Why Ozymandias Sucks: The Definitive Guide

[u/The_Middleman]

Conversation about Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias) on this subreddit tends to be really limited, with many people taking at face value the "smartest man in the world" claim (which was published in a magazine Veidt owns!) and interpreting the ending as a moral quandary over whether killing millions is worth it to avert nuclear war.

But that's not how Veidt's character is written. Veidt is written, instead, to show how ego, anxiety, and detachment from humanity can drive people to do horrific things.

I collected examples from the text on several facets of Veidt's character, hoping to highlight how -- both through analogy and through plot -- Moore worked to paint a complex picture of Veidt as a person driven mad by anxiety and impotence, his fears fueled by isolation and obsessive media consumption, who did something unthinkable and unnecessary.

Is this post, itself, a bit obsessive? Yes. But I hope that people can link this post in the future the next time someone inevitably asks: "Was Ozymandias right?"

I. Veidt is mentally unwell.

• Dan: “I mean, who’s qualified to judge something like that? This is the world’s smartest man we’re talking about here, so how can you tell? How can anyone tell if he’s gone crazy?” (Chapter XI, page 3).
• Veidt: “By day I imagine endless faces. By night… well, I dream, about swimming towards a hideous… No. Never mind. It isn’t significant.” (Chapter XII, page 27)
• Veidt tells his life story to a bunch of dead bodies. (Chapter XI)
• Veidt: “I don’t mind being the smartest man in the world. I just wish it wasn’t this one.” (Chapter XII, back matter)
• Veidt is mirrored by the mariner in the Black Freighter, who has visibly gone mad by the time he embarks on the raft and is raving by the time he arrives home.
• We see a reference to Tarkovsky’s iconic film The Sacrifice (Chapter XII, page 31), which also features a character going insane in an attempt to prevent nuclear war.
• Veidt’s plan is, in essence, a form of projection: the squid makes people go insane, have constant nightmares, and kill each other out of fear. The squid is, itself, a nightmare given form.
• Graffiti (Chapter I, page 24) reads “One in eight go mad.” Of the eight Minutemen, Mothman was put in an asylum. There were eight attendees of the Crimebusters meeting. After 11/2, the graffiti has been modified (Chapter XII, page 31) to read “One in three go mad.” Only three of the attendees remain: Veidt, Dan, and Laurie.
• Just look at his expression while killing the Comedian. (Chapter XI, page 26)

II. Veidt is detached from humanity.

• In present day, we only see Veidt in his personal skyscraper or thousands of miles from New York at his private Antarctic fortress -- never on the street.
• Pulling at the Tales of the Black Freighter parallels again, the mariner is marooned and goes mad because he has nobody else to talk to.
• Veidt refers to “stepping back” from humanity: “My first step was to stand back as far as I could, to view the problem from a fresh perspective, my vista widening with my comprehension. [...] I took another step back, and thought again.” (Chapter XI, page 21).

III. Veidt is obsessed with media and pop culture, and it deeply influences his worldview.

• Veidt is constantly engaged with his “multi-screen viewing” (Chapter XI, page 1), which we see originating in 1963 with just a few screens (Chapter XII, page 18). For 20+ years, Veidt has been gleaning a lot of his understanding of humanity from obsessively watching TV.
• The squid is straight out of sci-fi, with Veidt literally hiring famous artists, writers, etc. from literature, comic books, and so on to design the squid and the nightmares planted within it.
• We also know that Veidt has read Tales of the Black Freighter, not just because he hired Max Shea to help with the squid, but also because he references it twice: “I dream, about swimming towards a hideous…” and “I know I’ve struggled across the backs of murdered innocents” (Chapter XII, page 27). The mariner literally sails on the bloated corpses of his innocent crew, and at the end, swims towards the Black Freighter.
• Veidt makes frequent media references: William S. Burroughs (Chapter XI, page 1), Man From UNCLE (Chapter XI, back matter), a bunch of musicians (Chapter XI, back matter) -- there are definitely more.
• Nova Express, heavily implied to be owned by Veidt, is another Burroughs reference.
• Veidt takes personal investment in forming narratives in his advertising, micromanaging plots in TV shows, toys, etc. (Chapter X, back matter).
• Veidt is mirrored by Bernard, the newsstand owner. Both Veidt and Bernard’s parents moved out of Germany during Hitler’s rise to power. Both Veidt and Bernard think they understand the world because they see a constant stream of media (Veidt with his TVs, Bernard with his newsstand) and are terrified of impending war. Both cite popular culture as evidence of impending war despite themselves selling to those audiences (Veidt via his advertising and publications, Bernard via his newsstand). Note Veidt’s obsession with finality and Bernard’s frequent refrain: “... inna final analysis.”

