Doomsday Clock 6

For the second time in six issues, Geoff Johns has dedicated an issue of Doomsday Clock in large part to providing the biography of Watchmen Universe characters of his own devising. Before, it was New Rorschach; this time, it is Marionette and Mime, but primarily the former. In it, we get a very recognizable origin story: The young costumed character suffers a traumatic event, and this gives them the overwhelming motivation to suit up and live a life driven by compensating for youthful suffering.

But, there's a twist. This trope, which originates with Batman, has been modified in many forms throughout comics history, often depicting the way in which the killing of one or both parents led a person turned their life into heroism (often, vigilante). Johns even took this Batman backstory and applied it to Barry Allen via time travel. And New Rorschach followed a version of this, with the deaths of his parents due to the plan of superhero-or-maybe-villain Adrian Veidt taking him on a path to adopt the vacant Rorschach identity. Marionette and Mime, however, are pushed down this path after each loses a parent to corrupt cops. And so, apparently, they begin to fight the law and never look back. This is made all the more painful as young Marionette's father is shown to be an inherently good man, kind to his daughter. Moreover, he embodies an intention very obviously the inverse of Watchmen as a whole: Whereas Alan Moore adultified and made tragic some characters that were invented to entertain children, Marionette's father takes some of the grim characters from his own world and makes them into entertainment for children. Symbolically, his fate shows that this spirit is not tenable in the Watchmen Universe, as payoff money for the corrupt police is hidden inside the head of a hero, and in turn, the puppet-maker himself is driven to suicide. Whereas Moore's grim characters like Comedian, Rorschach, and Veidt are dark figures injected into the world of superhero comics, Marionette's father, as her brief performance of Pinocchio's song highlights, is – as the crooked cops taunt – Geppetto injected into the Watchmen Universe. And he doesn't last. To make his suicide even grimmer, the way he hangs from a rope visually echoes his marionettes, seen behind him in the same panel.

The story arc of the youthful Mime and Marionette also echoes, in many places, the story of Moore's original Rorschach, from a traumatic childhood, a beating suffered from bullying kids who sling the insult "whore" turned into a particularly violent counterassault againstthose bullies, and the eventual use of deadly force against policemen.

This seeming aside, not involving the major players in the story, shows is in more detail Johns' intention. The Watchmen Universe is, in Johns' hands, something like the Crime Syndicate's Earth Three, a world that is not simply different from the main DCU, but a world that turns light and dark topsy-turvy. Seeing this, the eventual fate of the Watchmen Universe in this story will comprise Johns' ultimate statement: Will the Watchmen Universe die, survive dark, or be redeemed? In my last post, I suggested that the Nathaniel Dusk films may offer a big clue. If Johns is showing them in such detail, perhaps the reason is for us to see a Before-and-After in the DCU when the JSA comes back and The Adjournmentis therefore made in a different world, a world with heroes. But many options remain in play.

The JSA plot, and any possible onscreen presence of Superman and/or Doctor Manhattan are completely on hold in this issue, as is the Nathaniel Dusk series that pertains to the JSA plot, and we do not see Veidt, New Rorschach, Johnny Thunder, nor Saturn Girl. Instead, we get a focus on the Joker with his captive Batman and a meeting of supervillains who comprise two factions: Those who wish to join Black Adam in Khandaq and those who choose not to. As we learn in the end materials, Typhoon, the obscure villain who is murdered by the Comedian, is a product of the U.S. government and the Supermen Theory is thereby proven real (or a really tricky double fake).

The mystery that is being dangled before us is: Who is the creator of the program? Before, Luthor said that the person was a former member of the Justice League. This issue dangles some very superficial clues before us in the form of documents that cover the creator/director's name with black rectangles and coffee stains. The black rectangle corresponds in size to a word about 8 letters long. Around the coffee stain, we can see certain features of the letters, including a vertical stroke on the left side of the first letter. We could run many different names past these clues and narrow the candidates down, but that presumes that there are no other tricks going on, such as aliases. In all, the documents contain the names of three people from the Department of Metahuman Affairs: An admiral, the director/founder, and Brittany Brandon AKA Moonbow. One thing we see in recent Supermen Theory details is a large number of characters associated with Firestorm. With that in mind, the obscured versions of the founder's name is compatible with these names (and certainly various others) associated with science and/or government: Raymond, Luthor, Palmer, Magnus, and perhaps Waller. None of them is a straightforward solution to the mystery because each has some reason or another to doubt them. Perhaps Luthor is the favorite, but the overall list of candidates, meanwhile, remains large.

