Doomsday Clock 12

There is a war between optimism and pessimism, a childlike joy triggered by how wonderful things can be and then there is an awe and fascination in how terrible things can be, a desire to see the old ways shattered and hell let loose. But does that describe Doomsday Clock #12, or does it describe what has happened in DC Comics since Rebirth? Or does it describe both, with the two situations delivering up opposite outcomes? And which will lay the ground for 2020 and beyond?

Ordinarily, I would respond to an issue of this series by going into the small details and see where they are going. As the previous eleven issues, as well as DC Rebirth #1 and "The Button" and various crossovers like the Mr. Oz subplot beforehand ticked by at a remarkably leisurely pace, those small clues pointed us towards the end, an end which in many broad strokes – the JSA and the Kents returning; Superman turning Dr. Manhattan "good" – was visible from the outset. Other details led my prognostications, anyway, onto wrong paths and dead ends; perhaps there were some red herrings in some places, but then again, maybe some plans were changed. In many ways, we don't know, at the conclusion of issue #12, how things end because we ought to be wondering, is Doomsday Clock a turning point in DC's plans or is it a now-out-of-continuity story from a writer who has lost favor during the slow roll of this long, long running miniseries? I will post again on DC #12, looking into the small details, in the days to come. But as I reach the end of this issue, I find myself thinking most about the big picture, and that's what I discuss here.

Without unpacking them, I'll chronicle a list of plot points that I found relatively surprising: That the Superman-Manhattan meeting began as backdrop to a continuing attack on Superman from various villains. That Johnny Thunder had no significant role in saving the day. That the LSH and Superman's career as Superboy were affirmed while Bendis' LSH series seems to have taken a different path. That Veidt's plan prevailed and was not interrupted by Batman or anyone. That Johns provided an expansion of the Multiverse, placing old familiar timelines into the "Earth-" + number scheme. That Johns would flash-forward through the future of DC's reboots "predicting" many future years' worth of stories and hint at this continuing for over 900 more years. That Dr. Manhattan will get to live a non-superpowered life as a married man, a bit like the ending that Alan Moore gave Superman in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

In many respects, there were no major surprises at all. Superman's goodness prevailed and as far back as DC #5, I posited, "Veidt will likely… orchestrate a meeting between Superman, the DCU's symbol of hope, and Dr. Manhattan. But to what end, and to what intended end? Veidt sees the DCU in stark terms, and his only goal is to get Dr. Manhattan to return to his own universe and save it." That was a bit over one and a half years ago – the ending of Doomsday Clock was visible from farther out than any of DC's previous events have even lasted in their entirety!

But as the story ends, I find myself noting the possible dissonance between Johns' prognostication and what I see in much of the rest of DC's output, and I don't mean on mere small plot points (are the Kents alive again?).

Watchmen delivered up a worldview in which superheroes couldn't possibly be the sunshiny and beneficial saviors of a world, at least not one interestingly like ours. Johns, we could see from early on, was going to show the darkness of Moore's vision being illuminated and vanquished by the unstoppable optimism of Superman. On the page, in his own story, and his own miniseries, Johns had the power to make that happen. But what about the rest of DC's superhero comics? What about, as it was dubbed two weeks ago, the Depressoverse? DC has called 2019 "The Year of the Villain." Their flagship character in the making is Harley Quinn. The demonic force behind the scenes of several titles' stories is The Batman Who Laughs. While Johns' story tells us that Superman prevails in the long run, are DC's other stories – are the sales figures – telling us that characters with morality closer to that of the Comedian and Rorschach prevailing in their future output? Was the year of the villain a harbinger of many more years of the villain to come, or is it ending now to deliver up something closer to Johns' vision than to Snyder's? I reach the last page of Doomsday Clock more curious than ever to see how the story will end. We'll start to find out in 2020.

Doomsday Clock #11

Three details. Thinking over Doomsday Clock #11, I began to focus on three details ranging in scope from a few words in a single panel to the longest scene in the issue. Each of them made me wonder, why this detail? In each case, I wondered if Geoff Johns put a significant key to the finale in plain sight or if the details are just random happenstance of no great importance. Upon further contemplation, I noticed that each of the three has a parallel event in the Watchmen Universe, which inclines me to believe that there is a deliberate pattern, though that need not be the case for all three. Those three details concern:

• Batman's battle with the U.S. military.

• The reference to John Hinckley.

• Veidt revealing much of his plan in a long speech.

If these details are simply there to move the plot along in a convenient way, then people may remember Doomsday Clock as an unworthy sequel to Watchmen. If, however, they are there as a matter of design, we have an intricate finale awaiting us. I'm going to consider each of these three details in turn and then pull back to see how what they tell us is likely to fit into the finale.

1) Batman vs. the USA

In just a few impeccably drawn panels, Gary Frank shows us a fight between Batman and several uniformed members of the U.S. military. There is voiceover narration by a newscaster, but the details don't seem to match. What is Batman doing, anyway? The interfaces referring to "launch" seem to mirror similar scenes in Doomsday Clock #1, when they indicated ICBM launches and a nuclear war. I don't think that's what they mean here, though.

The answer may lie in the uniform patches.

First, we see Batman in what appears to be a missile launch facility, subduing four or more soldiers. One of them has a patch showing the Earth and space. Then, from behind him, at least four more soldiers emerge, with two arms revealing yellow patches. The narration indicates that the National Guard arrived in Gotham City in order to arrest Batman. Later, on Veidt's monitor, we get a hint that Batman has – not astonishingly – emerged from the fight victorious. What happened?

The Earth and space patch is close to that of a U.S. Space Force that existed before 2002. It appears as though Batman is preventing a missile launch that one might associate with the risk of a civilization-destroying nuclear war, one that Batman certainly couldn't stop if he needed to be in more than one launch facility at a time. Is the DCU on the verge of nuclear war?

No. The apparent scenario is that the missile launch was a staged event, designed to lure Batman into a trap that sprang when the yellow-patched soldiers – the National Guard – burst into the room, with Batman's backward glance indicating apparent surprise. Thus, the television coverage is about the relatively minor matter of Batman battling the authorities and not about the infinitely larger concern of nuclear annihilation. According to what we see on Veidt's monitor, Batman has escaped from the ambush, surprising no readers, and is free to continue his quest, as Alfred reveals, to find Reggie and join forces in confronting Veidt – the only plot point of the issue that is described in the solicitation of #11. Evidently, how that search plays out will be important in the finale.

