay.
