Ozymandias

"

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away

"

Summary

Adrian Alexander Veidt, a.k.a. Ozymandias is the main antagonist of Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, published by DC Comics. 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.

Adrian was born in 1939, the son of rich immigrant parents, he was found to be incredibly intelligent. After his parents and his teachers became suspicious of his grades, he successfully hid his intelligence by deliberately achieving average grades. After his parents' deaths, he inherited their substantial fortune at age 17, but chose to give it all to charity. Veidt then embarked on a vision quest, following the route of Alexander the Great - a childhood idol - throughout the Mediterranean, Asia Minor, and former ancient Persia.

It was during this journey that he consumed a ball of hashish and saw a psychedelic hallucination which inspired him to become a superhero. Returning to America, he named himself "Ozymandias" and became both a costumed vigilante, focusing particularly on organized crime, and a multi-billionaire businessman, earning a reputation as "the smartest man on the planet."

However, his own cases robbed him of the idealistic belief that battling crime would truly lessen evil and suffering in the world. This was brought to a head when an abortive attempt to organize a new superhero team was disrupted by the Comedian, who noted in his brutally apt way exactly how petty the doings of the costumed heroes were in a world where the threat of nuclear war hung overhead, and how powerless they were to stop it. This, coupled with the existence of Doctor Manhattan and the threat he posed to the entire human race, drove Ozymandias to a compulsive obsession with attaining world peace, regardless of the means necessary.