What this shows is that the U.S. government has turned on Batman, and a later scene shows that Superman is also subject to arrest, but Superman's intention to speak with the President is sidelined by other events. Ultimately, the point of the Batman scene is not that nuclear war is imminent but that Veidt's frame-up of Superman succeeded in turning the U.S. against both Superman and Batman. Veidt has a plan and his wish to pervert American power has succeeded, although he may or may not have anticipated – or cared – that Batman would still be on the loose.

2) Why does Dr. Manhattan refer to the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley?

Not often does such a small detail seem so important. Dr. Manhattan narrates history often, but why would this particular event be chosen? Why not the inauguration of any of the 45 Presidents? Why not the British occupation in 1814?

This occurs in DC #11 during the continuation of a scene that began at the end of DC #10. Looking only at the portions that occur in #11 make it quite confusing: Dr. Manhattan is on the sidewalk in Washington, D.C. when he narrates the 1981 event, then promptly says that four hours later, his confrontation with Superman will take place. But the confrontation with Superman is in the present, not 1981, so we have two confusing gaps: 1981 to 2019 (38 years) and the aforementioned 4 hours. What is going on here?

The earlier portions of the "scene" in DC #10 shed some light on the structure, or lack thereof, of Dr. Manhattan's narration. His narration is moving wildly back and forth through time, and from event to event: About 12 years ago, Five years ago, one year ago, 1938, the present, 1954, 1971, 1938, 1954, 1985 (in the Watchmen Universe), and only then 1981, and the present. At a minimum we can say that the wild gyrations are more salient than any of the individual events.

The Hinckley assassination attempt stands out from the other events that Dr. Manhattan names in that it only involves actual historical figures. For what it's worth, it occurred in the real world and in the DCU, but not in the Watchmen Universe, in which Ronald Reagan was not President in 1981.

The location of the Hinckley assassination attempt was in Washington, D.C., about two miles from the White House, where Superman encounters Black Adam. It is plausible that the punch that lands Superman where Dr. Manhattan was waiting for him knocked him those two miles in distance. So, the location of their encounter may match the 1981 event. That could partially explain the connection, but since the event was 38 years earlier, why mention it? Why single that one event out from other events that have taken place in Washington? There are two likely answers that build upon one another.

First, there is a corresponding and contrasting event in Watchmen: It is asserted in a very small number of panels that Dr. Manhattan knew in advance of the Kennedy assassination but did nothing to stop it. (Watchmen #3: "failed to prevent J.F.K.'s assassination." Watchmen #4:  knew Kennedy would get shot but didn't do anything; he states that he "can't prevent the future. To me, it's already happening.") Brief though those may be, they do much to illustrate Dr. Manhattan's stoic indifference to humanity, and Moore included this not as an incidental minor detail, but a major insight as to the nature of Dr. Manhattan's role in his universe.

Second, Hinckley's assassination attempt may thematically symbolize Veidt's plan (whatever its precise details may be) as the attempt of a violent (and unstable?) figure to bring down a leader. And in this, if so, what is significant is not the violence that took place (alternately, Reagan's injury and Superman's incapacitation and loss of prestige) but that the effort failed (Reagan survived with a quick recovery and we may likely see Superman prevail in the next issue). Thus, it symbolizes not a successful attack but a failed one, and its inclusion bodes poorly for Veidt's plan.

What would be more meaningful would be if the contrast with Watchmen's JFK assassination is explored actively in the finale and we learn that during his time in the DCU, Dr. Manhattan intervened in the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, saving Reagan's life, and that in some other timeline, without his intervention, Reagan died. This would show the moral arc of Doomsday Clock to be one of redemption, with Dr. Manhattan losing his stoic indifference, or fatalism, or the predetermined nature of his action and inaction. While this could involve some sort of sci fi mechanism to explain it, it would also entail moral development on Dr. Manhattan's part, and the triumph of Superman's hope versus Veidt's cynicism.

3) Veidt's long, expository speech

Reading Doomsday Clock #11, my thoughts turned to a speech from Watchmen's issue #11. I'm sure most of you recall it:

"I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my masterstroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago."

That is surely one of the best-remembered lines from Alan Moore's Watchmen. It is also likely to become one of the keys to how Geoff John's Doomsday Clock is remembered. Because, if Veidt's long, expository speech to Saturn Girl in Doomsday Clock #11 (one that largely revealed things already decoded from Doomsday Clock #10 and earlier) turns out in the final analysis to be what it seemed on the surface, Adrian Veidt is at least a notch or two less sophisticated in Johns' story than he was in Moore's. (FWIW, Republic Pictures was a maker of films and not-so-well-regarded serials. Characters in Republic serials included Zorro, the Lone Ranger, and even Captain America.)

And, sure, it could be argued that Doomsday Clock's Veidt is so absolutely certain that Saturn Girl cannot interfere with his plan that his expository speech to her cannot do harm. But let's be clear about what the "Republic serial villain" line meant in Moore's original. It wasn't a tactical examination of how Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, and Rorschach, in Antarctica, might possibly have interfered with events in New York. It was Moore elevating his characters and his work above those of other, clumsier works from the past. Now, if Veidt has revealed the better part of his plans in Doomsday Clock and there is no forthcoming reference to his "Republic serial villain" remark from the same-numbered issue of Watchmen, it will have seemed as though Johns has dropped the ball. 

It could play out in one of three ways:

• Johns goes on with his story without returning to the "Republic serial villain" line. Veidt's speech to Saturn Girl was ultimately without major effect except to reveal his plan to the readers and one character that is no longer alive. In essence, Johns' version of Veidt will be one notch less self-aware than Moore's, and if the story itself does not address that, then Johns' story is one notch less deep than Moore's.

• Veidt is eternally a step ahead, and was knowingly speaking those words in order to facilitate his plan. We are going to get an intricate reveal in #12 indicating how he, again, is on a higher level of awareness than those "Republic serial villains."

