Hooded Justice
I recently re-watched Watchmen (2019) with my roommate, and she said something really clever that changed my mind on a hang-up I had. While I loved Watchmen (2019), I was originally a bit put off at the retcon of Hooded Justice’s origin story. Originally Rolf Muller, HJ was originally a Nazi sympathizer at the very least, and I felt it was strange to change the Nazi white supremacist character into a Black man. This Extraordinary Being (Ep 6) was perhaps one of the greatest episodes of television of all time, so I didn’t care too much, but I did wonder why they didn’t pick literally any other character.
However, my roommate loved the change, and pointed out to me that HJ is, in the Watchmen universe, the first Superhero. If the first Superhero is a Nazi, then the origins of the Superhero are inherently fascist. If the first Superhero was a Black man dealing with systemic racism, then the origins of the Superhero inherently lie in the experience of the marginalized. In real life, the Superhero genre was created by Jewish immigrants, fleeing antisemitism in Europe. William Reeves more accurately reflects the origin of the Superhero than Rolf Muller.
Furthermore, while I think Alan Moore is a brilliant writer who was majorly screwed over by DC, and I have a lot of respect and sympathy for him, his take about Superhero’s being inherently fascist was totally ahistorical and insulting. My roommate made me realize that William Reeves is the perfect rebuttal to that idea. I’m really glad I re-watched it with her.