And who had a really bad issue in #6? Batman. The only DC superhero seen on-panel in the issue is reduced to a muttering hostage of the Joker, pushed around in a wheelchair. He's on a remarkable losing streak. After failing to anticipate New Rorschach's escape, Batman was outplayed by Veidt in the Owlship, beaten by a crowd, then drugged by the Joker, and treated as an object of ridicule in a room full of supervillains. The wheelchair and the Joker suggesting that he take "a few pictures" of the captive Batman are both subtle stylistic pointers to Alan Moore's post-Watchmen story The Killing Joke.

What happens next will prove to be defining for the series' direction. Many a Batman story would have the Caped Crusader suddenly and miraculously spring from the chair and take down the villains like bowling pins. So far, this series has shown no signs of this, and Batman's poor fortune has resulted not from being overpowered but rather from being foolish. Johns has apparently set the stage either for Batman to pull off a magnificent turnaround on his own, or for the story to end with Batman having been thoroughly shown up in a story which sees Superman, likely, prevail; this would, as I suggested after DC #5, make Doomsday Clock into a rebuttal of The Dark Knight Returns.

In fact, Johns pointedly and knowingly calls out DKR with paraphrases that turn the meanings in some respects reverse and an exact quote.

DKR: Diana went back to her people. Hal went to the stars.

DC #6: The Lantern's other adversaries have left for the stars. And there are rumors that the Amazons kidnapped Wonder Woman and dragged her back to Themyscira.

DKR (Batman, as Superman bursts into an underground chamber): Not him. Not now.

DC #6:(Riddler, as the Joker enters an underground chamber): Not him. Not now.

Intentional shout-outs to DKRsend a signal that Johns indeed means to make a comment on that series, and the state of Batman thus far makes it look like Johns may intend to conduct a hard reversal of the Batman-over-Superman dynamic that has held sway in pop culture since 1986.

As we reach the halfway point in the miniseries, the absence of Doctor Manhattan and Superman in most – nearly all – of the story so far heightens the tension considerably. While movement among those big players seems to have been absent, we still received possible clues about Doctor Manhattan:

One, for Johns to include the Joker in this opus story, years after one of his stories raised the "Three Jokers" mystery, suggests strongly that one of the three, the Joker in this story, will be revealed as an alternate Joker, however much he looks and acts like a standard version thereof.  And if this Joker isn't whom we think he may be, and we have the long-standing mystery of Doctor Manhattan's presence in the DCU, there would be some economy of plot if this Joker were a corporeal – and stunningly out of character – guise for the dull, humorless demigod from Watchmen. If true, then the final pages of this issue are achingly ironic, with the Joker zapping The Comedian with electricity much like the mosquito zapped by Doctor Manhattan at the end of DC#4. And why would Doctor Manhattan – photo of Jon Osterman and Janey included – be in Arkham Asylum in the first place? Perhaps because he has full memories of a life as the Joker, to whom Arkham is a kind of home? Then, when Marionette suggests that The Comedian might know the whereabouts of Doctor Manhattan, this Joker repeats the name and asks, "Who's that?" Unmistakably, having the utterly stoic Doctor Manhattan take the role of the least stoic character in the DCU would be deeply ironic; is that the punchline that Johns is going for?

And note also the curious arc of The Comedian. He is brought to the DCU by Doctor Manhattan, who is undoubtedly in his blue usual self at that point. Then The Comedian rather stunningly finds Ozymandias in Luthor's office, which would be nearly inconceivable as detective work in a world where Veidt had never previously had any trail to follow. But now he's trying to find Veidt and unable. Is this an arbitrary inconsistency to move the plot along, or is Doctor Manhattan toying with The Comedian?

