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It does seem a bit confusing and contradictory, Stoatie. Rorschach doesn't know Edward Blake is the Comedian until he finds the uniform in Blake's wardrobe when investigating "a routine homicide."
"Victim named Edward Blake...seems he was the Comedian."
Dreiberg doesn't seem to know any more than Rorschach, but on the next page, Rorschach is suddenly more clued in, knowing how old Blake was when he joined the Minutement: "Blake was sixteen and Mason the first Nite Owl."
Maybe he got that from Mason's book, but from my quick re-reading, Mason doesn't give either the Comedian's age or real name in "Under the Hood".
Dr Manhattan and Laurie both know the Comedian's secret identity ~ Jon because he and the Comedian were the last remaining government operatives, Laurie presumably for the same reason, but also because her mother would have told her Blake's real name. He "was a bastard. He was a monster."
At the first Crimebusters meeting, Nelson Gardner is open about his name, but implies a lot of them won't have known his secret identity before. There's an inconsistency in the use of first names and code names ~ Blake calls Nelson "Nelly", Janey refers to Dr Manhattan openly as "Jon", but Blake calls Adrian Veidt "Ozzy" and Dan calls Rorschach only by his nom de guerre.
So, in short, it seems that at the time of Blake's death, some of the active or retired masked adventurers knew, and had known for some time, that Edward Blake was the Comedian (Jon, Laurie, the original Silk Spectre) while some of them (Rorschach) were in the dark, and others (Nite Owl, Ozymandias) don't let on whether they knew or not ~ but Adrian/Ozymandias obviously did know, and Dan, given his friendship with Jon and Laurie (Laurie hasn't seen him in years but has his number to hand and sees him for dinner that evening), may have known but be playing safe when he finds Rorschach in his kitchen.
Overall, good question. I'm not sure if I have answered it correctly as I'm just skimming the first chapters here. |
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