The explosive, fiery destruction visited by both V and the Comedian, two of Moore’s perpetually grinning protagonists who are above (or outside) the law, represents blistering Lacanian jouissance. The excess that marks them as ur-violent, as revolutionary/founding agents, is represented/visualized in the irruptive flame they both associate with.
In chapter II, The Comedian (whose preferred weapon in Vietnam is the flamethrower,) sets fire to the map of “new social evils” the “Crimebusters” have been convened to fight. He says these evils “don’t matter squat because inside thirty years the nukes are gonna be flyin’ like maybugs...” (ch.II,pg11). The Comedian doesn’t offer any way to address this larger problem, which he feels negates particular social ills, but seems to enjoy the threat of annihilation. “Once you figure out what a joke everything is, being the Comedian’s the only thing makes sense” (ch.II,pg13). This flippant discussion of nuclear catastrophe is perhaps the grandest economy of jouissance on display until the overweening power of Adrian Veidt is revealed.
The Comedian registers jouissance each time he goes too far: happily tear-gassing protestors, or, more gruesomely, shooting his pregnant mistress. Each time, jouissance is something that can’t be contained; an excess or extra thing breaking free of any restraint.
Dr. Manhattan psychoanalyzes him: “Blake is interesting. I have never met anyone so deliberately amoral. He suits the climate here: the madness, the pointless butchery.... As I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such an understanding. Blake’s different. He understands perfectly ... and he doesn’t care.”
The Comedian presents the pure jouissance of enjoying absolute destruction, accepting its negativity for what it truly is. Overflowing the bounds... is this the state’s violent desire or the anarchist subject’s excessive joy? We are caught in an oscillation of these terms as one comes to resemble the other.
