Batman and The Case of the Stolen Story

 The Shadow of the Bat

Before Batman, before Superman, before comic books at all, there was The Shadow. And there were many pulp series, comprising text without illustration, publishing stories quite similar to those also heard on the radio. Some years back, the revelation broke that the very first Batman story, from Detective #27, borrowed – heavily, it turns out – from an earlier story featuring The Shadow. This was revealed by brief comments from the Batman story’s writer, Bill Finger, and then explored more deeply by Will Murray and Anthony Tollin in a special issue, The Shadow #9, back in 2008.

It’s worth beginning by making a careful distinction: Certainly many prior stories and ongoing serials helped inspire Batman as a character, as a concept. In the aforementioned issue of The Shadow, Murray and Tollin, in two separate essays, break this history down in impressive fashion, naming some obscure pulp stories that were available to Bill Finger and Bob Kane when Batman was being formulated as an idea. Murray and Tollin identify about six possible connections between certain 1930s pulp crime dramas and Batman; early Batman writer Jerry Robinson, penning a piece in the same volume, added more based on his in-person experience with the first years of Batman stories, and his knowledge of what he, Kane, and Finger had been reading.

It’s two different matters, though, to say that a character was inspired (or borrowed or stolen) versus to say that a story was inspired (or borrowed or stolen). In terms of defining the character either as we know him now, or even as readers knew him in the early 1940s, that first story isn’t particularly significant; it’s simply one story of many, and it easily could be shuffled into some other location in the first year’s worth of Batman stories, or omitted entirely, and the character doesn’t come across any differently. Without that first six-page story in 1939, Batman would still be Batman. So, we are not discussing here whether that story by itself robbed the entire idea of Batman from the creators behind The Shadow. The point under discussion here is if that particular story was lifted from an earlier story, and there is no need for the “if” – it certainly was.

Anyone who reads both of the stories will see the similarity; Murray and Tollin spend, combined, little more than a paragraph discussing the point. My ambition here is to flesh out the details and itemize exactly what was borrowed and what wasn’t. In doing so, we will find out, first, why the first Batman story creates such a strange and relatively insubstantial impression and, second, that perhaps the greatest thing borrowed from that Shadow story was not a few pages of Batman plot but some compelling details crucial in defining the Joker, who did not appear until nearly a year later.

A Tale of Two Tales

To lay out the basic facts, the 1939 Batman story “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate” (CCS, for short) obviously borrows from Theodore Tinsley’s 1936 The Shadow story “Partners of Peril” (POP); nobody could read both and fail to see the strong similarity. As Murray and Tollin note, POP even likens The Shadow – twice – to a bat. However, CCS is not simply a retelling of the entirely of POP, because that is not possible: POP is much longer than CCS, at about 60 pages of text as opposed to 6 of comic panels. POP has far more plot and detail than could conceivably be packed into the shorter format; POP has many more characters, many more scenes, and much more intricacy than CCS. And so, it’s not the case that CCS does or could contain all of the plot of POP; rather, essentially all of CCS is selected from the details of POP. Moreover, the selection of which details are borrowed and which are not was not very carefully made, and the comprehensibility CCS suffers considerably as a result.

That said, we may construct a breakdown of how closely CCS is borrowed from POP. CCS has a total of eight named characters, while five others (presuming that several brief appearances of a policeman represent the same policeman) have an extremely minimal quantity of dialogue. The eight with substantial presence are the following:

• Four businessmen

• Batman, appearing both in costume and as Bruce Wayne

• Commissioner Gordon

• The son of one businessman

• The assistant of one other businessman

This cast corresponds fairly well to the most prominent characters in POP, with some modifications: The “son” character in CCS belongs to the first businessman in the story, whereas the “son” in POP belongs to the third businessman we see. And, Gordon in CCS is a sort of amalgam of POP’s Commissioner Weston and a separate character, an ace detective of the police department named Joe Cardona. Some of the many additional characters in POP include a niece of one businessman, many faithful assistants to The Shadow, and an entire gang of armed thugs who participate in several action scenes that as part of a massive red herring of a side plot corresponding to nothing whatsoever found in CCS.