Two clues run through the extended story. One, when the Reverse Flash sees Doctor Manhattan in the fourth chapter of "The Button," he is immediately terrified. Would Doctor Manhattan's usual appearance terrify Thawne? Even if DM meant to kill Thawne, why would that cause terror first, before the attack? On the other hand, if he appeared as a gigantic, glowing version of the Joker, the Reverse Flash's terror is immediately explicable. This is not explained if Doctor Manhattan appeared as his usual self or as one of the DC heroes whom we know. The moment that Thawne is killed, that manifestation of Doctor Manhattan draws the Comedian's button up towards himself, for no apparent reason. At the end of DC#6, the Joker also lifts the Comedian's button up towards himself. The irony is further heightened if Doctor Manhattan has adopted this tremendously off-type identity and ends the issue with the words, "It hurts when I smile." And it would further explain why this Joker takes such a fondness to Marionette and Mime. And, remember, Veidt brought Marionette to the DCU especially because he expected them to be bait that would attract Doctor Manhattan. The fact that they escaped from the Owlship did not concern Veidt – that was part of his plan, responding to the discovery of their absence with, "Perhaps now Jon will…" Now, consider how the Joker found Marionette and Mime in the first place – he had a plan to meet at the Bat-Signal. Why? He runs into Batman there – which an ordinary version of the Joker would have absolutely no way to anticipate – and his plan draws Marionette and Mime there, something Doctor Manhattan could anticipate by seeing it in advance.

Note the alternate cover of DC #5. The Joker – given curious prominence to be on a cover in a story that otherwise seems to concern him only tangentially – is painting a smile on himself, as though the smile is not part of his normal identity. Behind him? The mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. Coincidence? I think not.

Finally, if this Joker is Doctor Manhattan, then the Riddler's "Not you. Not now." has a greater impact and makes for a very fine counterpoint with DKR's use of the line in reference to Superman. Why use a line about Superman in reference to the Joker in a story that will feature a clash between Superman and Doctor Manhattan? The clues indicating that Doctor Manhattan could be hiding as this Joker remain a bit short of absolute proof, but the clues do abound, and seem too subtle to be red herrings.

At the midpoint, Johns has begun a very good story, one that has never sagged  or fallen short of a brilliant, compelling follow-up to a story that was incredibly ambitious for Johns to try to follow up. And now we await what has to be a busy second half.

Doomsday Clock: The Nathaniel Dusk Films

One structural similarity between Doomsday Clock and Watchmen is that each contains a prominent story-within-the-story. In Watchmen, that takes the form of the comic book series Tales of the Black Freighter, and in particular one story, "Marooned," from that fictional series. In Doomsday Clock, the parallel effort is a movie series starring an actor named Carver Colman as a detective named Nathaniel Dusk, and in particular the details of The Adjournment, one film from that series. This is potentially quite interesting, as a story-within-a-story can be quite revealing about the main story yet to come, and – even if not useful for forecasting – it says something about the way that Johns is crafting this story, and his overall message.

Part of what makes this interesting is the incredibly recursive nature of a story that has a story-within-a-story homaging an earlier story that also had a story-within-a-story. In fact, that understates it considerably. The layers are so numerous that it becomes almost maddeningly complex, a narrative equivalent to the visual phenomenon called the Droste effect, where an image contains a smaller version of itself that also contains a smaller version of itself, ad infinitum. To demonstrate the complexity of the situation here, let us consider the facets created by the story-within-a-story of Watchmen alone:

1) The main Watchmen plot (including multiple subplots)

2) The plot of "Marooned" and other TotBF stories

3) The fictional creators of TotBF.

4) Real people included on the fictional creative team.

5) Works of fiction in the real world that influenced TotBF.

Now, adding the equivalents from Doomsday Clock, double that from five planes of reality to ten, and instead of a handful of interlocked relationships, we have literally dozens. This is complicated yet more by the fact that the Watchmen Universe only consisted of a single work you can hold in your hand, whereas the DC Universe has been described in literally tens of thousands of works – and make no mistake – Johns is reaching into some fairly obscure old material in creating some such connections. There are effectively, therefore, six levels in the Doomsday Clockversion because creators of the Nathaniel Dusk series may be chosen from: (A) The real world; (B) Existing DCU characters; (C) Totally new characters debuting in Doomsday Clock. Moreover, we have multiple timelines at play in the DCU, and this is a fact that I am quite sure willprove relevant to Nathaniel Dusk. In duplicating Watchmen's use of a story-within-a-story (henceforth, for brevity, SWAS) Johns has something so remarkably powerful for its multiple layers that I can't readily recall a comparable device elsewhere in literature. Someone more avidly avant garde might let this SWAS take over the entire story; I do not think this is likely to be the direction that Johns will go, but I think he has devoted whole pages to it for a reason, and that it is going to get more interesting as it goes on.

