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 4

One of the dramatic elements of Doomsday Clock and the various prequels in the story arc is the way characters are brought onstage. This began with the very appearance of the Comedian's button and Dr. Manhattan back in DC Rebirth #1, and the appearance of Superman's logo at the end of The Button and continues into the current series. Perhaps the biggest surprise of DC #4 is the fact that it centers so completely around the new Rorschach, one of Johns' new characters. A series that is about the encounter between two worlds and only has eight more issues to do so is still setting things up, and if one of these issues is devoted to one character, there must be a good reason for it.

Readers may be tempted to find this issue – with no Superman, little Batman, little Veidt, and no Mime and Marionette – advancing the main plot comparatively little, but this only highlights a number of brief, intriguing connections to the main plot. Devoting an entire issue to the new Rorschach indicates in flashing red letters that he is going to become a very important figure. The remaining issues of Doomsday Clock are likely to feature a battle for this young man's soul.

As previously hinted, new Rorschach is Reggie Long, the son of Rorschach's psychologist, Dr. Malcolm Long. He was orphaned by Veidt's alien plot, and also driven mad by it. This issue has so many scenes that reflect other scenes, in itself or in previous works, that it can make you feel like you're looking down a hall of mirrors. We see Reggie twice spend time in mental asylums; once on each Earth. Both times, his placement there earns our sympathy, but is not without justification. Both times, he meets superheroes who are in there with him; both times, that superhero helps him escape. We should perhaps note the asymmetries where they occur: One, Watchmen's Mothman, is a figure out of the past, whereas the other, Saturn Girl, is from the future.

Another double-up in Doomsday Clock that is highlighted by the Mothman's story is the similarity between the Watchmen old-timers and the Justice Society. Both teams were driven underground by pressure from their respective governments. It is interesting to note that this plot development – copied many times in subsequent goverment-vs-superhero stories – began with a 1979 JSA story scripted by Paul Levitz. Why is this relevant? Both backstories name-check the real-life HUAC which advanced the anti-Communist witch-hunt of Senator Joseph McCarthy. In both cases, the superheroes are confronted by a McCarthyesque government panel and are driven into retirement or other unpalatable options. What makes this similarity relevant is the ongoing Johnny Thunder cameos, particularly in Rebirth wherein he implies that he chose to protect them by making them "go away" when the committee asked them to unmask. Placing this in the larger Doomsday Clock story suggests some complicated relationships between timelines. If Johnny Thunder commanded the JSA to disappear, and Dr. Manhattan is also manipulating timelines, then we have two forces altering history for the worst. That seems overly complex. Perhaps Johnny Thunder and/or the Thunderbolt are agents of Dr. Manhattan. In fact, the Thunderbolt seems like an appropriate candidate to be Dr. Manhattan given their similarity. In any case, this reflects on how events in the Watchmen universe may have served as a pattern for alterations made to the DCU.

A scene with striking overtones of older DC / JSA lore is the rooftop encounter in which Reggie and Mothman met. Reggie was about to commit suicide by jumping from a height but didn't because he coincidentally met Mothman, who also seemed to be jumping to his death. The original Mister Terrific, Terry Sloan, was contemplating suicide when he happened upon a woman who was also intending to commit suicide by jumping from a bridge. Later, Michael Holt was also contemplating suicide when the Spectre spoke to him, leading him down the path to becoming the second Mister Terrific. Reggie has a similar encounter but his path was already turned in a dark direction, and he became a new Rorschach.

So consider now the life of Reggie Long thus far, and the various origin stories it resembles. He loses his father and mother and seeks vengeance upon their killer. This is Batman's origin. He sees the gravest horrors and emerges from a fire to begin a life of adventuring. This is Rorschach's origin. He contemplates suicide but meets someone else and this saves him. That's Mister Terrific's origin. Look at the cover of this issue, also its first panel: The tall stack of pancakes and syrup remind Reggie of the wealth of Batman. That's not his story: Even the smallest bedroom in Wayne Manor feels too luxurious for him. This Rorshach identity surely isn't working out. Going forward, I think we're very likely to see Reggie turned by good influences from the DCU into something more akin to Mister Terrific.