• Before pride comes the fall: By speaking those words aloud, Veidt has unwittingly doomed his own plan because someone in a position to ruin his plan has heard them. If so, that would almost certainly be Johnny Thunder, dismissed with contempt by Veidt. We know that Johnny is close enough to Veidt's conversation with Saturn Girl to have overheard. We also know that Johnny's return to power is coming, whether it involves Alan Scott's lantern or the Thunderbolt or both. In essence, Johns' version of Veidt will be less sophisticated than Moore's, and the story will make the contrast clear.

Which of these will we see? I hope it's the third. (Though the second might set up a brilliantly complex finish that I can't anticipate.) Small details – a close-up of the lantern and the fact that Johnny could overhear the conversation – seem too salient to be coincidental. We are seemingly ripe for an ironic turnaround where Johnny Thunder – the most lighthearted and laughable member of the Justice Society – could instruct the Thunderbolt to act on what he has overheard and upend Veidt's plan, either by intervening in the Superman-Manhattan showdown and/or by having it take the lantern back to 1940 and save Alan Scott's life and Green Lantern career. This is what I think will be a pivotal event in #12, and Veidt giving his speech to Saturn Girl may be what #11's title refers to as a "lifelong mistake." It will turn out that Veidt is not Moore's bitterly cynical genius trampling over optimistic superhero comics, but is, indeed, no better than a Republic serial villain, and will have blown his evil (well, extremely Machiavellian) plan by reciting it aloud.

The Big Picture

Around the many small details in Doomsday Clock – the three upon which I focused here, and many, many others – there is a larger design and it has a striking simplicity to it, with a great deal of symmetry. From the Watchmen Universe, we have the blue superpowered godlike figure Dr. Manhattan and a counterpart of sorts, a non-superpowered genius, Veidt. From the DCU, Superman and Batman play a similar role. There are supervillains from each, with Mime and Marionette representing their universe to the many supervillains at home in the DCU. The American cast of superheroes is mirrored by other groups internationally. The international politics of the Watchmen Universe and the DCU both reflect a U.S.-Russia dynamic in the real world which is taking form and being revealed too quickly for Johns' story to capture faithfully. And as intriguing guest stars from other teams, we have another kind of symmetry: Johnny Thunder representing the past and Saturn Girl representing the future. This symmetry is not accidental, not in a story where multiple panels show off Rorschach's eponymous symmetries. And now, Black Adam's lightning calls to mind the numerous shout-outs to the Thunderbolt.

Doomsday Clock was introduced in the final pages of "The Button" storyline in Batman and Flash monthlies and it ended with a bold image: The soiled and marred Superman symbol in close-up. This told us, provocatively for an image in the pages of Flash, that the story ahead would focus on Superman. Given the small reveals in the dialogue of Dr. Manhattan and a few others in Doomsday Clock, we may interpret it more firmly according to the interpretation that Mark Waid gave us in Birthright, that the symbol means "hope." It is this idea that Veidt attacks after hearing a hospital employee say that, "Superman's the only thing you can believe in anymore." However, in Dr. Manhattan's vision of the upcoming calamity, he "saw a vision of the most hopeful among them… now hopeless." He also shows a sort of transformational disappointment in the fact that Carver Colman was once full of hope but died an early and inglorious death.

Knowing all of this, Veidt concocted a plan for the upcoming encounter between Dr. Manhattan and Superman. He knows there are two possible outcomes: Either Superman destroys Dr. Manhattan or Dr. Manhattan destroys the universe. What is Veidt's plan?

The pivotal moment in Veidt's orientation occurs in Watchmen #2 when the Comedian bitterly declares that the world cannot be saved from nuclear catastrophe by people in costumes fighting crime. On the basis of that moment, Veidt moves towards a plan to save his world by bringing about a catastrophe. In order to prevent total annihilation, he orchestrates a massacre. In order to save billions, he kills millions.

His plan for the DCU is no different. "In order for things to change, they must hit rock bottom. So what if I could turn the world against Superman?"

The dialectic in this story has been clear from the beginning: Veidt, Dr. Manhattan, and the Comedian are, in their own ways, morally bankrupt. Johns will show the DCU's leading lights upend Veidt's bleakness.

Veidt believes that the DCU will be his tomb. He likely believes, then, that Dr. Manhattan will give up hope when he sees Superman fail. He may believe that Dr. Manhattan will reboot the DCU, making it better, then return to the Watchmen Universe to save it, too. Instead, we seem sure to see things rebound in the DCU without hitting bottom. The future is gone (as the new Bendis LSH reboot already shows). But the past is not.

I believe that one or two of the DCU characters will "turn" Dr. Manhattan, this will be one or both of Superman and Johnny Thunder.

We've read many stories over the years where someone tries to corrupt or break Superman and cannot. The victory is not in Superman's immense powers but in his unrelenting sense of hope. Will this happen? Perhaps. We see Superman attack Dr. Manhattan in a rage, likely when he learns that Dr. Manhattan's manipulation of the timeline killed Jonathan and Martha Kent. But is that the last moment before catastrophe? Is there a last-second change of heart, Superman pulling back his fist in the last instant?

Or (and/or) we could get the Johnny Thunder finish. If we find out that Dr. Manhattan was, all along, the Thunderbolt, then Johnny could successfully summon him and pull him away from the final encounter with Superman, then set him to the task of fixing everything on both Earths. It is perhaps key that the death of Alan Scott "saved" the lantern from being applied to the third and final of its three roles, which have always been since its first appearance in 1940 been, "once to bring death, once to bring life, and once to bring power." Johnny could now use it for power, and be the savior in the story.

We also have Batman and Luthor both seeking to intervene, and other players, such as the superheroes on Mars, could step in as well. Between the showdown in Washington and Johnny in the cell and Batman and Reggie in Gotham, what is the key series of events? Will Johnny Thunder save Superman or vice versa? Will Batman play a key role at all?

Whatever the intricate details, I see the finale taking the form of a comedy, as opposed to Watchmen's tragedy. As the Thunderbolt always represented cheerful, humorous fun, it would be a symbolic defeat of Moore's dour pessimism if it turned out that this story transformed Dr. Manhattan retroactively into a benevolent character who has always been a bit of a gag.

I think Johns' mind may turn to a pair of JLA-JSA crossovers from the late 1970s, each of which, scripted or co-scripted by Martin Pasko, became more elaborate by adding a third world to the mix. In JLA #137, Johnny's Thunderbolt personally zapped the unpowered Marvel Family into becoming their superpowered identities. In the very next JLA-JSA meeting, the LSH was the third team joining them. The juxtaposition of Johnny Thunder and Saturn Girl in Doomsday Clock makes me wonder if Johns also remembers these stories and has chosen Black Adam as one of the major threats onstage precisely because the Thunderbolt can take the place of magic lightning and zap him into his powerless identity.