Tales of the Black Freighter

Moore includes a considerable amount of text and art in conveying "Marooned" and I am not going to attempt, in this post alone, to reviewing that in detail. I will point out some high-level observations and offer just a few examples to back them up.

First, "Marooned" is a comic book, like Watchmenand other things upon which it comments are comic books. However, "Marooned" is not in the superhero genre but rather the pirate genre. It is quite full of horror, however, and in that regard TotBF certainly resembles to some extent Swamp Thingwhich has a horror element and whose writing duties, like TotBF, rotated from one writer to another, including Moore, who is the writer of Watchmen. The end materials for Watchmen#5 describe the history of TotBF and offer real world artist Joe Orlando as an artist on TotBF, and includes a drawing by the real Joe Orlando (portraying, in an interview, a slightly different fictional Joe Orlando). So TotBF has a lot of interplay with the real world.

Now, how does "Marooned," in all its detail, relate to the main Watchmenplot? The array of little clever details are quite numerous, and I will make no attempt to list them, but I will offer one example that shows that some of the plot mirrorings are fairly superficial and pointed in scattered directions: Someone taking a phone call inWatchmenmistakes the name "Rorschach" for the words "raw shark." Earlier in "Marooned," the protagonist has eaten raw shark meat. This is undeniably deliberate, but what does it mean? Perhaps we can note that Rorschach is as mean as a shark or that he is "eaten" because the phone call leads to his arrest and the main plot leads to his death, but none of that is very deep, or serves as useful foreshadowing. It's just a phrase that occurs in one story while the same idea (though not the exact phrase) occurs in the other.

What is the main story arc of "Marooned"? It makes one shudder to recall. A shipwrecked man meets repeated horror in his efforts to return home and save those whom he loves. The protagonist's associates, family, and even their dead bodies are devastated and defiled as he attempts to achieve some good outcome. Ultimately, he causes all of that devastation – everything would have been far better if he'd done nothing at all. And only in the final scene, when he realizes how damned he and his efforts are, that he surrenders himself to the infernal Black Freighter, climbing aboard as the newest member of its damned crew. Bleakness leading to greater bleakness leading to ultimate bleakness.

Is "Marooned" foreshadowing the main Watchmenplot? It certainly mirrors it in tone. Does it mirror it in plot, and if so, who is the protagonist? The doomed sailor from "Marooned" tries to do well, but fails repeatedly to make meaningful improvement in his situation, and ultimately, his act of violence that is meant to do good does the ultimate evil. He meets this fact with resignation. Who in the main plot does so? Veidt, the Comedian, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, Doctor Manhattan – all these nominal heroes come to see that their acts of violence have done no real good. Even Rorschach, in his final moments, meets the futility of his predicament with resignation, asking Doctor Manhattan to go ahead and deliver the inevitable death zap. However, only Veidt plays the active role in making the final violent climax occur. If the protagonist closely represents anyone, it's Veidt. The looser tone of resignation, however, is certainly seen all over Watchmen. So, could a savvy reader have used "Marooned" to predict where Watchmenis going? Maybe someone can tell a story to that effect, but I doubt it. "Marooned" only reaches its conclusion a few pages before Veidt tells the details of his plan to Rorschach and Nite Owl. Perhaps if someone stopped reading Watchmen#11 mid-way, then put the issue down and spent a long time thinking they could have used their cogitations to predict what was about to follow three page-flips later. Even then, we'd have to trust that they hadn't finished the issue first. I myself read Watchmenin the single paperback volume and certainly don't remember setting it down to try to make predictions.

But I think Doomsday Clockmay be different. I will go out on a limb and make some specific predictions for things I think we're likely to see before the Nathaniel Dusk storyline is complete.

Similarities and Differences

First, one remarkable alignment that may indicate how closely Johns is following Moore's structure: TotBF was mentioned/shown in Watchmanissues #3, 5, 8, 10, and 11. Five issues into Doomsday Clock, the Nathaniel Dusk films have been mentioned in issues #2, 3, and #5, suggesting that Johns is following Moore's structure considerably, but not to the last detail.

On the surface level, we can see many similarities between the two cases: Both are fictional narratives in a visual medium. Both are serials. Both are genres – pirate and detective – besides superhero that were once very popular in comic books. Both have death and murder as prominent elements. And, in both cases, we are given not only the story-within-a-story's narration, but also its backstory, with information about the creators who are a mixture of real-life creators and those who are fictional. Both of them also have a limited autobiographical feel – TotBFis a comic book, Moore's own medium, and the backstory of Tales of the Black Freighterrotating from one main writer to another reminds me of Swamp Thingbeing passed on to Alan Moore, who was in the middle of his run when Watchmenwas written; meanwhile, Geoff Johns began (and continues) a career in film, the medium of the Nathaniel Dusk stories.