The plot of CCS boils down to this: Four businessmen are partners in the ownership of a chemical company. One of them decides that he can profit by killing the other three, eventually owning the entire company without needing to pay for the other three-quarter shares. In his effort to kill them one by one, he succeeds in killing the first two before Batman intercedes. In the end, Batman spares the life of the third partner, subdues the evil businessman’s assistant and a final struggle claims the life of the villain, who falls into a tank of acid. As far as that goes, it’s a simple plot, and a sensible one, as far as people who are willing to kill for large sums of money go. Nearly everything in this paragraph describes, equally well, POP, except that in POP, the assistant is killed, the evil businessman is arrested, and the hero is The Shadow rather than Batman. Moreover, the “son” in CCS is the son of the first businessman and is briefly put forth as a suspect for his father’s murder; the son in POP is the son of the third businessman and appears throughout the story, sometimes as a possible culprit and nearly becomes, more than once, a victim of the killers.

Batman explains the plot of Tinsley's story

Now, with the greater length of POP, we can imagine adding in the other elements of the plot, primarily the involvement of a gang who is trying to steal one of the products of the chemical company. While the story unfolds, the reader is uncertain if the murders were committed by the gang, who are in fact willing to kill if that helps them achieve their ends, but as it happens, they did not commit the two murders. The uncertainty the reader has throughout the story regarding the role of the gang, the involvement of one businessman’s niece, and many action sequences in which The Shadow and his helpers cross paths with the fourth businessman’s thugs and/or the gang is what makes POP a story that engages the reader for over an hour while CCS is a trifle that flits by in a few minutes.

This is the relationship between the two: A long story published in 1936 has a central plot and some side plots; a shorter story published in 1939 keeps the central plot, changing it only slightly, while eliminating the side plots. Case closed?

Left in the Shadow…

Around 2008, I read many comic book stories that had been published between 1935 and 1942. The first stories featuring Superman, Batman, and various members of the Justice Society were of great interest to me, and as “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate” is such a quick read, and has such a central place in comics history, I read it many times. These readings left me with a minor but general sense of befuddlement that I might never have expressed if it weren’t for the fact that Grant Morrison put the same idea into writing. In their book Supergods, Morrison says of CCS that it has “a bizarrely complex plot…” “It’s not a great story, and no matter how often I read it, I’m still left slightly in the dark as to what it was about.”

Several Golden Age stories give me a similar impression, that the logic doesn’t quite hold up, and I suppose that when it comes down to brass tacks, the writers were poorly paid, probably hustling through a chore to get their rent money, and had a juvenile readership to entertain. With the artwork providing more of the entertainment than in all-text adventure stories, the comic book plots didn’t need to stand up to the scrutiny of academics with advanced degrees, so we can explain the confusion, perhaps, on writers who were simply careless and had no great incentive to be otherwise.

There are indeed gaping plot holes in CCS, as there are in other Golden Age comic book stories. That said, the extent of the plot holes and illogic in “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate” exceed even that which was normal at the time. To list just a few:

• The killer warns each victim, before the attempt on his life, with threats. There is no apparent reason to do this. The killer simply needs for the three men to be dead, and that could only be easier if there were no advance warning. Without such threats, the plan probably would have succeeded.

• Ordinarily, a series of murders that result in one person profiting would make the killer’s identity obvious, so the story asserts that the partnership was in fact secret, but offers no reason why it would have been secret.

• When Batman bursts into the lab where the third businessman is nearly killed, he enters a glass dome where the man is trapped, then plugs a vent through which gas escapes, then breaks the glass to free them. This is a strangely complicated death trap and it’s even stranger that Batman, who enters the room at the last moment, would understand the mechanism and how to defeat it.

• When the villain’s assistant subdues the third businessman, the assistant announces, “Soon, I’ll control everything!” It is unexplained why an assistant would believe that he would control everything, and this is at odds with the subsequent exposition indicating that the fourth businessman, the assistant’s boss, is the one who would control everything.

When one reads POP, one finds explanations for most of these plot holes.

Gas as a weapon doesn't even make sense here

• The contracts, in POP, stipulate that the fourth partner is buying the company from the other three over a period of ten years, but must pay the same total sum even if one or two of the three die during that time. Therefore, when there is a threat to any of the three, it makes the others who are being bought out the likely suspects. The fourth ends up expecting to profit only because all of the other three are to be killed. [Why anyone would agree to such a contract, that robs one’s heirs of the payments, is never explained in POP, and is seemingly present only to drive the plot forward.] Therefore, the death threats towards the first two businessmen direct suspicion, at least temporarily, to the third victim rather than to the actual killer. In POP, then, the death threats serve a purpose. In CCS, they are counterproductive.