The long interval between issues of Doomsday Clock allows a lot of time for us to contemplate the story, and I for one am in favor of it. While, in many cases, I have blogged about issues the day they came out, I have pondered this one for weeks before compiling my thoughts. With weeks to go before the finale, I'm sure there is more to contemplate still.

Doomsday Clock: The Golden Age and The Metaverse

Doomsday Clock #10 mentions, a striking ten different times, the date April 18, 1938. This, it has been determined, was the date that Action Comics #1 went on sale. The title of the issue's story is "Action." The closing quotation is, "Every action has its pleasures and its price." We are both told of, then shown, the famous act from the cover of Action #1, Superman lifting a car full of wrongdoers over his head before smashing it into rocks. There is no light touch being employed here. DC #10 is about how the introduction of Superman changed everything. And then, how that event that changed everything was itself changed, or, using a term that emerged decades later, retconned, and how things followed from there.

There's something exciting, I find, in seeing artists with more modern and refined skills and color technologies revisit the classic moments and eras of comics. You see in in The Killing Joke, and in Tony Daniel's and Lee Garbett's work on Grant Morrison's Batman run. DC #10 lets Gary Frank redraw Superman's introduction to the world and there's something powerful and fresh in seeing his fine technique re-render Superman's smirk embodying a bold confidence that the "Boy Scout" Superman lacked in later renditions. The impact of that Superman is echoed when Johns and Frank re-present us with the origin of the Justice Society in (again, using the newsstand date from the real world) November 1940. The gathered heroes speak with reverence of Superman, the best of a remarkable lot, and they pause their meeting to wait for his arrival, an arrival that, a bit sadly, never occurs. The Flash, Jay Garrick, says that if the Justice Society is to work, that they need Superman. Green Lantern, Alan Scott, replies that Superman is a busy guy. Sadly, this is all correct. Superman does not make it to their meeting, and ultimately, the Justice Society does not succeed. But this is all a blend of two different things: What happened to the comics in the real world (the Justice Society went out of print after 11 years) and what happened in the comics (at the Justice Society's first meeting, it was asked why Superman wasn't showing up, and he never did).

This blend of the world within the comics and the historical – publication – history is fertile ground. Johns re-creates and gives new life to a special time when the DC Universe is born and the very first time when any of their characters speak of Superman. (In the Red Tornado's debut, with the cover date November 1940, Ma Hunkel makes DC's first cross-storyline reference to another superhero, Green Lantern.) There was a time, Johns reminds us, when the short but sensational first two and a half years of Superman inspired a colorful explosion of many other superheroes, and then it was all undone. Ultimately, DC un-did and re-told their own origins, but here, for the first time in years, Johns has DC reassert that first beginning as the true beginning. And he gives it back to us as something called the Metaverse. But even he changes it.

If you examine the JSA's first story, from All Star Comics #3, it goes a bit as Johns shows it to us in DC #10. He's got the right cast of characters and the round table. Johns and Frank pay attention to the details, many of the tiny details, like the order they sat in, and who has which hand on the table. Johns places Johnny Thunder and a camera in position to capture a photo with the cover/splash page art. (Johnny is himself present in the story but absent from that art.) With that sort of attention to detail, it's worth noting what Johns changed. In All Star #3, it is indeed pointed out that Superman is absent, and it is indeed observed that he is likely too busy to attend. Which of the superheroes has which lines is one thing Johns changes, but what I find most striking is who is left out. For in reproducing faithfully eight superheroes, plus Johnny Thunder and his Thunderbolt, plus the mention of Superman, Johns deletes, or skips, others. In All Star #3, the Atom asks about "Superman, Batman, and Robin." He also mentions the Red Tornado. In DC #10, the only absent hero named is Superman. Why skip Batman? Maybe Johns is making a dramatic cosmological decision here, one that will be examined in the remaining portion of the series. Maybe he is not so subtly amplifying Superman ("Why is he the center of this universe?") and quietly deemphasizing Batman, but in a re-creation so faithful that they pay attention to who has which hand on the table, I find the subtraction of Batman to be striking.

For the moment, though, we have another sort of subtraction presented to us. Superman, after being given to the world in 1938, is later subtracted from 1938 and reinserted with new origins, in 1956, 1985, 2011, 2016. If you look closely, you see the designs of the rocket change to that from Birthright and from Superman: Secret Origin. There are seven different Superman reboots here, Johns picking publication years to communicate years within his story.

DC has retold the story of how the superheroes began several times. If we reduce the matter just to Superman and Green Lantern, the major Earths and timelines in continuity have gone like this:

Golden Age: Superman, then Alan Scott

Silver Age Earth One: Superman, then Hal Jordan

Silver Age Earth Two: Superman, then Alan Scott

Post-COIE: Alan Scott, then Superman, then Hal Jordan

New 52: Superman, then Hal Jordan

If you get into the fine details, it's actually uncertain what, if anything, from DC's past retcons Johns is showing us when he shows the JSA origin suddenly shift from the approximate events of All Star Comics #3 to a reality without Superman. There was never a retcon in any "Earth" with a Justice Society that had Superman's debut shift from 1938 to 1956. If one returns to the strict details of 1985-1987, COIE did not produce a world without the 1938 debut of Kal-L, because Kal-L retained a memory of fighting with the JSA, noted in (among other places) the last issues of both COIE and Infinite Crisis, and even Power Girl retained this memory once events in Infinite Crisis reminded her of them. The 1956 debut of Superman seems to belong to the Silver Age Earth One continuity and the 1940 Superman-less debut of the Justice Society seems to belong to the Post-COIE continuity, which are different Earths and different timelines.

It seems possible that Johns is proposing a new cosmology, perhaps akin to Hypertime, in which all timelines and continuities are separate realities, not necessarily existing side by side on different Earths. It's also possible that we could think up details that Johns isn't even trying to raise, and so I'll pause before parsing the text of old retcons and DC #10 like a lawyer applying strict logic and the law to a case in order to determine what Johns means by the Metaverse. It is clear, though, that he sees a sort of hub-and-spoke nature to DC History: There is a main reality, and there are variations of it, and at the center of the main reality, there is Superman – and not Batman.