Meanwhile, in the goodness-deprived Watchmen Universe, Mothman's life ends as a bit of a bad joke, as a moth kills itself by being drawn to flames. This is one of three times in the issue that we see an insect incinerated: The Mothman is one. The other two are mosquitoes, zapped by electricity. This pattern is also not coincidence, and readers who felt that this issue was too slow-paced were missing portentous hints as that pattern went forward. We (and Reggie) see a mosquito flying down the Arkham hallway, and into a bug zapper hanging in front of Killer Croc's cell. Later, we see the Mothman killed by fire. But the third time, looking very much like the first, the mosquito is not killed by the bug zapper. Just short of entering the device, the second mosquito is killed from behind by a white bolt that leaves a trail of smoke with Dr. Manhattan's hydrogen atom insignia: The second mosquito is killed by Dr. Manhattan. We also see the photo that reminds him of his past life as Jon Osterman floating in the breeze. Why – what does this tiny, insignificant event mean? First, it tells us that Dr. Manhattan is present at that point in Arkham Asylum. Is that a clue to his "secret identity"? Maybe. So far, if we find out that some Arkham resident is "really" Dr. Manhattan in disguise, it would be a hollow reveal: We've hardly seen any of them doing anything interesting. Perhaps more significant, it shows us that Dr. Manhattan is at work in the DCU, tampering with events. And more specifically, it shows us that he is in Arkham as Saturn Girl meets Reggie Long. This is something he wanted to have happen, or at least, condones.

That visitor from the future, Saturn Girl is smiling and cheery throughout her brief appearances in this issue. This leaps out as an anomaly. We first saw Saturn Girl's current visit to the 2010s in DC Rebirth #1. She is serene, saying that everything will be all right. Later, during the opening moments of The Button crossover, she is terrified and panicked, telling us that Superman will not arrive to help and everyone will die. Now, she's serene again. What is responsible for the whiplash turn in her demeanor? Is this mere emotional instability? Probably not, because she refers to knowledge of events that drive her responses.  But why the alternating responses? It's probably too soon for us to know, but Dr. Manhattan's manipulation of timelines seems a likely answer. Remember, Saturn Girl is not precognitive – she's telepathic, and happens to be from the future. What we're likely seeing at this point is an experiment that Dr. Manhattan is carrying out, and Reggie Long, a "mosquito" in comparison to the vast, indifference of Dr. Manhattan, is probably on a path towards the light (to use this issue's metaphor), from the darkness of Rorschach and Veidt's grand tragedy to the light of Mister Terrific, a character who, in both previous versions, turned from suicide to hope.

Nevertheless, we should remember what happened to that mosquito. Dr. Manhattan killing for no reason is chilling. Because he can just as easily turn that power to killing anyone else. But the photo of Jon and Laurie might give us hope. He's still clinging to memories of humanity. He is letting Saturn Girl take Reggie down a path towards the light, and we need that experiment to succeed so that Dr. Manhattan can believe in the light. Later, he's going to turn things dark again, as Saturn Girl's panic revealed. But later still in this series, he's going to meet the greatest representative of the light. He's going to meet Superman.

Doomsday Clock 3

Reading Doomsday Clock #3, like much of the earlier issues, is like examining a crime scene. Many things are out of place. The question is, why are those particular things out of place, and how did they get there? What are the rules of the game?

We get one direct answer when we see the Comedian get plucked, in mid-air, out of the fall that killed him before Watchmen #1, and teleported into a fall into water in the DC Universe. We know that Dr. Manhattan did this. We don't how – in terms of the sci fi nitty gritty details – this changed what we saw in Watchmen. One possibility would be that when Comedian has finished playing some role in the DCU, he will go back to his fall and then die. Or, perhaps he did die and Manhattan put the pieces back together. Or perhaps he made a duplicate. Or changed the timeline. The bigger question is really "Why?" Did Dr. Manhattan perform an act of mercy or does he simply need Comedian for a cold, utilitarian purpose? Some of the other events in the issue may indicate the answer.

