What Nixon does and what Dr. Manhattan does and what Veidt does — it affects the people on the street corner but only peripherally, indirectly... And yet, in some ways, those people on the street corner, it's their story. They're the people we're concerned about.
The Minutemen are a superhero group that came before the Watchmen. The group was founded in 1939 during the Golden Age. The group later disbanded in 1949 following some public controversies. Among it's notable members are:
Liquidator is a costumed Criminal who was active in the 1940s and was first seen in Before Watchmen: Minutemen #4. He was the one who killed Silhouette and her lesbian lover. Some days later, he was killed by Sally Jupiter.
Dollar Bill (real name William Benjamin "Bill" Brady) - A bank-sponsored member of the Minutemen who was created for publicity purposes. While he is described as having no actual superpowers, Dollar Bill was known for having apparently supernatural luck, surviving many things that should have outright killed him. Socially conservative, he is portrayed in Before Watchmen as homophobic (barely tolerating his homosexual Minutemen colleagues) and close friends with the ultra-right-wing Comedian, voting to let him stay after the attempted rape of Sally Jupiter. He dies during a bank robbery in 1947 when his cape is caught in the bank's revolving doors, allowing the Robbers to shoot him at point-blank range. This was a Problem he warned his employers about, but they insisted the cape had to be part of the costume as Mason laments in his book. Even Rorschach, who dislikes Ozymandias for making his super-hero alter-ego into a toy line, laments Dollar Bill's death.
In the Watchmen film, she is played by Malin Åkerman. In a 2003 draft script by David Hayter, which was reviewed by IGN, Laurie uses the name Jupiter, and the alter ego name "Slingshot". The former detail seems to have been retained in the final version of the film (though the Nite Owl's goggles gave her last name as her mother's maiden name, Juspeczyk). The film gives her date of birth as December 2, 1949. Silk Spectre was ranked 24th in Comics Buyer's Guide's 100 Sexiest Women in Comics list.
This is retconned heavily in Before Watchmen: Minutemen #6, where we learn that he is not Rolf Muller (a character that sexually abused and killed children), but it is strongly implied that he is Muller's son or ward, Jacob. Assuming that he himself was a victim of Muller's abuse, it explains a great deal about his violent persona, costume, and mask. A violent vigilante, Hooded Justice shared a romantic homosexual relationship with Captain Metropolis and a deep-seated rivalry with Comedian, after he prevented Blake from sexually assaulting Silk Spectre. Hooded Justice's relationship with Metropolis was a fractured one; Justice repeatedly cheated on his boyfriend with male prostitutes, physically abusing them in sadomasochist sexual encounters. This resulted in bribery of his lovers and the usage of Silk Spectre as his public girlfriend. He ultimately disappeared in the 1950s after refusing to cooperate with HUAC's new policy on costumed vigilantes. In the original novel it is suggested that he was murdered either by the Comedian for voting him out of the Minutemen (as Ozymandias believes), or by the Stasi of his native East Germany. In the retcon we learn that Hollis Mason, mistakenly believing him to be Muller, attacked Hooded Justice and snapped his neck, killing him. He was never actually unmasked, and Metropolis burned down the headquarters with his former lover's body inside; it later turns out that the Comedian was the one who misdirected Mason to believe that Justice was Muller, so Ozymandias was partially right. Much of the "Under the Hood" information on Muller and HJ is revealed to be a deliberate lie on Mason's part. This may be contrary to the intent of the original novel. In chapter 1, the fourth panel of page 25 focuses on two old men sitting affectionately together near Dan and Laurie in Rafael's restaurant. They look very much like older versions of Rolf Muller and Nelson Gardner, and it was speculated by many fans that these were in fact Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis, who had faked their deaths in order to retire and be together. Dave Gibbons said this was unintended but allowed that it might be true. In the retconned world of Before Watchmen, it is obviously not the case.
Dr. Jonathan "Jon" Osterman is a vigilante and the only character with superpowers, with the arguable exception of Ozymandias, who could possibly possess superhuman speed. He was originally a Physicist who was transformed into a blue, irradiated powerful being after he was disintegrated in an Intrinsic Field Subtractor in 1959. He had returned to the chamber to retrieve his girlfriend's watch (which he had repaired), and was accidentally locked inside when the Subtractor started automatically. Osterman was blown into atoms, with nothing left of his body. Within a few months, his disembodied consciousness managed to reconstruct a physical body for itself, after several hideous partial reconstructions. Following his reanimation, he is immediately pressed into Service by the United States government, which gives him the name Doctor Manhattan, after the Manhattan Project. Though he dabbles briefly in crime-fighting, his greatest influence is to grant the U.S. a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union during the Cold War, with his most significant action taking place after he is personally asked by President Richard Nixon to intervene in the Vietnam War, leading to an unqualified victory for the U.S. with the defeat of North Vietnam and the Vietcong, preventing the collapse of the Saigon government. Since he works for the U.S. government, he is exempt from the provisions of the Keene Act, but spends much of his time doing advanced Technology research and development, and physics research. He is single-handedly responsible for the shift to electric-powered vehicles (by synthesizing the needed elements and chemicals himself) and Veidt credits him with causing a huge leap forward in myriad areas of science and Technology. As a result, the Technology of the alternative 1985 of the Watchmen universe is far more advanced. After the death of his father in 1969, he does not conceal his birth name and is referenced as "Jon" or "Dr. Osterman".