Whatever the rules of this cosmology, we can speak of the key players, and what DC #10 shows us is that, alongside other bad actors who have triggered changes in the Multiverse, Dr. Manhattan has caused one of the divergent realities, specifically creating the New 52 reality by allowing Alan Scott to die. As he himself now recognizes, he is one of the villains of DC (meta)history. We can expect Superman and other heroes to reverse the harm that Dr. Manhattan has done, and quite likely, we will see a Dr. Manhattan who has learned from the DC superheroes how to perform magic shift from "inaction" to "action" and, inspired by the hope that Superman provides, return to the Watchmen Universe and undo a nuclear war.

There's a bit more of a mystery story, though, still left in Doomsday Clock. We now have multiple pointers indicating a special role to be played by Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt. Dr. Manhattan killing Alan Scott in July 1940 would not seem to delete the JSA superheroes that had already debuted, such as Sandman, Hawkman, and the Flash. We know that Johnny Thunder, dispirited by the McCarthy hearing asked the Thunderbolt to protect the JSA, and this apparently hid them entirely from the timeline, perhaps as a second crucial step following Dr. Manhattan killing Alan Scott. Johns has called attention to Alan Scott being bold before the McCarthyites on a completely separate occasion, and perhaps without Alan Scott, the JSA hearing goes much worse, less heroically. Is it a coincidence that the last moment of the Justice Society meeting before the reboot occurs is when Johnny Thunder asks the Thunderbolt to interact with Superman, or is that event a trigger? (Incidentally, Johnny Thunder did indeed use the Thunderbolt to summon Superman in the final pages of All Star #7.)

Yet another striking moment in DC #10 shows Johnny Thunder on the set of Carver Colman's movie in 1954, as an errand boy: Just a random detail or a significant tie between Johnny Thunder and Dr. Manhattan? And, to the point, is the Thunderbolt actually Dr. Manhattan, or is the Thunderbolt simply a separate entity with powers that work a bit like Dr. Manhattan's? It is certain that the final two issues of Doomsday Clock are going to put both Dr. Manhattan and the Thunderbolt to work in setting things on a new path, and issue #10 begins to define the cosmology in which that path exists.

Doomsday Clock #10: Superman and Dr. Manhattan

Doomsday Clock #10 was unusually packed in reinterpreting DC history, and there are so many facets to it, I will split my comments into two posts. In this one, I will focus on the major players in the issue and what seems to be the message of the issue, at this late stage in the game, comprising a lot of the message that Johns intends for the series. In a second post, I will comment on the Justice Society and the striking – to me – omission of Batman.

Doomsday Clock #9 featured one of the most sprawling casts the DCU can muster, with a huge force of superheroes taking part in a showdown on Mars. Issue #10, in contrast, shrank the whole story down to a few principal characters; though a few characters from the past and some from this story had extended cameos, almost all of the major narration focused on a few men. These characters are not merely playing roles in this story. Johns uses them to deliver a reframing of the history of superhero stories. It is probably most instructive to see these major characters in the issue as archetypes, standing for major eras in comic book / heroic fiction. The focus of the issue is primarily about the use of and messages conveyed by Johns' use of the following: Nathaniel Dusk, Alan Scott, Superman, and Doctor Manhattan. Along the way, there is heavy use of Carver Colman, the actor who plays Dusk in the movies.

The story intertwines, in a legitimately weird way, several different substories – some of them classics of the superhero genre – some more obscure stories from the past, one – of course – Moore's Watchmen, a comment on the superhero genre, and then the main plot of Johns' work that we're discussing here – Doomsday Clock, along with the side plots and stories within a story. All told, we have nearly a dozen separate fictional universes wound together into one larger story. But, unlike the pre-Crisis or Morrisonian DC Multiverse, these worlds are not parallel. Part of what Johns is doing here, within his story and no doubt to launch a reframing of DC's sub-universes is to discard the notion that all these separate universes are separate but equal. C'mon, we always knew that Earth 3 and Earth 19 and Earth whatever were not universes equal to Silver Age Earth One. Most of the universes in the Multiverse are and always were derivatives of the main DCU. Johns is advancing the conversation in this issue by recognizing that in the cosmology, the main Earth is special, and other things flow from it.

The story has so many threads going, of such different kinds, that the issue alone needs a map of them, or at least a list. It goes as follows:

1) DCU timelines, keying around the origin of Superman:

            Golden Age 1: Superman debuted in 1938 before Alan Scott

            Golden Age 2: Alan Scott debuted in 1940 in a world without Superman

            Silver Age: Superman debuted in 1956 in a world without Alan Scott

            Byrne: Superman debuted in 1986, long after Alan Scott

            Birthright: Same Golden Age backstory as GA2

            Secret Origin: Same Golden Age backstory as GA2

                        Wally West and Johnny Thunder remember this

            New 52: Same Golden Age backstory as SA

            Rebirth: Same Golden Age backstory as SA

            Seemingly inevitable reboot: Same as Secret Origin?

2) The Watchmen Universe

3) The Nathaniel Dusk universe

4) Carver Colman's story: He inhabits various DCU timelines, possibly all of them, though we only get direct indications of his intersection with the first two DCU timelines, and after that, at least in the one we last saw, he is dead.

One of the jarring aspects of the story is how profoundly obscure Dusk and Colman are, and yet Johns elevates them to central roles in the story. The Colman plot takes a man of no particular importance and gives him one of the most influential roles in DC history, with the (in some respects) godlike Dr. Manhattan pairing up with him in a strange and somewhat incomprehensible partnership, meeting once a year in the same location. It is easy to see how Dr. Manhattan's vision of the future provides a pivotal, life-changing boost for the career of Colman, but less obvious why the company of such an unimportant man would be a draw for Dr. Manhattan. Similarly, the Dusk sideplot is, on the surface, a distraction from the main story, of no causal relationship to it. Neither Colman nor Dusk seems of interest on a par with the superbeings who headline the series. Why did Johns give them these roles?

