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Line 56: ==Fictional character biography== ===Before ''Watchmen''=== Walter Joseph Kovacs was born on March 21, 1940, the son of Sylvia Kovacs, who was a [[Prostitution|prostitute]], and an unknown father only known to Kovacs as "Charlie". His mother was frequently [[Child abuse|abusive]] and condescending towards him. In July 1951, at the age of 11, Kovacs became involved in a violent fight with two older bullies, and subsequently his living conditions were finally looked into. After his home was investigated, Kovacs was removed from his mother's care and put in "The Lillian Charlton Home for Problem Children" in [[New Jersey]], where he rapidly seemed to improve, excelling at [[scholastics]] as well as [[gymnastics]] and [[amateur boxing]]. In 1956, after leaving the Charlton Home when he was 16, Kovacs took a job as a [[garment worker]] in a dress shop, which he found "bearable but unpleasant" partly because he had to handle women's clothing; it was here that he acquired a certain dress fabric that he would later fashion into the mask he wears as Rorschach. His mother was brutally murdered by her [[pimp]], George Paterson, by forcing her to drink [[Drano|Drano cleaning fluid]] and dumped her body in the back alleyway. In 1962, Kovacs scavenged the material from a rejected dress that had been special-ordered by a young woman with an Italian name. Though Kovacs learned how to cut and fashion the material successfully with heated implements, he soon grew bored with it, as it served him no real purpose at the time.<ref name="Watchmen #6">{{cite comic|writer=[[Alan Moore]]|penciller=[[Dave Gibbons]]|inker=[[John Higgins (comics)|John Higgins]]|story=The Abyss Gazes Also|title=[[Watchmen]]|volume=|issue=6|date=February 1987|publisher=[[DC Comics]]|page=|panel=}}</ref> Two years later when buying a newspaper on his way to work in March 1964, Kovacs read about the rape and [[murder of Kitty Genovese]], who he believed was the Italian woman who had rejected the dress. Ashamed by what he read about the [[Bystander effect|unresponsiveness of her neighbors]], Kovacs became disillusioned with the underlying apathy that he saw as inherent in most people. Inspired by Genovese's fate, Kovacs returned home, made "a face [he] could bear to look at in the mirror" from the dress's fabric, and began fighting crime as the vigilante Rorschach. Initially, Kovacs left criminals alive, but bloodied, for the police to arrest, leaving a calling card in the form of a Rorschach test at every crime scene. In the mid 1960s, he teamed up with [[Nite Owl#Daniel Dreiberg|Nite Owl II]], a partnership which proved highly successful at battling [[organized crime]].<ref name="Watchmen #6"/> | |||