And we face a lingering mystery from the end of DC #2, that the Mime's presumed-nonexistent lock pick worked. Sure, you can be crazy and imagine that you have invisible tools, but the Mime's seemed to have worked, and Marionette seemed to have expected it to. Or maybe he was able to pick a lock in some other way and pretending to have a tool was part of their shared gag. In #3, we get undeniable evidence that the Mime's (almost) invisible gun is real: People get shot and we see the light reflect off of it. And if an invisible gun is real, why not a lock pick? This says something about how illusion and reality are twisted around in this story. On a more pragmatic level, we might wonder what material those things are made of: Perhaps some unusually strong glass.

Glass and glass breaking are the overwhelming recurrent image in this issue. Mime's tools seem to belong to that. A broken bottle is on the cover. We find out inside the issue that it is the bottle from which Blake is drinking when Veidt assaults him. A few things are remarkable about the brand. First, this is Victory Gin, which is the brand from Orwell's "1984" and that is a work of yet another stature for Johns to tie in with his story. Presumably, we're not going to (nor legally could) see this story jump into the 1984 Universe, but it may provide a symbol of autocracy, particularly cogent given the Russia subplot in Doomsday Clock's moment in the DCU.

What's more important than the brand might be the drink. Linking Blake and gin makes four times in two issues that Doomsday Clock has referenced the same scene in Watchmen #2. In that scene, set in a bar in Vietnam in June 1971, Blake is told by a Vietnamese woman that she is pregnant with his child. He announces that he will leave her behind along with the country he disdains. She attacks his face with a glass bottle, giving him his trademark scar, and he shoots her dead while Dr. Manhattan looks on, and comments glumly. Blake points out that Manhattan could have stopped the violence by turning harmful objects into harmless ones, or that Manhattan "coulda teleported either of us to goddamn Australia." On that occasion, Victory in Vietnam Day, Blake is drinking bourbon but standing in front of a mirror advertising gin – thus "Victory Gin" is the setting of that scene. In DC #3, we also see a comedian hit in the face with broken glass – a subpar standup comedian in the bar full of Joker devotees. In DC #2, we saw Dr. Manhattan save the life of Marionette because she was pregnant, indicating a difference in his policies which is striking (thanks to Comic Book Resources poster robotman for calling attention to the scene for that connection). And DC #3 begins with Dr. Manhattan preventing/delaying violence to Blake by teleporting Blake to, metaphorically speaking, goddamn Australia: the DC Universe. That scene and the difference between Dr. Manhattan in 1971 Vietnam and Dr. Manhattan in Doomsday Clock is a tremendously important statement, but one that requires further clarification regarding timelines (is this the "now" Dr. Manhattan, or one stage, or some merciful Dr. Manhattan from some other slice of the timestream?) and motive (is he actually merciful or does he have some ulterior motive for saving Blake and Marionette, perhaps temporarily?).

The other big showdown in DC #3 is Batman and Rorschach, in which Batman gets the original Rorschach's journal and spends a long time reading it before deciding to leave the new Rorschach cooped up in Arkham. This is not such a surprising turn of events if one remembers how Geoff Johns wrote the encounter between Batman and an earnest visitor from another dimension back in Infinite Crisis, in which Batman took Kal-L's proposal for an alliance and friendship and responded with an (ineffective) attack using kryptonite. Rorschach, however, is not superpowered, and it looks like he's going to spend a little time in captivity. Remember, however, Arkham also contains Saturn Girl, who can read Rorschach's mind, and she can learn from him how important his and Veidt's mission is to save billions of lives, and facts necessary to carrying it out. I suspect that information is going to go from Rorschach to Saturn Girl to Superman and power the next part of our story. Meanwhile, we learn more about Rorschach's backstory: He is young, grew up poor, and lost his family in Veidt's New York attack. He is apparently nobody we saw in detail in Watchmen but is credibly the son or other relation of Rorschach's psychiatrist Dr. Malcolm Long (whose coffee cup read "DAD"). If so, Johns will likely use the generations to show the potential change between the Watchmen world's past and present.