That is a good transition into the sharp differences between the two cases; they are in different media. They are aimed at different generations: TotBF is being read by one of Watchmen's youngest characters, a boy named Bernie; The Adjournment is being watched (primarily, that we see) by a man named Donald who is in Johnny Thunder's assisted-living facility, and is probably about 90 years old. We can already be assured that they have distinctly different plot structures: Adjournment is a film noir whodunit, with a complex structure – as many as four victims or would-be victims and at least two killers. Marooned, on the other hand, was an endlessly bleak horror story, a failed journey leading inevitably to tragedy, with events both within and outside of the protagonists' control always leading to greater horror. But, unlike Adjournment, there are no unknown identities in Marooned, at least none that last long.

The Motive?

So what is the point of Adjournment? I think there's a probable answer to that, but it's more likely that we can figure it out from what we can already guess about Doomsday Clock than vice versa.

In and of itself, Adjournment is a murder mystery. If it proves to mirror Johns' larger story, then we will find all kinds of parallels between them. The victims and killer in the movie will represent equivalent figures in the DCU.

Alternately – or additionally – there seems to be an important subplot in which the creators of Adjournmentwill have directly played a role in the DCU. We know that Coleman Carver had a room full of timepieces in his home, and these have been important to both Doctor Manhattan and victim of timeline manipulation, Wally West. Moreover, some Golden and Silver Age characters have been mentioned in the Nathaniel Dusk backstory; these characters' presence may be a throwaway, or may turn into something very important.

One thing that has been telegraphed to us already, as of DC Rebirth#1, is that the New 52 reboot of 2011 and concurrent actions appearently taken by Doctor Manhattan if not others, is being portrayed as an unfortunate worsening of the DCU, removing the Justice Society and a decade of relationships such as Barry and Iris. Having passed that decree as truth, Johns must assuredly be on a path towards undoing those deletions. And so we have two major retcons to un-retcon.

That brings us to The Adjournment. Our murder mystery has two victims. It also has two killers, and one of the killers will turn their sights on the detective who is trying to solve the case. To tie the just un-retcons we expect together with the Adjournmentplot, I suggest this: The older murder victim represents the Justice Society. The younger murder victim (divorced) represents the lost loves and legacies that the New 52 retcon removed. The latter was, apparently, removed by Doctor Manhattan, and the former by a wish that Johnny Thunder made to protect the JSA. Johnny tells us this in Rebirth as: "McCarthy yelled, 'Take off your masks!' You know I was only trying to protect them. I'm sorry for what I did."

This is a very specific reference to a story published in Adventure#466 1979 with key scenes set in 1951. In that story, an unnamed Joseph McCarthy demands that the JSA unmask themselves. They do not comply and retire from crimefighting, even though they continue to live their civilian lives. Apparently, Johnny Thunder, in this timeline, made a wish to his Thunderbolt that protected them from McCarthy but removed them from ever having been the JSA  – perhaps even from ever having lived.

There may be a tiny Easter Egg confirming this. Early in that story, the leader of a gang of anti-JSA criminals tells his colleagues, "…having failed to come up with a plan to stop the JSA once again, I must declare this meeting adj…" The word that is cut off is obviously "adjourned," and the title of the Coleman Carver movie is The Adjournment. However, what was more significantly adjourned was not a meeting of a bunch of criminals, but the outright existence of the Justice Society. It is that which the movie symbolizes. The detective's last name is Dusk, signifying the end of a day and the beginning of night. The act by Johnny Thunder ended the "day" of the Justice Society and brought on a long, dark night.

