Well, here it is, the conclusion of Brian Azzarello’s beautiful, yet dull Rorschach miniseries. And I’d use that exact phrase to describe Lee Bermejo’s final cover. It matches his usual impeccable standards, but it’s not terribly exciting. It really would have helped had Rorschach actually been fighting the main bad guy of this series, not a random goon.
The variant cover by Ivan Reis really bugs me. Not that I’m against the blood-spattered wall — I just don’t like Rorschach’s reflection in it. You shouldn’t be able to see that reflection based on where Rorschach is standing. That’s not how light works!
I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it one last time: I really appreciate how Bermejo followed Dave Gibbons’ practice of using the cover image as the first image in the story. Which means we open on Rorschach fighting Rawhead’s goons. Oddly, it seems like Azzarello forgot how he was writing Rawhead. Or maybe he failed to clearly indicate that the mob boss was now high on cocaine or something. Because the Rawhead we get in this issue is completely different from the cold, calculating villain we saw previously. Here, he’s dancing and singing and acting completely irrationally.
Rawhead has Rorschach tied to a bed, leaving him to be tortured by one of his goons. Rawhead, meanwhile, randomly dons Rorschach’s mask and decides to go beat up some looters taking advantage of the blackout. But Rawhead proves remarkably bad at this task and is killed by the criminals he was trying to stop. Rorschach, meanwhile, is miraculously saved by Rawhead’s pet tiger, who decided to kill and eat the man who wanted to torture Rorschach.
And if that wasn’t random enough for you, we then skip ahead five years. Rorschach’s diary — now handwritten instead of typed — informs us that the Bard (remember him?) also made a fatal mistake on the night of the blackout. He failed to kill his final victim, the kind woman from the diner, who managed to turn him in to the police. Three years later, even though she testified against him in trial, the jury decided to let the man go free. So now, two years after that, Rorschach has finally tracked down the Bard and killed him.
What a mess of an issue. It really feels like Azzarello panicked when he got to this issue, realizing he had to hastily tie up all his loose ends. He really did have enough material here for six issues. But since he was only given four, then he should have adjusted his story accordingly. I would have recommended dropping the Bard entirely, as that subplot didn’t have nearly enough room to be developed properly. Rawhead could have been more than enough for four fun issues of Rorschach — especially if you dove a little deeper into his fascination of faces and masks. Heck, spend a whole issue of Rawhead disguised as Rorschach and see where that takes you. But what we got was just plain sloppy. Which is a great insult not just to Bermejo’s stellar art, but also the classic source material by Moore and Gibbons.
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