Hollis Mason is the first Nite Owl who retired in 1962, and author of the autobiography "Under The Hood" which appears in excerpts throughout the story. Hollis was the only member of the Minutemen who did not have any social problems and mainly enjoyed being a costumed adventurer. On Halloween 1985, The Knot-Tops led by Derf assault Hollis in retaliation for the release of Rorschach, which was caused by Nite Owl II (Daniel Dreiberg) and Silk Spectre II (Laurie Juspeczyk). Derf hits Hollis on the head with Mason's own Nite Owl trophy killing the former superhero (in the film, this event is only depicted in the director's cut version). Hollis' death was avenged when Derf is among those killed by Ozymandias' giant Monster.
Janey Slater is the first girlfriend of Dr. Jon Osterman. She leaves him in 1966 after she perceives a relationship building between Osterman and Laurie. Veidt gives Janey cancer as part of his scheme to exile Dr. Manhattan; Janey erroneously believes that Jon Osterman gave it to her.
In the video game Watchmen: The End is Nigh which is set in the 1970s, Twilight Lady (voiced by Courtenay Taylor) is established as a madam whose clients include many high-profile Washington politicians, who she blackmails for state secrets and money. In the game, Nite Owl II and Rorschach must fight her and the Comedian, the latter of whom is ultimately sent to kill the Sin Queen to stop her extortion racket.
Rorschach is a noir private detective-themed vigilante who wears a white mask with constantly shifting ink blots. Rorschach continues to fight crime in spite of his outlaw status, eventually making the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. He was born Walter Joseph Kovacs, the son of an abusive prostitute by a man whose last name his mother never bothered to learn, and spent much of his childhood in a home for troubled youth, after which he began working in a garment factory. After reading about the murder of Kitty Genovese and the reported complete indifference of the witnesses of the crime, he modified a special fabric that she had ordered, according to him, to create a mask and became a vigilante, eventually forming a productive partnership with Nite Owl II. In 1975, after failing to rescue a young girl, he lost all faith in humanity and began to embrace extremist right-wing ideology.
The Alien Monster (referred to by fans as the "Squid") is a 100 ft. giant squid-like Monster with one eye, dozens of long muscular tentacles, and an exposed brain. It was created by Ozymandias as part of his plan to save the world from a nuclear holocaust. Adrian Veidt had transported science fiction Writers Max Shea and James Trafford March, surreal Artist Hira Manish, and an assortment of other Writers, artists, and Scientists to his private island under the impression that they are being used for a top secret movie production. It took several months to genetically-engineer the Monster where it's brain was actually the cloned brain of the deceased psychic Robert Deschaines which was augmented by a psychic resonant device. Once it was complete, Veidt had the ship that was taking them home blown up to erase his involvement in what will happen next. At midnight on November 2, 1985, Veidt teleported the Alien Monster into the heart of New York City, where its tentacles and large sections of its body exploded upon impact. In addition, the Alien Monster's brain unleashed a massive psychic shockwave that caused thousands more deaths. Its dead body was discovered by Doctor Manhattan and Silk Spectre.
Key to the success of Watchmen is the wide range of characters it features beyond the 'main' stars. Moore stated in 1988 that, in Watchmen, "we spend a good deal of time with the people on the street. We wanted to spend as much time detailing these characters and making them believable as we did the main characters." Moore and Gibbons deliberately wanted all their characters "to have a place in this vast organic mechanism that we call the world." The fleshing-out of the world was, in Moore's words, to demonstrate that "all the way through the entire series human life is going on with all of its petty entanglements and minor difficulties and all the rest of it." Moore adds that it is possible to see the story as being as much about the supporting as the main characters:
Ozymandias was directly based on Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, whom Moore had admired for using his full brain capacity as well as possessing full physical and mental control. Veidt is believed to be the smartest man on the planet, even capable of outsmarting Dr Manhattan. His combination of intelligence and highly advanced fighting skills makes him perhaps the most feared and dangerous of the mortal vigilantes. He was even able to catch a bullet fired at him (Chapter XII, page 15). He is often accompanied by his genetically-engineered lynx, Bubastis. Richard Reynolds noted that by taking initiative to "help the world", Veidt displays a trait normally attributed to villains in superhero stories, and in a sense he is the "villain" of the series; however, he purposely acts for an objective greater good, thus avoiding the traditional "villain" classification, which is typically self-serving, delusional or evil. Gibbons noted "One of the worst of his sins [is] kind of looking down on the rest of humanity, scorning the rest of humanity." In 2008, he was ranked number 10 on the Forbes Fictional 15. Wizard magazine also ranked Ozymandias as 25th Greatest Villain of All Time and IGN ranked him as 21st Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time.
Moore based Rorschach on the Steve Ditko creations The Question and Mr. A. Moore said he was trying to "come up with this quintessential Steve Ditko character — someone who's got a funny name, whose surname begins with a 'K,' who's got an oddly designed mask". As a result, Rorschach's real name is given as Walter Kovacs. Ditko's Charlton character The Question also served as a template for creating Rorschach. Comics Historian Bradford W. Wright described the character's world view as "a set of black-and-white values that take many shapes but never mix into shades of gray, similar to the ink blot tests of his namesake". Rorschach sees existence as random and, according to Wright, this viewpoint leaves the character "free to 'scrawl [his] own design' on a 'morally blank world'". Moore said he did not foresee the death of Rorschach until the fourth issue when he realized that his refusal to compromise would result in him not surviving the story.
It is revealed in Doomsday Clock #1 that he was “brutally beaten to death” after the publication of Rorschach’s journal.