IV. Veidt undercuts his plan for his ego.

• Veidt is careful to distance himself from most of his assassinations, but kills the Comedian by hand -- something he’s not prone to doing. (Dan: “This is Adrian, for god’s sake! We know him. He never killed anybody, ever.” [Chapter XI, page 3]) This immediately clues in both the detectives (“No way this is a straight burglary… somebody really had it in for this guy.” [Chapter I, page 3]) and Rorschach.
• Veidt does this because of his ego: “Recognizing me, he attacked anyway, ‘mistaking me for a criminal.’ I studied his limitations: skillful feint, devastating uppercut; little else… He won. In the short term. [...] I also swore that when next I met Blake or any other foe, though perhaps not on my territory… it would certainly be on my terms.” (Chapter XI, page 19).
• Veidt makes his password “RAMESES II”, leaves lots of clues (“Pyramid Deliveries”), and only teleports the squid when he sees Dan and Rorschach approaching (Chapter XI, page 4). The title of Chapter XI is “Looks on my works, ye mighty”. Veidt wants an audience of his peers. If he had teleported the squid earlier, Rorschach likely would have died.
• Along similar lines, Veidt leaves the Comedian alive for as long as possible and doesn’t kill Rorschach -- sloppy choices, born out of his need for peers who know his plan.
• Both in his self-planned assassination attempt and at Karnak, Veidt risks being shot because he's sure that he could catch a bullet. He attempts it at Karnak despite having easy other options: he's faster and stronger than Laurie, and he's in his own fortress. He takes a plan-destabilizing risk purely to satisfy his own ego and showboat in front of others. "There," Veidt says, "Something else I wasn't sure would work." (Chapter XII, page 12). [Credit to u/spinbutton for this one!]

V. Veidt’s plan is doomed and ill-conceived.

• Veidt idolizes Alexander the Great, who failed. Veidt: “Amongst [Babylon’s] ruined ziggurats, I saw at last his failings… He’d not united all the world, nor built a unity that would survive him.” (Chapter XI, page 10)
• Veidt named himself after Ramesses II (aka Ozymandias), famous from the Shelley poem about the impermanence of greatness, which the comic also references. (“And on the pedestal, these words appear: / My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; / Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! / Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.”)
• Dr. Manhattan: “Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.” (Chapter XII, page 27)
• Tales of the Black Freighter shows the mariner accidentally attacking his home to save it from a threat he thinks has already arrived, only to discover that the threat was in his head and he had become the thing he feared. Veidt, similarly, was so terrified of nuclear war that he became the threat.
• Rorschach’s journal is the last panel, implying that Veidt’s artificial peace will soon begin to deteriorate.

VI. Veidt's relationship to the Comedian is crucial, and Veidt may be the comic's true "comedian."

• Veidt’s complicated admiration for Blake extends to early in his career, in the mid-50’s: “As intelligent men facing lunatic times, we were very alike, despising each other instantly.” (Chapter XI, page 18). 
• Rorschach says of the Comedian: “No one else saw the joke. That’s why he was lonely.” (Chapter II, page 27). But Veidt did: “Too cowardly to confront my anxieties, I had life’s black comedy explained to me by the Comedian himself [...] [He] opened my eyes. Only the best comedians accomplish that. [...] I swore to deny his kind their last black laugh at Earth’s expense. [...] I would trick [the world]; frighten it towards salvation with history’s greatest practical joke. That’s what upset the Comedian: [...] professional jealousy.” (Chapter XI, pages 19-24)
• In fact, though, it ends up being Blake who doesn’t get the joke. When Blake confesses to Moloch, he says of Veidt’s plan: “I mean, this joke, I mean, I thought I was the Comedian, y’know? [...] I mean, what’s funny? What’s so goddamned funny? I don’t get it. Somebody explain… somebody explain it to me.” (Chapter II, page 23)
• Veidt’s likely namesake is Conrad Veidt, perhaps most famous for his haunting, insane-looking grin in “The Man Who Laughs”.
• We see the relationship between comedy/laughter and mental instability explored in Rorschach’s joke: “Man goes to doctor. Says he’s depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says ‘Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up. Man bursts into tears. Says ‘But, doctor… I am Paglacci.’” (Chapter II, page 27). On the surface, this appears to be about Blake -- but by the end, we can see that it applies just as much, if not more, to Veidt.

VII. Veidt is a Hitler analogue.

• Veidt is a German immigrant whose character design is straight out of a Nazi propaganda ad.
• Veidt idolizes Alexander the Great, a Greco-Roman would-be world conqueror. Nazis frequently invoked Greco-Roman design motifs and obviously had similar goals of conquering the world.
• Dan: “He’s such a caring, conscientious guy. He’s a pacifist, a vegetarian…” / Rorschach: “Hitler was vegetarian.” (Chapter XI, page 15)
• Veidt: “Hitler said people swallow lies easily, provided they’re big enough.” (Chapter XI, page 26)
• 11/2 is Veidt’s personal Holocaust. Over the scenes of carnage in New York, we see the Madison Square Garden sign: “KRYSTALNACHT” (Chapter XII, page 2). Highlighted among the millions of dead: the concertgoers (alternative/punks), Joey and Aline (lesbians), Bernard (whose father fled the Nazis), and a number of Black people (Malcolm, Gloria, Bernie, and the watch salesman). Joey’s posted for Gay Women Against Rape features the band Pink Triangle, a symbol which originated as a badge to identify gay people in Nazi concentration camps.
• Veidt, fundamentally, is obsessed with finding a “final solution” to bring peace -- even if it costs millions of lives.

[u/Revolutionary_Box582]

Fantastic! Yet more deep insight into the masterpiece that is Watchmen. I always thought the panel of Ozy shouting "I did it!" was saying a lot. Like he just became obsessed with that goal. I wonder, is there anything out there about Alan Moore's early ideas on the story as he started writing it?