The idea that the Watchmen were very nearly existing characters (from Charleston comics, which I admittedly know nothing about) makes be wonder if it would have even been possible to tell this story with recognizable faces. If you took Rorschach and made him Batman, and took Dr. Manhattan and made him Superman, etc, could you get the same effect? My gut reaction is no. As Alex said, by creating characters from scratch he was allowed to make them exactly as needed. Still, the question is why? Why is it so vital to the success of the story that these characters being new and unknown and made exactly the way they are?

Again, I’ll take Rorschach (who, interestingly, seems to easily be the character people latch onto the most. I wonder why?) as a sample. Why does he work here when a Batman wouldn’t? Both are capable of cruelties, and you could argue that there is nothing Rorschach does that isn’t outside of Batman’s obsessive personality. The problem as I see it is a simple one: Batman is Batman. We expect certain things from him. He is, no matter how he’s written, already a protagonist simply for being who he is. Rorschach, on the other hand, is intriguing but also mildly horrifying. It’s hard not to he wary of him, as we don’t know exactly how far. While Batman could easily play the same role, that feeling of wary uncertain would likely be absent.

That sense of uncertainty is key to the telling of the story because without it the questions Moore raises about the moral ramifications of superheroes don’t hold the same punch. We need to feel the same unease with these characters as society in the book does, and this is much better accomplished by using new characters instead of recycled ones.