• In POP, The Shadow is present, but hidden, during a very lengthy scene in which the assistant explains how the death trap works. This scene, and the poison gas in general, drive an aforementioned side plot involving poison gas being developed as a weapon for the military and a gang that wishes to steal its formula. Therefore, in POP, there is a reason for this complex apparatus to exist, and the Shadow knows how to deactivate it. Batman, barging in suddenly from outdoors, should not have that information. A fragmented description of the death trap is just a weird digression from the plot and the whole story would make more sense if the assistant or the fourth businessman simply tried to kill the third businessman by more conventional means.

• In POP, the assistant is for many pages offered as the most likely identity of the killer, and the reader is given reason to believe that the fourth businessman – the assistant’s boss – is to be yet another victim after the first three are killed. It’s a plot twist that comes after the assistant is dead when The Shadow reveals that the fourth businessman sought to frame his assistant as the killer of the other three. Therefore, the assistant has an important role in the narrative of POP, but in CCS is just a bizarre distraction.

Bill Finger not only took his plot from POP, but also took details indiscriminately from the longer story, which had lengthy exposition explaining some of its stranger aspects, such that Finger’s story, which includes certain details but no explanations, ends up almost nonsensical. In a better and tighter story, Finger could have kept the details of the contracts that offered a reason for the killer to issue threats to the businessmen. Further, he could have simplified the death threat to the third man from poison gas to something more conventional, and eliminated the assistant, who plays no useful purpose in the story that the villainous businessman himself couldn’t have performed. The haphazard inclusion of certain details from POP is precisely what makes the story, as Morrison notes, bizarrely complex, and hard to absorb. It certainly would be a better and tighter story with a few simplifications. We can say now with confidence that the eventual success of Batman was not hindered by the weakness of his first story, but this helps explain why that first story did not go on to become a staple for later writers to reference in loving homage.

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before

While the above lays out the relationship between POP and CCS, it was another observation, coming as early as POP’s first page, which struck me earlier, and has perhaps never been noted before. Perhaps the most vivid match between POP and a Batman story is not with May 1939’s Detective #27, but with 1940’s Batman #1, and this detail does not reside only in a Golden Age comic book, but was also adapted, as a significant piece of Batman lore, into a memorable scene in 2008’s The Dark Knight. In fact, the character whose schtick is most directly borrowed from POP is not Batman but the Joker.  While Anthony Tollin states, “there is no concrete evidence to suggest that Tinsley’s stories influenced the development of DC Comics’ Joker,” there is overwhelming evidence that the same story already discussed here influenced the first Joker story, if not the character’s overall concept. Less than a year after Finger borrowed extensively from Tinsley’s POP for the plot and many story elements for the first Batman story, he went on to borrow many plot elements for the first Joker story – more than could conceivably be a coincidence.

While Jerry Robinson was the creator of the Joker, and his comments printed in The Shadow #9 go into some detail about previous pulp stories that may have provided inspiration for Robinson, his own reflections indicate that he did not write the first Joker story. Instead, he conceived of the character, and then, to his disappointment, Bill Finger was given scripting duties for the first Joker story, which opened the series of stories that appeared in Batman #1. And we already know that Finger read POP and felt free to borrow from it without limitation.

Batman #1 contains both the first and second Joker stories, which also happen to be the second and fourth stories with Dick Grayson. (Hugo Strange and Catwoman serve as the villains in two stories that appear between the two Joker stories.) The first of those untitled Joker stories has the following plot: On three separate occasions, the Joker breaks into a public radio broadcast to issue a threat against a prominent man. In each case, the Joker names an exact time later the same evening at which the man will be killed. In the first two instances, the victim is a wealthy man and the threat also specifies a robbery that will take place; in the third case, the threat is leveled at a judge who had previously sent the Joker to prison. All three of these attacks proceed exactly as the Joker predicts, but he is followed by Batman and Robin after killing the judge. After tussles between the heroes and the villain prove inconclusive, the Joker heads off the same night to commit another robbery (apparently, he made this threat to Robin off-camera). During this fourth attempted crime, he is stopped and apprehended by Batman.

