Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of graphic violence, violence against animals, suicide, alcohol addiction, and attempted rape. The source text also contains outdated, racist, and misogynistic language, which is reproduced in this guide only through quotations.

A vigilante named Rorschach (after the mask he wears, which resembles the ink blots of a Rorschach test) walks the streets of an alternate New York City in 1985, his journal narrating scenes of crime, vice, and filth. Meanwhile, two detectives reconstruct the scene of a recent murder, where a man was thrown out of a high-rise apartment window and plunged to his death. They notice that the assailant must have been incredibly strong, as the victim had chained his door shut and himself “had the muscles of a weightlifter” (10). They decide to keep the case quiet, lest “masked avengers”—illegal crimefighters like Rorschach—get involved and make matters worse. When they leave, Rorschach arrives, finding a smiley face button stained with blood where the victim had landed. Rorschach rappels his way up to the apartment and discovers a hidden closet with a crime fighter’s costume (roughly resembling that of Captain America) and a photograph of the victim with similarly dressed people.