For whatever reason Internet Media Discourse™ can’t include the possibility that a character is meant to be sympathetic to some extent but ultimately wrong. They’re either perfect and did nothing wrong or an irredeemable monster, no in between.
I honestly wonder how many people have actually read Watchmen. I feel like the discourse around a lot of this stuff is driven by people who have read the cliff notes or are just blindly upvoting shit.
It’s mainly the movie.
In the movie he’s pretty much the only one of them all that actually holds on to his morals. He goes the whole movie practicing what he preaches while everyone else is shown to do the opposite.
The comedian was just an abusive power hungry drunk.
Ozymandius was willing to kill millions for “the greater good”
Dr Manhattan was too removed from his own humanity to care about anything anymore
Night owl and the purple girl I can’t remember gave it all up entirely and then they fuck meanwhile she was still in a relationship with Dr Manhattan.
Rorschach was the only one in the movie that actually held to his morality the whole movie. Especially with the scene of him unmasked as a begger on the street and that’s how he learned about the goings on in the city. He actively lived a life of poverty to help him be a better hero.