For Dusk, the answer is clear: He is an archetype of the detective genre. His kind starred in comic books, novels, and movies, peaking in approximately that order. The "D" in DC stands for "detective" and that hearkens back to 1937, a little over a year before the debut of Superman. One of the detectives who launched the Detective Comics title in issue #1 was Bruce Nelson, name-checked by Johns in the end materials in Doomsday Clock #3. Nelson and other, generally similar, tough guys who tackle crime appeared in the monthly title for 26 issues until they were overshadowed by, and ultimately replaced and virtually eliminated by a new feature in that title — Batman. Ultimately, old-style detectives did not survive contact with the likes of Batman; he immediately took over the cover art of the title and the conventional detective stories inside the issue rapidly became scarce, as well. A similar rise and fall took place in the movies, as well, with the film noir genre starting to peter out during the same mid-50s timeframe that, in Johns' story, sees the onscreen death of Nathaniel Dusk. Dusk serves as a single example of that kind of character, standing in for comic book Bruce Nelson (whose run ended in 1940), and movie detectives like Nick Charles, Mike Hammer, and Sam Spade, whose popularity also rose then fell (but later enjoyed various revivals).

Dusk's story, though, is packed with references to the meta-story arc that Johns gives us about DC history, most obviously when he is given a glass globe representing a "world" from the past, and he smashes it while using it as a weapon, with the voiceover narration echoing a Crisis on Infinite Earths tagline, "Worlds live. Worlds Die." Just as various DC timelines (and eras) have died, just as the eras of comic book and movie detectives ended (or, at least, greatly waned in popularity), Dusk's storyline came to a definitive end in The Adjournment. Moments after Dusk shatters the globe, he is shot in the back, and his world – his time as a detective in the movies, anyway – also dies.

Much the way that Batman and other costumed heroes ended the run of Bruce Nelson and his kind, Dr. Manhattan elevates, then indirectly ends the life of Carver Colman. Colman initially feels (literally) blessed by the presence of Dr. Manhattan in his life, wondering if the erstwhile superhero is an angel. But from the beginning, their association takes Colman down a tragic path. Colman's movie success brings him fame and riches, but his fame combines with secrets and lies to attract the blackmailing that ends his life. Colman receives from Dr. Manhattan in much the way that Faust received from Mephistopheles, getting precisely what he wished for in the short run, but damnation in the long run.

Clearly, the rise and fall of Dusk and the actor who played him, Colman, are told in parallel fashion, both killed from behind in successive panels after being betrayed by a woman they loved. As I have suggested that Murray Abrahams plays a part intended to parallel that of Dr. Manhattan, we see them occupy the same position in that pair of panels. However, Abrahams is actively the killer, facing Dusk and pulling the trigger, while Dr. Manhattan passively brings about the end of Colman, with his back turned as Colman is killed. As Dr. Manhattan himself narrates, he could have stopped it, but did nothing. He is a being of inaction in a world where the heroes practice action.

"Action" is the title of the issue's story, and it should be interpreted on a few different levels. It is yelled by the director on the set, and it is what, in Dr. Manhattan's formulation, distinguishes Superman from himself. It is, of course, the title of the series that launched Superman, the title whose first issue appeared on the newsstands on April 18, 1938, the very date during which Dr. Manhattan appears in the DCU. Johns also slipped the title of the famous comic book into the climactic dialogue at the end of Infinite Crisis, with Superman telling Superboy Prime that being Superman is "about action." (Much the same synopsis of heroism delivered a couple of years later in Batman Begins: "It's… what we do that defines us.")

Dusk and Colman are no-name characters used as archetypes in Doomsday Clock, and Dr. Manhattan is also an archetype, created by Alan Moore to make a comment of his own. It may be easy to forget reading Doomsday Clock in 2019 that, if there is a single character that Dr. Manhattan was meant to represent, it was Superman, at least Superman as he was when Moore plotted the story around 1984. Blue, buff, godlike, weirdly dysfunctional in relationships with women, incapable of symmetric relationships with the people closest to him, phenomenally self-absorbed (as Moore has Superman say of himself in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, "over-rated and too wrapped up in himself"): These are the characteristics of Bronze Age Superman that Moore packed, with distaste, into his rendition of Dr. Manhattan.

Dr. Manhattan is toxic, and he was meant to be. Moore was trying to use him to tell comics fans, see how sterile, self-serving, and off-putting your heroes really are. Johns turns Dr. Manhattan loose in his interactions with Colman, all of his godlike powers ultimately availing his friend nothing when he watches unconcerned as Colman is murdered by his own mother.

Remembering this, consider the question that Dr. Manhattan has asked of the blackout following his upcoming encounter with Superman: Does Dr. Manhattan destroy the universe or does Superman destroy him? The interesting thing is not to take this as the headline on a "versus" thread – how do the powers of the two characters match up in a fight – but how do the two visions of a comic book superhero square off? And here, I think we return to the message that Morrison closed on in Final Crisis, with Mandrakk representing, for the most part, Alan Moore in that story and Dr. Manhattan representing Moore's worldview in this one. If Moore was right, the superhero genre was on a path towards oblivion way back in 1985. This is 2019, and the good guys haven't given up yet, so Johns has plenty of room to take the opposite side of the argument.

And in case there's any doubt where that is going, the final lines of the end materials, featuring the screenplay of The Adjournment give it away: Dusk, seemingly shot dead during the scenes that were filmed, survives the shooting and recuperates to walk again. The good guys aren't dead yet.

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Doomsday Clock: The Adjournment

Doomsday Clock has paid considerable attention to a story within the story, a 1954 detective movie called The Adjournment. Like the pirate story "Marooned" in Watchmen, the story within a story can and almost certainly does provide insight regarding the main story. This is particularly fertile given that the star of The Adjournment is intertwined with some of Doomsday Clock's main characters, and the screenwriter himself is a Golden Age superhero. It's certain to be with good reason that Geoff Johns has devoted seven pages so far to giving us the story of The Adjournment, but what is that reason, and what does this story tell us?

There are at least three directions to follow in understanding The Adjournment.

1) On a surface level, what is its story? It's a story we've only seen the early portions of and we don't know its ending and/or the answer to its central murder mystery. This may not be highly compelling in and of itself, but it is part of the big picture.

2) Probably most important, what does the movie plot tell us about the main Doomsday Clock story? It seems highly likely that it parallels part of the main plot, and understanding that parallel could be used either to predict what is coming or to see what Johns is emphasizing as the most important aspects of the larger story.

