Upon completion of his project, Veidt planned to murder all of his (unwitting) accomplices and arrange the psychological deterioration and self-exile of the presumably invincible Doctor Manhattan.įellow vigilante Edward Blake, a.k.a. He became very wealthy and was known as a great humanitarian, and used this to bankroll his secret scheme of creating a catastrophic event to deceive the world into uniting against a common enemy and thus avert nuclear war. Two years before costumed heroes were banned by the Keene Act, Adrian Veidt revealed his secret identity, retired from superheroism and marketed his image. It was at this moment that Veidt began to believe superheroics were not enough to save the world, and began plotting to think of a method that could.Īfter being a superhero File:Adrian Veidt Signature.svgĭue to the increasingly negative perceptions of vigilantes by the media, Veidt predicted that the public would turn away from them. In 1966, he was invited by former Minuteman and adventurer Captain Metropolis to become a member of the Crimebusters, but the group never came to fruition due to the Comedian's breaking up of the meeting. He debuted in early 1958 by exposing a drug ring in New York City. On returning to the US, he began training himself to achieve peak physical condition, becoming a world-class gymnast in the process.Īt age nineteen, Veidt named himself Ozymandias (the Greek name for Ramesses II) and became a costumed vigilante, earning a reputation as "the smartest man on the planet” and using his physical skills to non-violently incapacitate opponents. As he finished his travels in Egypt, he realized that Alexander was a pale imitation of Ramesses II, who became Veidt's new hero. During an excursion into the Middle East, Veidt consumed a ball of hashish and saw visions of the past. Veidt embarked on a vision quest, following the route of his childhood idol Alexander the Great. After his parents' deaths, he inherited their substantial fortune at age seventeen, but chose to give it all to charity as he wanted to make something of himself on his own. He then hid this information from his elders and peers by deliberately achieving average marks.
As a child, he received high grades in school, and it was noted that he was very intelligent.
An older Adrian Veidt in the limited television series Watchmen on HBO, was played by Jeremy Irons.Īdrian Veidt was born in 1939, and is the son of wealthy German-American immigrant parents.
Ozymandias made his first live-action appearance in the 2009 film Watchmen played by Matthew Goode. Ozymandias is ranked number 25 on Wizard 's Top 200 Comic Book Characters list and number 21 on IGN's Top 100 Villains list. Named "Ozymandias" in the manner of Ramesses II, his name recalls the famous poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which takes as its theme the fleeting nature of empire and is excerpted as the epigraph of one of the chapters of Watchmen. Ozymandias ( / ˌ ɒ z i ˈ m æ n d i ə s / oz-ee- MAN-dee-əs real name Adrian Alexander Veidt) is a fictional character and anti-villain in the American graphic novel miniseries Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, published by DC Comics.