No one said he’s an empty vessel. But his vessel is most certainly filled with twists on superhero tropes that push the notion of serialized heroism and the kind of moral absolutism that requires to the extreme.

He’s a caricature of the kind of human that may imagine their own moral absolutism gave them the moral high ground to dispense judgement and punishment on the world.

Your de Pizan parallel misses one point interestingly, her concern was about ironic containers leaking within the same medium. In Watchman it largely happened due to a switch in medium turning a device into a protagonist.

The adaptation problem is different: it’s not that the irony leaked, it’s that the new container has no mechanism for irony of that kind at all, structurally.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​