51 GREATEST FICTIONAL BAD GUYS
#41. ADRIAN ALEXANDER VEIDT/OZYMANDIAS from WATCHMEN
The line between hero and villain is often very thin, often determined by motive — and how far that moral compass is willing to bend to achieve a goal. Heroes (especially comic book heroes) act on a defensive position; villains usually go on the offense.
Harder yet is how to categorize the tale of Adrian Veidt, the smartest man in the world of Watchmen. Veidt begins the series as a retired superhero and ends it as the world’s greatest mass murderer. Moral ambiguity hovers ever-present in Alan Moore’s graphic novel with its world inevitably heading towards nuclear Armageddon. The question Ozymandias poses is extremely troubling: are a few million souls worth the price to secure the safety of billions of others?
In comic book tropes, the hero always finds a way to circumvent disaster and genocide. Usually. The dividing line with Ozymandias’ plan is the lack of sacrifice to it — not the sacrifice of the billions caught up in it, but the lack of self-sacrifice on his part. He gloats of his success and fantasizes of the world that can be built on its ashes: one of order and armistice, under his influence. And that’s just fascism, pure and simple.
Ozymandias: “I don’t mind being the smartest man in the world. I just wish it wasn’t this one.”