3) Because the superhero Tarantula is the movie's screenwriter, the story may tell us something important about him and his relationships with other Golden Age characters.

The Adjournment's Plot

First, the facts. We have seen only the first portion of the movie, and while we have two spoilers regarding the upcoming portions, we don't know how it will end, nor do we know if there are more major characters to be seen. But we do know this:

• Nathaniel Dusk is an ex-cop turned detective.

• On Christmas Eve, a former colleague of his, Murray Abrahams, comes with him asking for help with a case that involves the death of Abrahams' brother-in-law.

• Two men, Alastair Tempus and Bentley Farmer, have been shot dead and lie in blood on Tempus' floor alongside the pieces of a chess game.

• Dusk and Abrahams visit three different buildings: The crime scene; the former home of Dusk's dead lover, Joyce; and, the home of Tempus' employee Wellington.

• There is considerable friction in the lives of these men: Dusk doesn't consider Abrahams a friend; Abrahams "never liked" Farmer; Wellington stole from Tempus; Farmer is divorced; Dusk has enemies he's hiding from on both sides of the law. At both of the last two stops, Abrahams warns Dusk against "breaking and entering."

• We are told of the men's various female companions: Dusk's "greatest love" is dead. Abrahams is married with young kids. Tempus' wife is dead. Farmer is divorced. Wellington claims to want a sex-change operation, which may or may not be an excuse for the women's clothing in his luggage.

• The crime scene appears suspicious: There is only one chair visible near the chessboard. A white knight is standing on its base on the floor, an extremely unlikely position for a chess piece to settle into after a table is knocked over. Dusk is in a position to see if the knight was on the floor before blood flowed around it or if it was set down into the blood.

• Dusk seems to believe that Wellington is not the killer, despite the cash he has stolen from Tempus.

• In the last frame we have seen, two scarab beetles appear onscreen behind Dr. Manhattan. I don't see the relevance of this, but they are linked to Blue Beetle, who was the inspiration for Nite Owl, and there were two Nite Owls in the Watchmen Universe.

• We are told of a "big twist, where one of the dead guys turns out to be a killer, too."

• The cover of DC #10 shows a man stepping on Dusk's head while a woman in an eye-catching dress looks on with scorn.

• The very first comment by Abrahams in analyzing the scene concludes that Tempus was the killer's intended target and Farmer was not. Dusk does not agree that this is certain.

The Solution

In a strict sense, we cannot solve this mystery with any certainty. Johns has a free hand to augment considerably the little we have seen of the movie, even bringing in several new characters. What we know so far may end up insignificant in comparison to what is coming. However, if we can solve it given what we've seen, there is only one plausible solution (and it is bolstered by working backwards from some things that would follow if the rest is true):

The killer (of at least one of the two men) is Murray Abrahams. Farmer is a primary target of the killing.

We have the following evidence:

• The crime scene was tampered with. Abrahams saw it before Dusk did.

• Abrahams did not like Farmer.

• Abrahams is not a friend of Dusk, which makes him suspect.

• Abrahams is smarter than Dusk gives him credit for.

• The only characters in the movie besides Abrahams are Dusk, the two dead men (at least one of which had a killer who wasn't one of those two), Wellington (who, Dusk assures us, is innocent), and two unnamed women (Farmer's sister and Farmer's ex).

• One more reason involving a parallel to the main plot that I will mention later.

Abrahams knows more than he is letting on, and is either the killer or, at the outside, is covering for the killer. He is looking for Dusk to solve the case incorrectly, and in so doing, clear him. Therefore, he wants to lead Dusk off the correct track.

Perhaps we will see more Adjournment characters in the story yet to come, and my solution will prove to be off-track, but there are reasons besides the internal logic of The Adjournment that make it an effective solution.

Parallel Plots

Whether this or something else is the solution to the whodunit, we still have to deduce why Johns is sharing any of this with us. I have, over the past several months, considered many combinations of characters in the main story and in this one, trying to find patterns where someone in the movie matches someone in the main DC plot.

1) Alastair Tempus = Alan Scott?

A few clues point me in a particular direction. First, the killing of someone, in this story, if it's to represent a pivotal event, would stand a good chance of representing Dr. Manhattan's killing of Alan Scott in 1940, changing the timeline. Now, zero in on the first part of "time"line and note that Alastair Tempus' last name is Latin for "time." This seems like a good place to start. Does Alastair Tempus represent Alan Scott? There are some matching characteristics, such as age and wealth. And look at the name alone:

ALA_S_Tair  → ALAn ScotT

It's quite an odd choice of given name, increasingly the likelihood that that similarity is deliberate. (Also note: Alastair is derived from Alexander and Veidt is obsessed with Alexander the Great.) But "tempus" means "time" in Latin, not "lantern" or "scott." It may be more apt to posit that Tempus represents the post-COIE or post-Infinite Crisis timeline, with the JSA living in the JLA's past, and that the death of Alastair Tempus represents the end of the Alan Scott timeline, which is to say the entire pre-Flashpoint continuity.

2) Nathaniel Dusk = Adrian Veidt?

Another pair who may match up is Dusk and Veidt. Look at these panels that occur in DC #3, Veidt in the lower-left corner of page 7 and Dusk in the lower-left panel on page 17 – ten pages apart, in the same part of the page. The composition is identical, and their hair is similar, though the lighting is nearly opposite. Now consider the following lines of dialogue:

Erika Manson to Veidt: "What's the price on your head anyway?"

Abrahams to Dusk: "Everyone knows about the price on your head."

And, consider the thematic arcs for each: Veidt is disgraced and preoccupied with tragedy in his past while trying to make sense of a new mystery. This is also true of Dusk. Most to the point: The prime mover in the Doomsday Clock plot is Veidt undertaking a plan to save the Watchmen Universe by finding Dr. Manhattan. The Adjournment centers on the investigation by Dusk of a pair of murders. The central figure of The Adjournment should likely correspond to a central character in Doomsday Clock and that's quite a short list. The aforementioned clues place the focus on Veidt.

3) Murray Abrahams = Dr. Manhattan?

