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    Walter Kovacs, a.k.a. Rorschach is a main character in Watchmen.<br />
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    Wearing the inkblot mask he considers his true face, Rorschach had been one of the members of the Crimebusters, but continues his one-man battle against crime long after costumed vigilantes become both detested and illegal. <br />
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    EARLY YEARS<br />
    Rorschach's real name is Walter Joseph Kovacs; born in March 21, 1940. He never met his father, only knowing him by the name of Charlie, and all he had ever been told was that him and his mother would argue about politics and other matters; his father liked President Truman while his mother didn't. His mother, Sylvie Joanna Kovacs, was a prostitute who abused him for interfering with her business. In one incident, possibly at the age of ten (or younger), Walter heard his mother having sex with an unidentified man and had mistook it for her being abused. As he entered the room, the man became angry and left only five dollars, far less than she anticipated. In her rage, she began to beat Walter, calling him an 'ugly little bastard' and telling him that she should have listened to everybody and had an abortion.<br />
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    In the July of 1951, at the age of 10, Walter went to get something from the store for his mother. He was stopped by two older boys who were making fun of his mother, calling her a whore, and then calling him 'whoreson'. One of the boys picked up a piece of fruit and smashed it in his face. The other, joking that he has some sort of disease, tells him to pull his pants down so they can give him an examination. Walter snatches the cigarette from his mouth and then puts it out in his eye, then tackled the other, viciously tugging his hair and clawing and biting his face. The people near on the street pulled him off, referring to his wildness as that of a mad dog. The first boy attacked had been partially blinded. When questioned about the incident, Walter refused to talk about his motivation for attacking the boys, leaving others to presume the assault was unprovoked.<br />
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    BECOMING RORSCHACH<br />
    Wearing his 'new face', Kovacs decided to become a masked adventurer by the name of 'Rorschach', taken from Hermann Rorschach, who created the Rorschach inkblot test. Continuing his work in the garment factory, Walter started his nocturnal lifestyle by fighting crime. The next year, 1965, he partnered with fellow costumed vigilante, Nite Owl, whose technical skills and resources complemented his own skills as an investigator. Rorschach's grappling hook was designed and built for him by Nite Owl. <br />
    The next year, April 1966, Nelson Gardner, otherwise known as Captain Metropolis, the same man to begin the Minutemen, attempted to form a new group of superheroes called the Crimebusters. When discussing the group's creation, Rorschach added that a group that size seemed more like a 'publicity exercise', and was "too big and unwieldy." Rorschach was one of the seven vigilantes to attend, though Metropolis retired shortly after and the Crimebusters were built of the six that remained, including his partner Nite Owl, Comedian, Doctor Manhattan, Ozymandias and Silk Spectre<br />
    Rorschach's signature at each crime scene was a piece of paper with ink displayed in an odd pattern on one side, then folded in half, and smeared to both symmetrically. For a long time Rorschach described himself as 'soft', "Soft on scum. Too young to know any better. Molly-coddled them. Let them live." His pattern continued until 1975, when Blair Roche, six years old, was kidnapped because Gerald Anthony Grice thought she had been connected to the Roche Chemical fortune. Roche's father was a bus driver and the family was not in any way wealthy. Rorschach had "personal reasons," for taking the case and he intervened, promising the parents he'd return her unharmed. He visited underworld bars, putting fourteen people in the hospital needlessly, but the fifteenth gave him an address to an unused dressmaker's shop in Brooklyn.<br />
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    He arrived at the unlit building at dusk while Grice was out. He checked the backyard and saw two attack dogs, German Shepherds named Fred and Barney, fighting over a knob of bone. He went in through the front door and examined the house. The furnace had a piece of children's clothing. One of the cabinets was filled with meat hacking utensils and in the kitchen was a large cutting slab with thick cuts graved into it. He peered out the window, out at the dogs, and looked at the bone they were still fighting over. It was a femur, a human bone. He went into the yard and cut one dog's head open with a meat cleaver. It was at that moment, when he closed his eyes and opened them again, that he claimed to no longer be Walter Kovacs; he was now Rorschach. Then he used the meat cleaver to kill the other dog.<br />
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    His informant told him the man using the premises was named Gerald Anthony Grice, who was out drinking when he entered, and wouldn't return until ten forty-five that night. When he walked into the house, Rorschach threw the bloody corpse of one of the dogs at him through the window. As he backed up, the other was thrown through the window behind him, knocking him to the ground. Rorschach grabbed him and handcuffed him to the furnace while he screamed "Y-you can't prove anything. I mean, wh-where's the evidence? You can't do anything to..." Rorschach leaves a hacksaw by his hand, "...me." He then starts to pour kerosene throughout the house and pulls out a match, "Shouldn't bother trying to saw through hand-cuffs. Never make it in time." He dropped the match and stood outside, watching the house burn to the ground for an hour, "Nobody got out." <br />
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    AFTER<br />
    After the incident, Rorschach quit his job as a garment worker. In 1977 the Keene Act was passed, outlawing costumed vigilantes and demanding their retirements. Enraged and defiant, he answered by leaving the corpse of the notorious multiple rapist Harvey Charles Furniss in front of a police stationed with a note pinned to his chest, reading "Never!" True to his word, Rorschach continued fighting crime in open defiance of the law, living in a slum owned by his landlady, Dolores Shairp, without any source of income. During the day, he can be seen walking around the streets of New York without his face or costume as a vagrant with a sign that read "The end is nigh." <br />
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