In its overarching structure, this story is only a little like POP: There are four prominent men, threats, and killings, but the main plot is different. Unlike in POP, there is no mystery regarding the identity of the culprit, and no major mystery regarding motive, as the robberies serve as their own motivation, and the Joker has a grievance against the judge. (There is no apparent motive for the Joker to kill the first two men aside from his twisted desire to kill.)

However, the first crime in the first Joker story is quite specifically similar to the first murder in POP. All of the following similarities apply:

1) The crime is threatened in advance.

2) The time named in the threat is midnight.

3) The victim is a wealthy man.

4) The victim goes to the police for protection.

5) The police go to the man’s home and provide what seems like overwhelming protection.

6) Nonetheless, the crime is committed at the threatened time.

7) The cause of death is poisoning, but there is no apparent source of poison.

8) In both cases, the poison was introduced to the home long in advance.

9) The poison causes the dead man’s face to contort horribly.

10) After the man is dead, the police open a safe in the room and find that something was stolen.

To be thorough, there are some differences between the two scenes.

1) POP is a whodunit; the Joker identifies himself (though with that alias) before the crime.

2) In POP, the weapon is a poisoned cigar which the killer is confident will be smoked just before midnight; the Joker poisoned the man directly (somehow) long before the threat and the poison (implausibly) acts only very suddenly after a delay with pinpoint precision.

3) In POP, the death is threatened by midnight and occurs two minutes beforehand.

4) The man’s disfigurement in POP is withered and grotesque; the Joker’s poison creates – here, for the absolute first time – a ghastly smile.

5) The motive for the killing is unclear in POP, which is essential to the criminal’s hope of evading suspicion. The Joker robs the man’s safe, and that also had been performed before the threat was made.

To put the whole matter in contrast, take a look at the first Sandman story from Adventure Comics #40, scripted by Gardner Fox in 1939. In this story, the Tarantula threatens to kidnap a wealthy actress, and her home receives heavy police protection, and yet the kidnapping takes place anyway, baffling the investigators. (Besides Wesley Dodds, who comes up with the correct explanation in a few seconds.) This story may also have been advised by knowledge of POP, as it matches similarities 1, 4, 5, and 6 from the above list. Then again, maybe some of those plot elements were tropes that had been floated about in the noir world of the time. It would take a lot more research to work that out. However, ten similarities are a lot more than four, and in my mind there’s no doubt that Finger lifted from Tinsley’s story again, when we already know that the author of the later story had previously done exactly that on another occasion.

In the initial Joker story, the similarities wane, though don’t end, after the first crime. One more detail perhaps also taken from POP, in that the weapons used in the Joker’s second crime included “a strange gas,” which is how the villains attempt the third murder in POP (after the second involves electrocution).

What binds the first Joker story and POP is not the overall structure so much as the motif presented during that first crime – a threat is made in advance, giving the villain an air of invincibility when the police are unable to prevent it despite the advance warning. Continuing throughout Finger’s first Joker story and into the second, this motif is repeated again and again, with the threat occurring in all nine of the Joker attacks in those two stories, and poisons leading to the distorted face occurring in all but the two of them that Batman prevents. These two motifs become almost definitional of the Joker not only in 1940 but to the present day, from the most obscure monthly comics of decades past to the global prominence of The Dark Knight movie and its billion-dollar earnings.

So, I would suggest that the most significant legacy of Bill Finger’s casual approach to lifting details from Theodore Tinsley’s "Partners of Peril" was in the creation of the Joker’s modus operandi, which established comics and movies created over the years right up to the present, and sure to continue onward, and not the previously-revealed theft of the threadbare plot of the six pages of CCS. A bit over a decade ago, comics historians and creators lobbied for Bill Finger to receive credit as at least a co-creator of Batman; however much this may be true for the concept of Batman, some stories themselves and the concept of the Joker owe more than a little to the ideas of Theodore Tinsley. And this closes the case of the stolen story.

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.

Heroes in Crisis #1-3: Signs and Contradictions

All I have to add are some observations from lining up, side-by-side, events where the three issues have given us at least two accounts. There are numerous inconsistencies. (That's not to say that they are all contradictory: There are various ways to explain these.) The location of Roy and Wally has been mentioned, but there are also these:

1) The trio of greeter androids inside the house is an older couple (who resemble the Kents) and a younger woman. In HIC #1, the younger woman is black. In HIC #3, she is white with red hair in a ponytail.

