His mother was a prostitute, and his father is unknown. He was taken from his mother in at a early age after viciously attacking two bullies, and stayed in a home until he was a teenager, when he became a garment worker. A couple of years later, after reading about the death of Kitty Genovese, he took up the identity of Rorschach. He is extremly found of violence, but since he is the only one in the team with any ball handling skills he has had to take the position as thrower. This doesn't prevent him from seeking frontline action as soon as possible though.

Captain Metropolis was a lieutenant in the U.S. Marines who turned to crimefighting when it became a rage.. He began correspondence with the first Silk Spectre and her agent, Laurence Schexnayder. The result was the publicity and notoriety of the Minutemen.

He enjoyed the sense of being a leader, but how effective he was as any kind of a leader is questionable. After the Minutemen dissolved and the younger generation of vigilantes came on the scene, he attempted to form a new "justice fraternity"--"The Crimebusters"--but it never happened due to the Comedian's disheartening appraisal of such a "trivial" endeavor in the era of Cold War politics, government corruption, and the real threat of nuclear holocaust.

He still tries to take on his leader roll, but the team seems to only head his advice when it is the same as their own wishes.

The Commedian was a member of the Minutemen who formed as a "masked adventurer" justice league., but he soon left the group after his sexual assault on Silk Spectre. He went on to become a government agent with a distinctly mercenary sense of duty.

Serving in every major conflict from, the Comedian was a super-soldier involved in covert operations, including assassinations and the establishment of puppet regimes.

The Comedian expected the worst of humanity and acted on that worldview with his own brand of self-interest and cynical humor. He thrived on chaos and had no trouble killing anyone whom he was ordered to kill or who got in his way. He once severely beat Ozymandias.He was most likely responsible for Hooded Justice's "disappearance."

Although amoral by nature, the Comedian was thunderstruck by Ozymandias' bloody plan to save the world, his knowledge of which led to his death at the hands of Ozymandias.

The Comedian was self-made and obstinate. He lived by his own rules and had no patience for idealistic schemes. His tough-minded, cynical personality, however, gave him unique insight into others. He first pointed out Dr. Manhattan's otherworldiness and its consequences; he also remarked on Rorschach's grim change of character and complete submersion into his vigilante alter ego. Indeed, the Comedian's deep personal insights are catalyst to all the costume heroes that their purpose and meaning were obsolete and even silly in an era of geo-politics, the Cold War, and the real threat of nuclear destruction.

Dr. Manhattan was the son of a watchmaker who pushed him into studying atomic physics instead of following in the family business. He was involved in research at the Gila Flats under the direction of Professor Milton Glass. During this time, he had a love affair with colleague, Janey Slater. While retrieving a watch he fixed for her, he accidentally became trapped in an intrinsic field separator. His atoms were smashed, but, eventually, methodically, he reconstructed himself and emerged as Dr. Manhattan, a blue-skinned superhuman who can do anything because he has a quantum consciousness that reveals time, space, and matter as they truly are--in atomic detail.

Manhattan's unusual hyperconsciousness allows him to perceive time in multiple facets. He slides through time and has a keen sense of predestination. For him, all time is simultaneous; all things happen at once. Therefore, he knows what "will" happen in "the future" but is incapable of doing anything about it. An obviously complex, distant, otherworldly character, Manhattan is ageless and indestructible but poignantly paradoxical in his fatalistic yet omnipotent existence.