The first issue of Doomsday Clock is here , and with it a probability to research the world Watchmen left behind — and how it will eventually tie into the broad DC Comics cosmos . While in some ways it ’s unsurprising that this world is even gloomy than we left it , there have still been some major changes since we last saw these characters in the original serial
Written by Geoff Johns , and with artwork from Gary Frank and Brad Anderson , Doomsday Clock # 1 give with the twilight of America . Set just seven age after the conclusion of the landmark original graphic novel — which ended with an diffident unexampled era of peace after Adrian Veidt , a.k.a . Ozymandias , devastate New York with a giant psychical monster — Doomsday Clock reveals that Veidt ’s ritual killing earned less than a decennium ’s time lag on World War III . With Russia invade Europe , and North Korea rattle its atomic cavalry sword , America stick out again on a brink seen in the original Watchmen , but falls off it . news program station fall soundless and a new era of American propaganda sedately tell the body politic that atomic war has get . “ The Great Lie”—Veidt ’s original design — has come crashing down all around him .
The inevitably of this dark outcome finger right for the world of Watchmen , itself a story of history being doom to double itself , and the sacrifices that must be made to try and break that cycle . “ Nothing ever terminate , ” as Dr. Manhattan intoned to Veidt in the closing pageboy of Watchmen , and Doomsday Clock as a prolongation of that never - terminate tide of dark feels intimate , even as it explores unmapped avenues of this human beings we leave behind decades ago .
informal parallels and be intimate bosom of Watchmen ’s iconic style abound in Doomsday Clock , peculiarly the structure of Frank and Anderson ’s artwork . The pair ’s design masterfully honor and then break the nine - panel Sir Frederick Handley Page style of the original , frame in characters across alternate boundaries rather than through the actual separation of frame . What make Doomsday Clock # 1 so absorbing is the subtle ways it diverges from the familiarity of Watchmen to acquaint something new to the audience , even if it ’s still within the figure of Watchmen court . This is shown mostly through the re - initiation of Rorschach , a “ shocking ” return — already let out at New York Comic - Cona few months ago — after the character ’s literally explosive dying in the climax of the original series . But as we quickly learn , this is not the return of the fallen antihero but instead a new lineament carrying on Rorschach ’s bequest .
While the earthly concern we find in Doomsday Clock feel like a logical , if cheerless , continuation of the original Watchmen , the newfangled Rorschach is very dissimilar from the master . ( The biggest Book of Revelation we get is that he ’s African - American . ) We get together the original Rorschach as a malingering , mum figure investigating the Comedian ’s apartment . This Modern character enters the frame more boldly ; he ’s rough and ready , a threatening figure stalking a prison full of yard bird look to die in the oncoming apocalypse .
The new Rorschach ’s mission is to recover two supervillains , the Marionette and the Mime . The twosome are homage to the Charlton Comics charactersPunch and Jewlee , just like the Watchmen were extrapolations of other Charlton superheroes . They ’re being convey for a mysterious benefactor , who ’s on a quest to “ find God . ” If working for someone else was n’t already weird enough , this Rorschach also quickly acquiesces to the demands of the people he ’s been charter to extract from prison , an odd characterization for a bomber infamously know for spend a penny his last tie-up on the estimate that there could never be compromises .
It also becomes apparent how much has transfer in the Watchmen world when Rorschach ’s helper is unwrap to be none other than Adrian Veidt himself . The golden vanquisher is emerge from years in concealing after his horrific architectural plan for mankind peace unravel in the long time between the original comic and Doomsday Clock . Instead of the aloof master planner we see in Watchmen — evading even an almighty being like Dr. Manhattan — the Veidt we see here is one willing to process with others he previously saw as below him . He ’s also plague by cancer , keenly cognizant of his bankruptcy , and now knows that the human beings require Dr. Manhattan now more than it ever needed Adrian Veidt .
fight these characters beyond the familiarity of what we knew of them in Watchmen is a promising start for what Doomsday Clock has be after , and happily , it ’s a better choice than simply wallow in reverence for Alan Moore ’s classical in writing novel ( which is what the controversial prequel projection Before Watchmen did back in 2012 ) . Not all of Johns ’ attempts at bringing something new to the Watchmen board are successful ; there are clunky allusion to current government , from a President that golfs while his res publica crumbles to Rorschach ’s talk of “ undeplorables ” in the orifice narration . They do n’t land with the bite Johns probably intended them to , and finger like an overwrought comparison extend a bit too far to quite work . But Doomsday Clock ’s strength in present its post - Watchmen world definitely lies in how it work with the setting Moore , Gibbons , and Higgins left behind all those twelvemonth ago , rather than the moments where it vainly tries to wrap up that world around our current one .
But Doomsday Clock # 1 also begins to lay the groundwork for the conflict that will drive the DC side of things . We know that Dr. Manhattan has been been mud about with the framework of the DC universe since the earliest days of Rebirth ; here , Superman wakes up after a nightmare — itself a rare enough phenomenon that the Man of Steel is changeable .
The context of the nightmare is even more unsettling , since it ’s of the night his adoptive parents die in a car chance event when he was a teen . We already know , thanks toThe Buttonandrecent events in Action Comics , that various manipulations by Dr. Manhattan have been using the specters of lost fatherhood to prevent DC ’s greatest heroes , Superman and Batman , from embarking on their Earth - defending life history , to try and destabilize the establish order of this universe . The incubus seems to be a clear polarity that Dr. Manhattan ’s attempts are n’t over .
The first issue of Doomsday Clock is capsule in a erotic love for what made the original Watchmen so iconic and well-thought-of , but its smashing strength are discover in how it goes beyond it rather of just pay protection to it . Just how this all run into the wider DC world remains to be see , but Doomsday Clock # 1 sets up a story that is less of the intriguing cabal of the original Watchmen , and more of a climactic reckoning between two very different worlds .
DC ComicsDoomsday ClockRorschachSuperman
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