There is a big subplot set in the DCU's past. Back in Rebirth, Wally West gave us some crib notes on a nefarious reality-bending plot that had changed the universe in a harmful way. As we've often been reminded since then, the difference may have been introduced with Flashpoint, but the timeline was changed at least as far back as 1938, with the Golden Age superheroes having vanished from prominence, but still they exist in other forms. We saw the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick in "The Button" and we see a Johnny Thunder who remembers his hero past. If we stick to the original timeline, Johnny Thunder would be approaching 100 years old now, and he mentions a great grandchild to that end. DC #3 gives us quite a bit of information, buried in Hollywood celebrity news from the 1950s, about some of those characters.

During the events of DC, a television station is playing a marathon of movies starring the deceased  Carver Coleman, an actor who played a detective named "Nathaniel Dusk" in several pictures before his untimely murder. The "DCU 1950s Hollywood" is a weird pastiche of the actual, real-world 1950s Hollywood, the post-Infinite Crisis timeline, and some unknown number of other fictional stories. The "Screenland Secrets" celeb gossip magazine excerpted in DC #3 mentions Norma Desmond, who was the fictional character at the center of Sunset Boulevard, as well as many real people and many DCU characters. Because of the timeline, we should expect this subplot to indicate how (and why) Dr. Manhattan removed the Golden Age superheroes from the post-Flashpoint timeline. Coleman's murder is a big clue: He was beaten to death with an award that had received. This is exactly how Hollis Mason dies in Watchmen #8. Here's the question: Is that similarity a creative act on Johns' part, or is it a creative act on Dr. Manhattan's part? Also, his watch was missing, and he had a secret roomful of clocks. At the end of DC Rebirth, we see someone examining a watch with a leather strap and inscribed, "Every second is a gift" on Mars. This once belonged to Wally West, having been given to him by his uncle and having been owned by generations before that. Is it Coleman's? Note the possible significance of the inscription, and the ambiguity of the word "second," and that Doomsday Clock is the second version of the Watchmen universe, and Wally West a second (at his time; overall, the third) version of the Flash. Either we have one watch or two; either way, they will turn out to be meaningful.

And what of the other Golden (or early Silver) Agers mentioned in "Screenland Secrets"?

• Rita Farr, here alleged to be the daughter of actor Frank Farr. Previously, the Doom Patrol's Elasti-Girl, debuting 1963, placing her birth in the Golden Age time frame.

• John Law, previously the All-Star Squadron's Tarantula, a writer in his day job.

• Frank Rock, Jackie Johnson, and Randy Booth, members of Easy Company. In his original bio, Johnson was a boxer, and Booth ("Tin Soldier") was an actor.

• Ted Grant, here on hand at Johnson's wedding. Previously, a boxer turned superhero as Wildcat of the Justice Society.

• Libby Lawrence, here Law's ex-wife. Previously athlete, turned superhero as Liberty Belle of the All-Star Squadron. In later incarnations, she married John Chambers ("Johnny Quick") and gave birth to the second Liberty Belle / Jesse Quick.

• Rachel Drake, here the actress who gave birth to Rita Farr. There is no Rachel Drake in DC continuity, but Rachel van Helsing was in a romance with Frank Drake, a direct descendant of Dracula, and it's possible that Rachel was or gave birth to the mother of Rita Farr.

Note that John Law's alibi for the murder of Coleman was his location across the city. That would hardly be an obstacle for many of the superpowered characters in our story, including Johnny Quick. Maybe the alibi only holds up because someone's superpowers are not taken into account, although Tarantula never possessed super speed.

If the Golden Age superheroes were removed from continuity but many of the individuals still lived, then there may be a backstory in which Dr. Manhattan or others connected to him arrived in the past and performed whatever actions necessary to prevent their lives as heroes. The ones mentioned in Doomsday Clock so far were born as normal people without superpowers. Perhaps a series of murders or other actions prevented the rise of the superheroes, one by one. For what it's worth, that was 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. Controlling the existence/nonexistence of superheroes is also a theme in the Supermen Theory that's lurking offstage in Doomsday Clock, now seen to involve Metamorpho and Kirk Langstrom. Are the two subplots related?