2) The cluster of dead heroes outside the house is considerably different in HIC #1 and HIC #3. Lagoon Boy and Hotspot are feet-together in #1 but heads-together in #3. Those around them include Commander Steel in #1 and Red Devil in #3. Basically none of the details match.

3) Wally's costume leg is ripped in #1. In #3, he's killed with a single blow to the head. There'd be no reason for his costume leg to become ripped.

4) Obviously, Booster and Harley contradict one another, each saying that the other did it.

5) Booster's memory and recordings are inconsistent. At the time he apparently sees Harley kill Wally, he says that it's his first day there. The session recordings are not the same, and in one, he says that it's his first day. If all of these scenes are real and on the level, then he must have made two recordings introducing himself on the same day. (There are many other explanations.) Harley says that she didn't know he was there and his explanation is that it's his first day.

6) Booster and Harley have scratches/cuts, and costume tears in #1, but none when they meet in #3. Perhaps we missed a fight between them, but it would seem odd for any of Booster's weapons or tactics to give Harley scratches.

7) The shadows fall in almost opposite directions when Booster arrives at the house in #3 and when Superman arrives in #1. This is probably just an error, but it could indicate sunrise vs. sunset.

8) Ivy's testimony in #3 involves a direct and immediate contradiction/correction/refinement of how long she's been there when she says "A week. Nine days." We don't know if that recording and the one seen in #2 are from the same session or not. It seems that the one in #2, coinciding with Harley's arrival, must likely be shortly before the murders. This makes it odd that she is still explaining her justification for being there, nine or more days after her arrival. There's no direct contradiction here, but it calls into question the soundness of Ivy's thoughts.

9) Booster's costume is intact after Skeets wakes him up, despite the tears and injuries earlier. Perhaps Skeets' technology includes costume repair.

10) Booster's memory of the session where he's talking to a virtual copy of himself indicates that the attack began when he was not present, another contradiction of Harley's assertion that Booster committed the murders.

Obviously, this is a lot of contradiction, and it's got to be resolved. A lot could be resolved in one tidy package if we simply find out that Booster is delusional. More could be resolved if we find out that someone rearranged the crime scene.

I think we're a long way away from answers here. Neither Booster nor Harley is the killer in the simplest sense: The solicits for #5 and #6 indicate that someone or something corrupted the Sanctuary AI and the Sanctuary AI, by giving the heroes counterproductive "therapy" made their problems worse rather than better, until one or more of them snapped. The villain stands a good chance of being someone we haven't even seen on-panel yet. A bug in the software owing to Batman's paranoia (see the kryptonite in the belt) would be a plausible explanation except that's just what the Brother Eye plot was.

I'm glad we've got six issues to go. There's a long way to go for the mystery, and we haven't gotten very deep into the psychology yet.

Doomsday Clock 7

Something big happened. Now that Doomsday Clock begins its second half, some of the key meetings have taken place and the biggest one yet to come – Superman facing Dr. Manhattan in battle – has appeared in Dr. Manhattan's future-vision.

Early on, Johns added detail to the backstory of how Dr. Manhattan changed the DCU by deleting the Alan Scott Green Lantern from its history; this is something I sketched out in my review of DC #3 as matching "the subplot of a JLA/JSA crossover in which an evil Johnny Thunder on Earth One used the Thunderbolt to prevent the Justice League from existing." Just as the Thunderbolt in that story prevented, for example, the lightning that gave Barry Allen from striking his lab, Dr. Manhattan in this story prevented Alan Scott from obtaining his lantern (and, moreover, causing his death). We can be sure that most if not all JSAers were similarly interfered with.

With a scene that looked almost literally like a set stage, DC #7 was centered around a group meeting (after a brief, frantic battle) that put Mime, Marionette, the Comedian, New Rorschach, Veidt, Batman, and the Joker together with Dr. Manhattan. And what followed was, for the most part, talk. In the meantime, Dr. Manhattan teleported the Watchmen Universe members of the group to three different times and places, as significant backdrops of relevance that was not stated directly. First, they go to an idyllic nature scene by a waterfall. Then, to an anti-superhero riot at night in Washington, D.C. Finally, they enter a movie theatre in 1954, terrifying the audience seeing the final Nathaniel Dusk film, The Adjournment. And during this time, with a lot of talking and a couple of one-sided fist-fights, something big happens. What is not immediately clear is: What is that something big?

