Minutemen
From Watchmen Wiki
The Minutemen were the premier group of superheroes throughout the 1940s. They were founded in 1939, largely through the actions of Nelson Gardner (Captain Metropolis), Sally Jupiter (the first Silk Spectre) and Sally Jupiter's agent Laurence Schexnayder. Schexnayder also provided the group's publicity. After several public controversies, the group finally disbanded in 1949.
Contents |
History
In 1939, the original eight-person lineup of the team included Captain Metropolis, Silk Spectre, Hooded Justice, Nite Owl, Silhouette, Dollar Bill, Mothman and The Comedian. The Comedian left the group in 1940, after attempting to rape Sally Jupiter, reducing the group's membership to seven.
In 1946, Silhouette was expelled for having a lesbian relationship and both she and Dollar Bill were killed, and the following year Sally Jupiter retired in order to marry Schexnayder. In 1949, the remaining four members of the group decided to disband.
Members
Captain Metropolis
One of the founders of the Minutemen, Nelson Gardner, originally suggested that a group of heroes pooling their resources could be more effective than a handful of individuals. As an ex-Marine lieutenant, Captain Metropolis was motivated by ending "social ills" such as promiscuity and anti-war demonstrations. Gardner insisted that his motivations were not selfish or fanatically conservative.
In 1966 Gardner attempted to restore the costumed hero fad by founding the Crimebusters.
Hooded Justice
As the first costumed vigilante, Hooded Justice utilized sheer brutality to stop a bank robbery as his first act of heroism. His identity was never revealed, but due to his large, body-builder type figure, many conjectured that HJ was actually former circus strong-man Rolf Müller.
After HJ stopped her rape at the hands of the Comedian, Silk Spectre (Sally Jupiter) posed as his girlfriend to calm suspicions that Justice was a homosexual sadist and protect the image of the Minutemen in the 1940s.
When the Minutemen began to be questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Hooded Justice vanished, leaving many to conjecture that he died at the hands of the Comedian.
Silhouette
Ursula Zandt, a Jewish Austrian immigrant who escaped the rise of Nazism in Austria, joined the Minutemen as Silhouette. Ursula often baited Sally Jupiter about her Polish roots, which Jupiter outright denied. She was later expelled from the group when it became public knowledge that she was a lesbian in 1946.
Six weeks after her public outage and expulsion from the team, she was killed alongside her lover by an old adversary who sought revenge.
Nite Owl
After being inspired by an article on Hooded Justice's first appearance in the New York Gazette, Hollis Mason, an average policeman, became the first Nite Owl and joined the Minutemen. He helped to lead the team for many years, and eventually wrote a tell-all book about their endeavors called Under the Hood. His book contained the first public mention of the Comedian's rape of Sally Jupiter.
Once Doctor Manhattan became a public mainstay, Mason retired from hero work to open a garage, passing on the Nite Owl mantle to Dan Dreiberg, a long-time fan.
Mason was killed on Halloween in 1985 when he was confused for Dreiberg by a mob of Knot Tops gang members and beaten to death for the release of Rorschach from prison.
Silk Spectre
Upon the advice of her agent, Laurence Schexnayder, Sally Juspeczyk quit her career in burlesque dancing/waitressing and became a crimefighter. After one of the first meetings of the Minutemen, Sally "Jupiter," as she preferred to be called to mask her Polish heritage, was sexually assaulted by the Comedian. Hooded Justice intervened, resulting in bad blood between the two men. Sally later fell in love with the Comedian, even having a child by him while still married to Schexnayder, eventually becoming the root cause of their divorce.
Her dancing background and acceptance of pornography-style comics drawn of her are indications that she is a victim of low self-esteem as well as a woman who desired aggressive male attention.
The original Silk Spectre trained her daughter, Laurel Jane, early on to take up the mantle and be a better hero than she could ever be. She eventually retired to a rest home in California, letting her daughter take care of the crimefighting.
Dollar Bill
Dollar Bill was originally a star college athlete from Kansas, employed as an in-house superhero by one of the major, but unnamed, national banks. While attempting to stop a raid upon one of his employer's banks, his cloak became entangled in the bank's revolving door and he was shot dead before he could free it. In Under the Hood, Hollis Mason's tell-all book, Mason described Dollar Bill as an honest, friendly young man, and rued the stupidity of capes because of the incident. Interestingly enough, Dollar Bill's clear commercial motivations (public identity, hired by a bank) are never commented on by his peers or the subsequent generation of vigilantes who all seem to regard him as a worthy hero – even Rorschach, who condemns Ozymandias for his commercialization, laments Dollar Bill's untimely death.
Mothman
Something of a minor character, Byron Lewis was one of the costumed adventurers that appeared after the appearance of Hooded Justice. Lewis used special wings to glide in the air while battling crime. Lewis was frightened by the idea of the second World War. He was one of the four Minutemen to remain on the team after the deaths of Dollar Bill and the Silhouette, the Comedian's expulsion, and the Silk Spectre's retirement.
Lewis was investigated by HUAC, and had difficulty clearing his name due to several left-wing friends. The pressure from these investigations is considered to have precipitated his alcoholism and subsequent mental health problems that eventually consigned him to a sanatorium in New England. He is not a main focus of the storyline, but appears in flashbacks, at one point reduced in later years to fragile sanity, unnerving the second Silk Spectre. He is regarded fondly by most of the Minutemen, and the first Nite Owl sends Dreiberg to visit him, uncostumed, on his behalf.