And it's here that I make a prediction that goes to the core of the difference between TotBF and the Nathaniel Dusk films: The damage done in "Marooned" was complete, total, utterly bleak, and irreversible. That's what Watchmen was about, but is obviously not what Doomsday Clockis about. The Justice Society will be made to have lived again. And now, note the timeline. McCarthy's hearing with the JSA took place in 1951, before the last two Nathaniel Dusk movies. The current timeline, therefore, forked off from the one we previously (pre-Flashpoint) knew. Therefore,The Adjournment is from 1954 in a timeline that didn't use to exist, and will be somehow altered again. If the events of Doomsday Clockundo Johnny Thunder's errant wish, then the world in which The Adjournment was made will not have existed, and so I predict that by story's end, we will see a new version of the Nathaniel Dusk series. Perhaps there'll be different plots, in which the deaths of the older and younger man do not occur. Perhaps different actors. Perhaps the films will not exist in this form at all. This will be a stylistic flourish for Johns to reveal late in the story, and we'll see that the new/restored timeline is a happier and more optimistic one.

Behind the Scenes

A more complex situation is the behind-the-scenes one. The characters of older DCU stories are mentioned in the materials concerning the Nathaniel Dusk series. Up to nine of these are mentioned in Doomsday Clock#3. One more that I missed: Bruce Nelson, who is a detective who debuted all the way back in Detective Comics#1. (Nelson's story began in San Francisco but inexplicably moved to New York in the second issue, perhaps DC's first retcon. Doomsday Clockplaces him in San Francisco.)

We know that some of the individuals who, in the post-Crisis timeline, became some of the Golden Age's superheroes, are still alive in the current timeline, but did not become superheroes. We also know that Johnny Thunder did something to prevent the JSA from having their careers. Perhaps the explanation can be found in an older comic that went a lot like that. In JLAvol1 #37, an evil version of Johnny Thunder tells the Thunderbolt to make it so that the JLA would never exist. Going back in time, the Thunderbolt systematically makes one change after another to prevent any of the JLA members from beginning their careers – for example, stopping the lightning bolt that gave Barry Allen super speed, preventing the explosion of Krypton, and diverting Abin Sur from Earth and his meeting with Hal Jordan. If Johns is following that formula here, then all of the JSA's civilian identities should have lived normal lives with middle adulthood in the 1940s and 1950s. Carver Colman would have been 28 years old when the JSA debuted in 1940. He is suggested to have been an "American hero" in DC#3. His murder, in the current timeline, took place in June of 1953 or 1954, and he was murdered with his own award trophy, the same way that the original Nite Owl, Hollis Mason, was killed in Watchmen#8 with the trophy shown on the issue's cover.

Cumulatively, this builds suspicion that Carver Colman actually is one of the Justice Society members whose lives were rerouted by the Thunderbolt in its alteration of the timeline. How can this be? According to the end materials, Colman's purported mother was not his real mother, as claimed in a letter found after his death. If he was removed from one family and placed with another, perhaps this was the alteration made to the timeline to prevent his hero identity from emerging. Perhaps his real name is one that we know as the secret identity of a Justice Society member.

If so, who? The strongest signs point to Hourman. Above all, Colman had a room full of clocks, called a "ticktock room" in the celebrity gossip. Rex Tyler's nickname (yes, this would seem to give away his secret identity) was Tick Tock Tyler – this is surely not a coincidence on Johns' part, and is either the giveaway clue or a red herring. One more, subtler clue in DC#2: A present-day ad for a drug called Travodart is made by the "Bannermain Chemical Co." Bannermain, as other readers have pointed out, is very close to the name Bannerman, which was the name of Rex Tyler's boss and the chemical company for which Tyler worked until he eventually became the boss and named it Tyler for himself. If Bannerman remained the name of that company, then Tyler not only failed to become Hourman, but perhaps failed, also, to live any of his life as Rex Tyler. Yet another clue regarding his death: A woman in Johnny Thunder's retirement home calls him a "deviant" and part of the modern backstory of Tyler is that he battled addiction to the Miraclo drug that provided his powers. So, we may find out that a change made early in Tyler's life put him on the path to become Carver, and an untimely (no pun intended) death. If so, the restoration of the timeline to include the Justice Society will also save Tyler.

It is also worth noting that the name Carver Colman sounds a lot like the Carter Hall identity of the JSA's Hawkman, so perhaps that is who Colman was in the original timeline. If so, note that the older Carver Colman fan is named Donald. Don Hall, the Dove half of the Hawk and Dove duo, could conceivably be retconned as a relative of Carter Hall, which could explain why he is a fan of Colman, as an actual relative of his. However, the age does not seem to fit.

Then again, perhaps a Colman is just a Colman, but one who had significant ties to the Golden Age heroes; John Law and other Golden Age characters are tied to his story, and he may be more of a catalyst than a main player in the backstory of the JSA that was, now isn't, and will be again.