Dr. Manhattan says "No" to Veidt's request. That happens immediately, and seems obviously irrevocable. There is a little more discussion, including the revelation that Veidt was lying about his brain cancer in order to manipulate Reggie into assisting him. (In retrospect, this was foreshadowed by the Veidt jigsaw puzzle that Reggie was working a couple of issues ago. In one frame, Veidt's head had a piece missing. Then Reggie put the correct piece in place and said that it was in front of him the whole time.)

But this is a big scene for some reason besides those. We know this because when Veidt returns to the Owlship, he believes that he no longer needs Dr. Manhattan's help, and that he has a plan to save everybody. These thoughts frighten Saturn Girl, who believed at the beginning of the issue that everything would turn out fine, but at the end believes that Veidt's new plan will ruin everything. This is yet another turn in her demeanor as seen during "The Button" and makes the details of her mental state an important part of the picture.

Why? Whatever Dr. Manhattan said or did changed Veidt's plan is the mystery in front of us the whole time. It was cryptic for us, and we know things that most of the characters don't. We know that the Nathaniel Dusk movies are tied in some way to the JSA-era superheroes, but Veidt presumably does not know that. So what did Dr. Manhattan say that instantly changed Veidt's worldview?

Dr. Manhattan says a few things with a lot of implications, and some pithy but key statements of his concern the two children of Mime and Marionette. Those statements tell us a lot and tell Veidt a lot, too, but not necessarily the same things. First, we find out that Marionette is pregnant again, which means that the child was conceived in the past few hours in the DCU. Second, we find out that their first child will do or has done something that is so significant to Dr. Manhattan that it is for that child's sake that he spared Marionette's life during the bank robbery we saw in DC #2.

If the information that suddenly changes Veidt's worldview is this, then why? Very likely, because Veidt has some reason to suspect that that child would not have a valuable future ahead of him. And we can guess at several reasons why. First, there was a nuclear war happening on the Watchmen Earth when last we saw it, and that is reason enough. Perhaps Veidt even knows from the child's location that he is dead due to the nuclear attack. Also, the photo of the child that New Rorschach gave to Marionette was "a few years old": Perhaps the child died between 1987 and 1992. In any of these scenarios, Dr. Manhattan's statement may give Veidt hope that the entire timeline can be altered. And therefore, it gives Veidt hope that the past can be changed for the better. This is likely the information and motive behind his current plan.

Dr. Manhattan's comments and thoughts also tell us a lot about Dr. Manhattan's plan. First, we find out that he prevented the rise of the JSA through the murder of Alan Scott. In the same passage, introducing the issue, we find out that one of the events in Alan Scott's timeline of which Dr. Manhattan was aware was the JSA's surrender to HUAC, causing the superheroes of the DCU to disappear. Second, we find out that he was greatly dispirited by the death of Colman Carver, which led him to say that his comment at the end of Watchmen was wrong, and that "Nothing ever ends" has been replaced in his worldview by "Everything ends." Why? The connection here likely lies in the inconspicuous details of DC #3's end notes about Colman Carver and a simple panel at the beginning of that issue. According to those references, the screenwriter of Carver's 1947 movie went to prison for refusing to cooperate with HUAC. This was in fact a real man, Ring Lardner, Jr. who really was imprisoned and then blacklisted from Hollywood just as the fictional DC #3 says. Why include this information? This is likely the key as to why Johns has included the Colman Carver subplot in Doomsday Clock. Knowing that HUAC exists in the current DCU timeline, we also know that the same threat that caused the JSA to retire was not dissipated by Dr. Manhattan's alteration to the timeline entailed by the death of Alan Scott. We now know that killing Alan Scott was not a petty or malevolent act on Dr. Manhattan's part, but a calculated one intended to bring about a positive outcome. And this tells us a lot about Dr. Manhattan's and Johns' intentions:

The notion of an entire generation of Golden Age heroes retiring due to pressure from HUAC was introduced in 1979 as I noted in my review of DC #4. This is an idea that Alan Moore copied in Watchmen, with Hooded Justice retiring (like Alan Scott) and Mothman (a major focus of that issue) ending up in a sanatorium (like Lardner). Mothman remembers this when, after Veidt's scheme killing millions is revealed, he says "They're rounding them up" in reference to the events of 1992. Mothman remembers when his generation, also, was rounded up.

