Ozymandias (comics)

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Ozymandias is a fictional character in the comic book series Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, published by DC Comics. Named Ozymandias in the manner of Ramesses II, he is a modified version of the character Thunderbolt from Charlton Comics.

Fictional character history

The son of rich immigrant parents, Adrian Veidt was found to be incredibly intelligent at a young age. After his parents and his teachers became suspicious of his grades, he successfully hid his intelligence by deliberately achieving average grades. After his parents' deaths, he inherited their substantial fortune at age 17, but chose to give it all to charity. Veidt then embarked on a vision quest, following the route of Alexander the Great - a childhood idol - throughout the Mediterranean, Asia Minor, and ancient Persia. It was during this journey that he consumed a ball of hashish and decided to become a superhero. Returning to America, he named himself "Ozymandias" and became a costumed vigilante, focusing particularly on organized crime and earning a reputation as "the smartest man on the planet." However, his own cases robbed him of the idealistic belief that battling crime would truly lessen evil and suffering in the world. This was brought to a head when an abortive attempt to organize a new superhero team was disrupted by the Comedian, who noted in his brutally apt way exactly how petty the doings of the costumed heroes were in a world where the threat of nuclear war hung overhead, and how powerless they were to stop it. Veidt was inspired to do just that. In 1975, two years before vigilante crimefighters (superheroes) are banned by the "Keene Act," he retires from superheroism, marketing his image for money. This helps bankroll his scheme of creating a catastrophic event to deceive the world that there is a horrific alien common enemy to unite against. To that end, he employed geneticists to clone the stolen brain of a murdered psychic and use it to create such a creature with a group of artists and creative personnel to help create the illusion. Upon completion, he arranged the murder of all of his accomplices to maintain the illusion. To prevent Doctor Manhattan from interfering, he hired old associates of the superhero and secretly exposed them to radiation to induce terminal cancer in them, then engineered a rumor that Manhattan was responsible, causing Manhattan to exile himself to Mars.

Events of Watchmen

By chance in 1985, Comedian spotted the island where the creative staff were working and, heavily distraught, likely planned to alert his superiors. Veidt personally murdered the Comedian, which caught the attention of Rorschach, who investigated the crime, mistakenly theorizing that there existed a conspiracy to murder masked adventurers. Although Veidt arranged an assassination attempt on himself to throw off suspicion, he framed the wanted investigator on a murder charge to get him out of the way. In addition, Veidt started the accusations against Doctor Manhattan to drive him off the planet and set off a chain of events that threaten to start a global war. Unknown to him, the current Nite-Owl and Silk Spectre grew to believe that Rorschach's investigation had merit and sprung him from prison to investigate the matter. In addition, Manhattan took Silk Spectre to Mars where she convinced him to return to Earth. However, the superheroes were unable to stop the fulfillment of Veidt's scheme, which led to the deaths of over two million people in New York City and the world governments falling for the ruse, agreeing to a union to oppose this new menace. Seeing as how Veidt's plot had the desired effect of uniting the nations of the world and averting a possible nuclear war, Doctor Manhattan, Nite-Owl and Silk Spectre agree to keep silent about what they know, as it would only plunge the world back to the brink of disaster. Rorschach refuses to keep silent, telling Doctor Manhattan that he must kill Rorschach before he can tell anybody what he knows. When Veidt asks the god-like Manhattan for verification that he did the "right" thing and that his plans "worked out in the end", Manhattan can only reply that nothing ever ends.

Powers and abilities

Adrian Veidt has been deemed the "smartest man in the world" by many, mainly the media. He has proven to be incredibly intelligent with his genius plan to help Earth towards utopia. He is shown to be a ruthless master strategist, swiftly eliminating anybody who dares to get in the way of his plans. Additionally, Veidt is depicted at peak physical ability, to the point of being able to move faster than a trigger is pulled and catch a bullet. He is a superb fighter and martial artist, almost a superhuman combatant, easily defeating Rorschach and Nite Owl in hand-to-hand combat. His only defeat came early in his career at the hands of the Comedian. A world-class athlete, he does acrobatic performances in aid of charity events, performing excellently despite being in his mid-forties. Except for Doctor Manhattan, Ozymandias was easily the most dangerous of the crimefighters in that era.