Ozymandias (Watchmen)

Latest revision as of 05:36, 18 January 2025

Ozymandias is a male comic character who features in Watchmen.

Biography

Watchmen

Adrian Alexander Veidt was a male human born in 1939 as the son of wealthy German-American immigrant parents. From childhood, he demonstrated a high degree of intelligence where he received high grades in school. However, he young Adrian hid this information from his elders and peers by deliberately achieving only average marks. After his parents died, he came to inherit their substantial fortune when he was 17 years old but decided to give the money away to charity as he wanted to make something for himself through his own means. He then embarked on a vision quest where he followed the route of his childhood idol Alexander the Great. Whilst travelling in the Middle-East, he consumed a ball of hashish and saw a vision of the past. He then completed his travels in Egypt which was when he came to the conclusion that Alexander the Great was simply a pale imitation of Ramesses II who became Veidt's new hero. Adrian then returned to the United States where he began to train himself to the peak of physical condition and became a world-class gymnast in the process.

It was during this journey that he consumed a ball of hashish and decided to become a superhero. Returning to America, he named himself Ozymandias and became a costumed vigilante, focusing particularly on organized crime and earning a reputation as "the smartest man on the planet." However, his own cases robbed him of the idealistic belief that battling crime would truly lessen evil and suffering in the world. This was brought to a head when an abortive attempt to organize a new superhero team was disrupted by the Comedian, who noted in his brutally apt way exactly how petty the doings of the costumed heroes were in a world where the threat of nuclear war hung overhead, and how powerless they were to stop it. Veidt was inspired to do just that. (Watchmen v1 #2)

In 1975, two years before vigilante crime fighters were banned by the Keene Act with Veidt retiring from superheroism and marketing his image for money. This helps bankroll his scheme of creating a catastrophic event and deceive the world into uniting against a common enemy, in Veidt's case, a horrific alien invasion. To that end, he employed geneticists to clone the stolen brain of a murdered psychic and use it to create such a creature with a group of artists and creative personnel to help create the illusion. He also invents a limited form of teleportation based in part on the studies of (and studies by) Doctor Manhattan. Upon completion, he arranged the murder of all of his accomplices to maintain the illusion. To prevent Doctor Manhattan from interfering, he hired old associates of the superhero and secretly exposed them to radiation to induce terminal cancer in them, then engineered a rumor that Manhattan was responsible, causing Doctor Manhattan to exile himself to Mars and thereby setting off a chain of events that threaten to start a global war. (Watchmen v1 #3)

Doomsday Clock

Ultimately, it was revealed that Veidt's plans to unite the world had failed after Rorshachs' journal was published. This caused the world to fall into chaos after the departure of Doctor Manhattan with Adrian going underground. During this time, he was approached by Reggie Long who was Rorshach's successor where the two worked to save their world. Ozymandias claimed that the only way to do so was to find Doctor Manhattan and return him to their Earth so that he could restore order to the world. (Doomsday Clock v1 #1)

Overview

Personality and attributes

He came to take the name Ozymandias for himself which was a another name for Ramses II.

One of his idols from his childhood was Alexander the Great though he eventually came to see him as a pale imitation of Ramesses II who became his new hero.

Powers and abilities

Ozymandias was an ordinary human who was born with an exceptional intellect and no special powers. (Watchmen v1 #2)

Adrian Veidt has been deemed "the smartest man in the world" by many, mainly the media, though this title is regarded as well-deserved. Veidt deftly built both a legitimate and criminal empire large enough to become a global threat through his exploitation of advanced technology and genetics.

Notes

• Ozymandias was created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons where he made his first appearance in Watchmen v1 #1 (September, 1986).

In other media

Television

• In Watchmen, Ozymandias appeared in the setting of the live-action television series where he was portrayed by actor Jeremy Irons. Prior to the series' events, he launched a series of attacks from alien squids in New York City, New York, killing three million people as part of a larger plan to avert a nuclear war. The Seventh Kavalry was revealed to have obtained his pre-recorded video to Robert Redford in the event that he became the next President of the United States. Unknown to him, it was revealed that he came to have a daughter named Lady Trieu. Veidt has a daughter named Trieu who was conceived when a woman who worked for him stole a vial of his sperm and used it to impregnate herself. Trieu, who inherited Veidt's scientific genius, involves him in a plan to kill Doctor Manhattan and absorb his powers, claiming that she will use them to heal the planet and end all war. Veidt eventually sees through her utopian façade, however, realizing that she was a "raging narcissist" who desired unlimited power for its own sake; he replied by saying, "it takes one to know one". Trieu proved herself to match his skill and intellect, having sent a satellite to photograph Doctor Manhattan on Jupiter's moon of Eurpoa when it reached it in 2014. She then asked Veidt for money and resources to build a machine to absorb and use Doctor Manhattan's powers for the world's betterment, but Veidt was so furious to discover her existence, he disowned her and threw her out of his base, hoping to have seen the last of her. In 2009, Veidt was visited by Doctor Manhattan, who was seeking a way to become human to pursue a comfortable relationship with his lover. Veidt gave him a device to wipe his memory, explaining that if he was unaware of his powers, he wouldn't know to use them. In exchange, he asked Manhattan if he'd ever see his utopian world come to be. Manhattan replied by explaining that he had created a stretch of bountiful land with a large manor house in which to live on Europa, filled with a race of endlessly generating clones called Mister Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks, beings who desire only to make others happy. Manhattan offered to send him there, and Veidt, believing he described paradise, agreed, and Manhattan teleported him away, leaving the disc with him. When he arrived on Europa, Veidt was immediately worshiped as a god by the Phillipses and Crookshankses there, and performed several activities with them as his humble, willing servants. Over time, however, the lack of achievement and his servants' constant unwarranted celebration of him began to drive him mad, and Veidt discovered his own self-worth meant nothing without deserved appreciation. He began plotting a daring escape, but, knowing it would take years, instructed the first Phillips created to become the Game Warden, his masked adversary who would try to stop him from leaving, all as a way to keep himself entertained.

Films

• In Watchmen, Ozymandias appeared in the live-action film adaptation of the comic where he was portrayed by actor Matthew Goode. Ozymandias filled out Captain Metropolis's role in forming the Watchmen. Instead of creating an alien threat, he triggered the overload and detonation of energy reactors designed by himself and Doctor Manhattan, causing millions of deaths in major cities around the world. By framing Manhattan for the disaster, Ozymandias intends to trick the world's superpower nations into putting aside their differences and uniting against him.
• In Watchmen, Ozymandias appeared in the setting of the two part 2024 animated film where he was voiced by actor Troy Baker.

Motion Comics

• In Watchmen: Motion Comic, Ozymandias appeared in the setting of the motion comic where he was voiced by actor Tom Stechschulte.

Appearances

• Watchmen v1: (1986)
• Doomsday Clock v1:

External Links

• DC Database Entry
• Wikipedia Entry

This article is a stub. You can help Multiversal Omnipedia by expanding it.