And Dr. Manhattan remembers, too. He was discouraged by the lack of hope in both the Watchmen and post-Infinite Crisis DCU timelines entailed by the surrender of the heroes to the political pressures of their respective times. Removing Alan Scott prevented the JSA from existing, and therefore from surrendering to HUAC. But the death of Colman Carver extinguished the hope that Dr. Manhattan found in that. Why? Here, I see two possibilities, not mutually exclusive. One, based on no more information than an offhand comment early in DC #3, that Carver was regarded by Johnny Thunder's fellow inmate Donald as a hero suggests that Carver resisted the political pressures but remained working and in fact subsequently won an Oscar. A second, as I mentioned earlier, is that Carver actually is one of the would-be JSAers, likely Hourman (obsessed with clocks), and his movies had inspired positive heroism, until his death (being beaten to death with his own trophy like Watchmen's original Nite Owl).

And this tells us what is driving Dr. Manhattan. He, too, is driven by hope. He has been altering the timeline of the DCU, trying to achieve a more hopeful outcome. He deleted Alan Scott's Green Lantern career, trying to prevent the surrender of the JSA (which resembled a sad occurrence on his own world), but it didn't work, culminating with the death of Colman Carver. And now, he is seeing how the events finally play out, with Superman, the current symbol of hope, in some future act of war against Dr. Manhattan himself. This is fated to fail, and at that point, Dr. Manhattan ends the current timeline. The post-Flashpoint DCU is an experiment that Dr. Manhattan is running and he (and Johns) deem it a failure, set to end a month from now. The now-explicable scene at the end of DC #1 showing the deaths of the Kents shows another Dr. Manhattan-triggered tragedy that edited the timeline for the sake of an experiment that turned out tragic. When Dr. M (and Johns) give up on the current timeline, some version of the previous timeline, with Alan Scott living and the JSA existing will prevail. And, by implication, we will also get the Kents back. The fistfight between Superman and Dr. Manhattan will not end with the punch making contact, but with the implied sense of malaise leading the entire timeline to come to a dour close.

In the background, another, probably far less consequential mystery concerns the "identity" of Dr. Manhattan in the DCU. We get three clues. One, Dr. Manhattan himself says that he thought he "might find a place among" the DCU. Two, he says that he stood (physically) on the set of The Adjournment in 1954. Third, Bubastis' eyes glow when he is staring in the direction of The Comedian. I don't see a clear resolution behind all these details, but I do see a misdirection. Veidt believes that his cat responds to The Comedian, but New Bubastis already faced The Comedian and had no such response in DC #3. Either the trace of Dr. Manhattan on The Comedian's body happened after that or Bubastis isn't responding to The Comedian at all but to the man who happens to be standing behind him – The Joker. But we see The Joker still standing there after Dr. Manhattan manifests, so The Joker can't be him, as I postulated earlier, but is possibly "on" him in some fashion, or has left his trace there. I don't see how the details shake out yet, but there is some connection between the old movie set (predating most or all of our current DCU adults) and The Comedian and/or The Joker.

Still, whatever the small details, the large details are now apparent. We know Dr. Manhattan's actions and motives and where they lead. We also know that Veidt has a different plan and it isn't the one that Saturn Girl is hoping for, no doubt leading to her horror in the opening scenes of "The Button." Veidt's new plan is supposed to fail, then, and hope lies elsewhere.

And on the note of hope, the theme I mentioned earlier is emphasized once again: Batman comes across very poorly in DC #7. Although he manages to show his competence in battle, it is with mixed results, as he is injured by Marionette and then sucker-zapped by The Joker. Dr. Manhattan takes us to an anti-Batman riot in Washington and, though Batman is the last man standing after the fistfights of DC #7, he comes across as a mere brawler achieving temporary victories while Superman is "the most hopeful." Veidt, Dr. Manhattan, and Johns are all seeking hope. And we hear again and again that Batman is not it; Superman is.

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.