And in our story? Old Johnny Thunder claims to have sent the Thunderbolt away. Why is he the face of the Justice Society in our story? It's worth pointing out two correspondences, perhaps meaningful. One, the original Charlton character upon whom Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias was based was nicknamed Thunderbolt. Two, Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt is one of the DC characters most similar to Dr. Manhattan in powers. It's likely that that similarity will play out. Did Dr. Manhattan take the place of the Thunderbolt? Did he sideline the Thunderbolt? Johnny Thunder was invented as a purely comic character in his original run, with Thunderbolt often having a laugh at Johnny's expense. If the Thunderbolt returns to challenge and defeat Dr. Manhattan in a head-to-head battle, that would be the ultimate victory of light-hearted storytelling over Alan Moore's grim vision in Watchmen. 

Doomsday Clock 2

In its opening installment, Geoff Johns' Doomsday Clock provided many indications where its story must go. In the second issue, many inevitable other shoes fall, and there may be more to the style than the substance. We knew that characters from the Watchmen and DC Universes would collide, but Johns patterns the events after stories we've seen before and, surely, foreshadows events later to come in this one.

In the first pages, the team of Veidt, the new Rorschach, and villains Mime and Marionette board a modified Owlship and make the interdimensional voyage to the DCU in pursuit of Dr. Manhattan. Johns intertwines several story threads in narrating this escape. It's a necessary plot point for this escape to succeed, or we wouldn't have much of a story. But Johns, using some of the characteristics of Moore's storytelling (and not merely his characters) signals many other things to us.

First, we learn why Veidt has calculated that Marionette, a person with no superpowers, may help him wrangle the godlike Dr. Manhattan because of their special history. Some years ago, when Manhattan arrived to stop Mime and Marionette during a bank heist, he seemed to be on the verge of killing them when he halted. Something broke through the impassive cognition of the former-human-now-superhuman when he might have killed them and led him to mercy. Instead, he apprehended the couple alive. Veidt is clearly calculating that another, forced, appearance of Marionette may remind Dr. Manhattan to leave his activities in the DCU and return to the Watchmen Universe and save it. However, we readers see something else, which may mean that Veidt doesn't understand the situation fully. At the moment of killing Marionette, Manhattan, with his super senses, heard the heartbeat of her unborn baby, signified by blue (Dr. Manhattan) sound balloons rendering the sound of the heartbeat as "BABUM". A photo of the bank teller’s young child is shown to us because the teller had just tried to use her own child as a prompt for mercy from the criminals. Dr. Manhattan's act of mercy is the pivotal event in this issue, as signified by the cover, that shows the very same midsection of Marionette's costume where Manhattan was looking and listening when he showed that act of mercy. For the Watchmen Universe's sake, we hope that Marionette can trigger that same mercy now that she is no longer pregnant. We also have a subtle reminder that Dr. Manhattan can undo physical damage when he levitates the bank manager's recently severed finger upon arrival. We also see the significance of the Marionette character name, because a marionette is a figure that is manipulated by someone else, just as Dr. Manhattan may prove to be in the metaphorical hands of Veidt.

And undoing physical damage is what is required, and certainly what Veidt is banking on. The plan for Veidt to manipulate Manhattan into saving the Watchmen Earth happens too late for him to prevent nuclear holocaust. Veidt and his team leave only moments before New York is struck with a nuclear missile. This event is packed full of references to other stories, and it might be worthy of a spoiler warning, because these point where Doomsday Clock will likely travel.

First, civilian bystanders see the nuclear missile that will kill them and exclaim, "Look! Up in the sky!" and "Is that a plane?" These are catchphrases from the older, simpler days for the arrival of Superman. Here, these phrases are darkly ironic because it is doom, not salvation that flies toward them. And here, there is a choice for the story later to make: Is this indeed their final doom, with death standing in for life, marking the Watchmen Universe as a place where evil wins, much as Earth Three with its Crime Syndicate has been deemed by earlier writers? Or, is this a temporary, reversible death that Dr. Manhattan and others will make un-happen when the story moves on? Clearly, Veidt is banking on the latter. And we get a big stylistic clue that Johns is foreshadowing such an ending when the first use of Veidt's interdimensional travel button (marked with Dr. Manhattan's hydrogen atom symbol) does… nothing. But the second time he presses it, prompted by Rorschach, it does work, and barely in time to prevent their own deaths, which really would be final because of the vitality of their mission. Here, and perhaps again later, we can expect to see an initial failure be followed by success on a second try. And ultimately, this is the likely thematic arc for the story as a whole, with the sunnier DC Universe winning out and applying its happy-ending rules to the always bleak, fatally doomed Watchmen Universe as designed by Alan Moore.

