The Detective is a private detective hired to investigate the assassination attempt on Republican presidential candidate Gavin Turley.
Biography
Early life
As a kid, he read pirate comic books.[1]
Adulthood
By the time he grew up, the man was no longer a reader of pirate media and considered it to be "kids stuff". He became a private investigator who solved cases for numerous people, including a superhero obsessed collector who had some items stolen from him, which led to the detective accruing a good reputation. He didn't seem to have a home and seemingly lived in Room 3737 of a hotel in Los Angeles, California.
Events of Rorschach
Hired by Alan
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Visiting Myerson's Apartment
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Visiting Wyoming
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Meeting Frank Miller
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Investigating the Clark's Farm
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The Oates Connection
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Becoming Rorschach
The Detective took the bottle to his apartment and compared Alan's fingerprints to the unidentified fingerprints on Oates' bottle and discovered they were a match. This led the detective to realize he was being used this whole time by Alan so that the Turley campaign could frame Robert Redford as being the mastermind behind Myerson and Cummings' attempt on Turley's life. After arguing with hallucinations of Wil Myerson and Laura Cummings, he came to the conclusion that Turley and Alan needed to be killed.[2]
On the intersection of I-405 and I-10, the Detective purposefully performed a hit and run on the car of Turley's butler. The Detective arrived at Turley's headquarters with a tape that he told Alan and Jacobs contained proof that Redford was behind the attempt on Turley's life. Inside Turley's office, the Detective requested that they have some beers to drink while discussing the tape. After explaining that the confession on the tape wouldn't have the greatest sound and that it would be full of ramblings, the detective broke one of the beer bottles and used it to slash Turley's throat and stab Alan through the neck. He then washed his hands, put on his jacket, and turned on the tape recorder which played a C-SPAN recording of a speech given by Turley in Kentucky. After telling Jacobs that Turley was practicing a speech, he left the building where he was confronted by a valet who inquired about the origin of a bloody dent on the front of the detective's car to which he replied, "Hit and run".
The detective drove to the premiere of Pontius Pirate: War of the West Indies but missed the first 35 minutes though this didn't deter him and he simply sat down and ate some popcorn as the movie depicted Pontius Pirate giving a speech about how he would combat evil even if it killed him.[3]
Trivia
- In an interview with ComicPop, writer Tom King stated that he purposefully wrote the Detective without specific characterization or backstory so that he could be a "Rorschach test" for the reader who would have their own interpretations and assumptions about the character.[4]
- He doesn't have a favorite color.[5]
- According to Tom King, artist Jorge Fornes suggested giving the Detective a hydrogen atom tattoo on his forearm but this was nixed to keep the character a blank slate.[6]