and Marionette when they attend an underground villain meeting held by Riddler to discuss the Superman Theory. He makes himself known by shooting Typhoon in the face. While pursuing them, he evades Giganta's attacks, shoots Riddler in the leg, and uses a grenade to defeat the other villains present. When Mime and Marionette are in bed together the next morning, the Comedian catches up to them, planning to use them to find Ozymandias. Before the Comedian can do anything, Joker comes to Mime and Marionette's rescue where he uses a joy buzzer on the Comedian. As Batman gets free and fights Joker, Mime and Marionette escape with the Comedian and the Lantern Battery. Upon catching up with Ozymandias and shooting him, Lex Luthor shoots the Comedian with a device which returns him to the moment he was taken from, leaving him to die which horrified him and feeling denied of his revenge. Character inspiration and origin of name Alan Moore has stated that the Comedian, besides his comic book inspirations, was also based on G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent and a figure in the Watergate scandal as the chief operative in the White House Plumbers unit during the Nixon Administration. Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping for his role in the scandal. Moore imagined the Comedian as Liddy with "comic book muscles". In the comic, Rorschach explains that Blake's moniker of "The Comedian" stems from his cynical and arguably selfish world perspective that "in an insane world", one can only laugh, as if everything is "a joke". Moore took the idea of the name from Graham Greene's novel The Comedians. Powers and abilities The Comedian was a skilled hand-to-hand combatant in excellent physical condition, even at the time of his death at the age of 61. Blake was proficient with his M1911 .45 caliber pistol, MAC-10 submachine gun and pump-action shotgun, and was shown using a variety of conventional weaponry in his adventures (flamethrowers, grenade launchers, etc.). His government-sanctioned activities suggest that he received training in covert operations and unconventional warfare. The smiley face badge Throughout the work, the Comedian is typically seen wearing or in close proximity to the "smiley face" button which is closely associated with him, and has become the iconic symbol of the Watchmen series as a whole. At the beginning of the series, the button is smeared with a single