And here we see the most profound allusive symbolism of the scene, and the reason why the nuke had to hit now for it to be un-happened later: This recreates the Superman origin story, with a rocket carrying the last survivors out of the very last instant before destruction to another world where there is hope. See this scene, and this series, as a conversation between, at least, Jerry Siegel, Alan Moore, and Geoff Johns. Moore tried to kill the world of superheroes with Watchmen. Now, in 2017, Johns is reminding us of the original version of this story, from 1938, where the escape of a final survivor from the death of a world provides hope for everybody.

Though Superman is, therefore, at the very forefront of the issue's symbolism, he is not seen. The rescue squad splits up, with Veidt contacting Lex Luthor and Rorschach going to Wayne Manor.

Before meeting Rorschach, Bruce Wayne encounters a Rorschach test, the scene imitating Kovacs' such test in Watchmen. Here, the symbols prompt him to imagine major events in his own life, including his parents' deaths and his role as Batman, but he answers dishonestly, saying that every pattern reminds him of a boat, because as shallow Bruce Wayne, he wants to go boating. As a backdrop, the DC Universe has multiple events mirroring those from the Watchmen Universe, with frightened citizens protesting against Batman's vigilantism as part of a much larger plot that has only been hinted at, with the Russia of both universes stirring up some evil in what, plainly, resembles events in our Putin-Trump-afflicted world of 2017 just as the original Watchmen had a Soviet Union plot resembling its Cold War setting in the mid-Eighties. Five Russia stories, two real and three fictional. Clearly this is the larger story towards which Doomsday Clock is headed, but for now we have only hints, primarily from the end notes about a metahuman conspiracy, about the form that will take and how exactly the Russias in both universes seem coordinated. Along the way, Johns may just provide an explanation within the story for why the DCU is so America-centric. (Obviously, the historical reason is that DC and its market originate in the U.S.)

Veidt and Rorschach's first move is another stylistic flourish by Johns. In order to understand the universe around them, they go to the public library and read. This is exactly what Dick Grayson did in the classic story "To Kill a Legend." In that story, two DCU characters (Batman and Robin) travel to another universe and give it a happy ending by preventing the Wayne murders. That universe, as I noted in my breakdown of Doomsday Clock #1, is also precisely 20 years behind Earth One, where we now see that the Watchmen Universe is precisely 25 years behind the DCU's Earth Zero. The precise multiple-of-five difference in timelines and the use of the public library is a big clue that Johns has that story in mind as a template for this one. We get yet another clue that Johns is trampling on Alan Moore's gloomy vision by the Owlship landing in the abandoned carnival grounds from Alan Moore's The Killing Joke. However, Rorschach hints at some dark potential when he observes that Veidt's selection of literary figures (Hemingway, Woolf, and Mayakovsky) all committed suicide.

At Wayne Manor, we see that this Rorschach is either very lucky or very good, because he almost immediately finds the Batcave. In the issue's final story pages, the slow, moody focus on style suddenly wheels into high-paced action. Luthor and Veidt have a sit-down and begin understand, but don't much appreciate, one another. Meanwhile, Batman confronts Rorschach, and in one telling panel, we see that Mime and Marionette have escaped. The larger surprise, however, in the accelerated final pages is that the Comedian is somehow alive and in trying to shoot Veidt, accidentally grazes Luthor.

In the moments along the way, we get the opportunity to see how members of each universe view the other. This is, strikingly, at the very heart of the tagline for the original series: Who watches the Watchmen? Here, Luthor and Veidt watch one another, and neither is as impressed by the other as he is by himself. Meanwhile, Rorschach sees Batman as a "monster" because he fits the psychological profile of collecting clues from those he vanquishes.

The Veidt-Luthor and Rorschach-Batman confrontations were planned, and less surprise than lead one to mull over how much each is their respective universes' version of the other. The escape and surprise appearance complicate already-complicated expectations, and clearly require later resolution. Geoff Johns is doing a very good job of making this a full and compelling twelve issues.