I think this is Tom King's strongest work since Mister Miracle, and I don't say that lightly because I ADORED Mister Miracle.

A book about Rorschach, the most politically problematic and yet simultaneously most popular character from Alan Moore's seminal Watchmen, seems like a terrible idea, a cynical cash grab to profit from the renewed interest generated by Geoff Johns' Doomsday Clock and Damon Lindelof's TV show. But King deftly sidesteps all of this by writing a book not about the character of Rorschach, but the idea of Rorschach. Walter Joseph Kovacs is nowhere to be found (having been exploded by Doctor Manhattan in the original graphic novel), and instead we see the effects of his right-wing, moral-absolutist legacy.

King being King (whose previous superhero books have touched on issues of trauma, religious extremism, and war crimes, all drawn from his own experiences as a counterterrorist operative in Iraq), this all touches topical issues. And King offers some, quite frankly, disturbing commentary on the current state of American politics (and, by extension, world politics). A focus on conspiracy theories (albeit fictional, space squid-based conspiracy theories) connects uncomfortably with QAnon and Donald Trump's "fake news".

Meanwhile, the book's preoccupation with comic books themselves (one character is a clear stand-in for Steve Dikto, creator of The Question and Mr. A, the blueprints for Rorschach) questions the ability of comic books (even high-minded ones like Watchmen and Rorschach itself) to say anything meaningful about the real world. Or, at worst, to actively damage peoples' perception of how the real world works.

That last might seem ironic and even contradictory, but King's writing is ambiguous and open-ended enough to allow the reader to question it, and their own interpretation of it, and to attempt to come to their own conclusions about its themes.