If the first two matches are correct, then Abrahams has to be Dr. Manhattan. We already know that Dr. Manhattan is the killer of Alan Scott; killing Scott changed the timeline and Tempus is the timeline, so whoever killed Tempus represents Dr. Manhattan. Dusk and Abrahams have an established relationship, have worked together before, but are not friends. Reggie, the New Rorschach could also fit the bill of Abrahams, but then he certainly didn't work with Veidt before this case. And Dusk asks Abrahams for the favor of helping him revisit Joyce's home; Veidt's entire mission begins with seeking Dr. Manhattan's help, and nobody else in The Adjournment plays that role. These panels from #5 and #7 may provide another clue that this pair of characters is linked.

4) Bentley Farmer = The Reverse Flash?

Two players in this story are associated with changed timelines. Two, counting "The Button," are killed by Dr. Manhattan. Thawne recognized Dr. Manhattan when he saw him, indicating a past interaction between the two. And Alan Scott is not a killer, so the other of the two victims must be. Pandora – killed by Dr. Manhattan in Rebirth – could possibly also fit the bill, but for centrality to the larger story, a better match is the Reverse Flash. If you recall the details of "The Button," Reverse Flash actively sought out Dr. Manhattan, with confidence that the latter had never faced anyone like him. That didn't go well for Eobard Thawne. The two had some past association, just as Farmer and Abrams are related by marriage. The art, again, may hold clues, as Farmer was shot in the left side of his face and Thawne was blasted, strangely, with the left side of his face blown off. To match the main plot, we may end up learning that Farmer tried to kill Abrahams, but was himself killed in the attempt.

5) Jasper Wellington = Johnny Thunder?

There's a curious complication about the JSA's removal from the timeline, which seems to involve both Alan Scott and Johnny Thunder: We know that the JSA is not part of anyone's memory in the current timeline. The fact that Dr. Manhattan removed Alan Scott from the timeline might seem to be part of a larger pattern that removed the entire JSA. Dr. Manhattan indicates in DC #7 that when he removed Alan Scott's survival from the timeline, the meeting of the JSA in November 1940 did not go on to occur. According to Rebirth, Johnny Thunder belonged to a "covert team of mystery men." He later told his Thunderbolt to protect the JSA at the meeting wherein McCarthy told them "Take off your masks" in October 1951. It appears that the JSA was removed from the timeline in two steps: First, Dr. Manhattan moving the lantern in 1940, then Johnny Thunder sought to protect them via his Thunderbolt at the hearing in 1951. The cause-and-effect relationship of timeline alteration may be pretty tricky, but the chronology of those two "events" goes from Dr. Manhattan in 1940 to Johnny Thunder in 1951. Now, we can say that he removed the JSA from their would-be lives, but unlike Dr. Manhattan's killing of Alan Scott and the Reverse Flash, he didn't actually kill anyone. The visuals are a tip-off, too. Check out this pair of panels, both from issue #5. And how many characters wear a bowtie? Finally, one of those ambiguous speech balloons in that issue refers to Wellington with "This poor man never hurt anybody" and overlaps with a panel of Johnny Thunder, a hint that they are the same "poor man."

6) Chess pieces = Characters in the DC Universe?

If Tempus and Farmer represent Scott and the Reverse Flash, who in turn involve timeline manipulation, then the chessboards and pieces may represent those timelines and the characters within them. Flashpoint has been referenced in this for a reason. Perhaps each of the pieces we see represents particular DC characters. When we see, then, Dusk closely examining the white and black kings, this may represent Veidt considering the DCU, and contemplating two opposing sides, either the heroes and villains, or the polar icons of Superman and Batman.

Now, does all of this wash? I wouldn't bet the farm on this, but a lot of details fit together in a pretty comprehensive way. Others don't, such as the fact that Alan Scott and the Reverse Flash never played a game of chess against one another, so far as I know, and if any characters in the larger plot are akin to chess opponents, there would be better ones to choose from. Because this is all on the level of symbolism, the story isn't obliged to declare that the plots are parallel in the way I describe here; this is the sort of thing one may see or not see or argue about weeks or years after the series is over. I'm going to go out on a limb, though, and suggest that these alignments of details in the plot and the art are part of an intended framework of parallels.

In any case, the Adjournment plot is much smaller than the Doomsday Clock one and I spent some time considering if the older and younger victims might represent the personalities of Firestorm – Martin Stein and Ronnie Raymond. It could just be that they work in that fashion, too, because parallels aren't obligated to be unique. "Marooned" certainly doesn't map to the Watchmen plot in a singular way. This or other parallels may work in addition to or instead of the ones I have mentioned. We don't know, but in the meantime, I find myself thinking that the art parallels are not likely a coincidence.

Author, Author

The Golden Age Tarantula is not one of DC's most beloved and enduring characters, but Johns has mentioned Tarantula's alter ego, John Law, in some detail in DC #3. As the screenwriter of The Adjournment and a suspect in Colman's murder, Law has at least two roles to play in this story. His divorce from Libby Lawrence may be driving some animosity between any other man who has tried or succeeded in winning Lawrence over. This could explain why he's a suspect in Colman's death. If so, there's some a major soap opera style plot going on. Consider that Lawrence, the original Liberty Belle, is the mother of Jesse Quick / the second Liberty Belle, and the possible connection (via "tick tock") between Colman and Hourman: A romance between Lawrence and Colman could be a one-generation-earlier pairing up like the marriage between Rick Tyler and Jesse Chambers, a romance originally authored by Geoff Johns.

In addition, Law's angst over losing Lawrence (shown in great detail in The Golden Age) could also surface in the plot of The Adjournment. In only seven pages, we've seen how no fewer than three men have lost the women in their lives – two to death and one to divorce. The evil-looking woman on the cover of #10 may be another facet of Law's bitter feelings towards women and romantic relationships.

Wheels Within Wheels

One unmistakable characteristic of Doomsday Clock is the attention to detail, something we have not seen in all that many works, including some of Johns' more sprawling epics like "Sinestro Corps War" and "Blackest Night" that are more broad and vast than deep. I, for one, admire the obvious degree of intricacy in the scripting, and I'm more than accepting of the slower release schedule that has been necessary. It's a pleasure to have a story with our favorite superheroes be worthy of this much attention. However posterity may remember Doomsday Clock in relation to Watchmen, I think fans will salute the effort that Johns put in and the intricacy that resulted. I'm looking forward to seeing what the next three issues bring and how well the patterns I cite here continue – or don't – as the story moves towards a finish.