Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of graphic violence, violence against animals, suicide, alcohol addiction, and attempted rape. The source text also contains outdated, racist, and misogynistic language, which is reproduced in this guide only through quotations.

The Comedian (Eddie Blake) for years wore a small button with the image of the smiley face, and when he was murdered, it was found next to his body with a single streak of blood (an image that often graces the cover of the book). Dan Dreiberg drops it on top of Blake’s casket at the funeral. The smiley face is most immediately an indicator of Blake’s worldview. As Rorschach summarizes it, everyone must eventually come to grips with the cruelty and apparent meaninglessness of existence. Most costumed adventurers respond with “some animal urge to fight and struggle” in a futile attempt to make the world a better place (68). By contrast, Rorschach says, “Blake understood. Treated it like a joke […] he saw the true face of the twentieth century and chose to become a reflection of it, a parody of it” (69). The 20th century is defined as the insistence that the world is in fact improving, while its ostensible improvements only multiply the means of visiting misery upon other human beings.