The Broken Ska Record
Member
That's right. I always forget who the analogs for everyone but Nite Owl were supposed to be.
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'Doomsday Clock': DC's Geoff Johns on the Origin of the Watchmen/Superman Comic Book
- Thread starter LordOfLore
- Start date
That's right. I always forget who the analogs for everyone but Nite Owl were supposed to be.
LordOfLore
Banned
Blue Beetle/Nite Owl, Captain Atom/Doctor Manhattan, Nightshade/Silk Spectre, Peacemaker/The Comedian, The Question/Rorschach and Thunderbolt/Ozymandias.
Most of them still exist on Earth-4:
Blue Beetle and The Question are really the only characters who hit it big and have versions on the normal Earth. Captain Atom gets some use every once in a while.
Question (Rorschach), Thunderbolt (Ozymandius), Peacemaker (Comedian), Captain Atom (Manhattan), Liberty Belle (Silk Sceptre) and Blue Beetle (OwlMan) if I remember correctly.
And beaten badly.
DeathoftheEndless
Crashing this plane... with no survivors!
Its funny how desperate they are to turn their anti-superhero comic into a regular superhero comic.
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
I love that Grant 'Scottish Tribute Band' Morrison got to play with the real characters for Pax. Talk about insult to injury.
In all fairness, there are pretty strong thematic underpinnings revolving around the Rebirth stories that serves to highlight the relative cynicism of the Watchmen universe versus the much more hopeful and optimistic nature of the DC Universe. It's a pointed contrast that's not only self-aware, but pretty much seems to serve as the main driving force of the story.
I think they are more desperate on creating material that they can turn into movies.
The Broken Ska Record
Member
That's right. I remember The Question being Rorschach. It's kinda funny how close the Charleston characters are to the Watchmen.
Father_Brain
Banned
More money to be made turning them into badass, gritty superhero characters, at least in the short term.
LordOfLore
Banned
Strangely enough I think Thunderbolt is owned by Dynamite Comics right now. Does make it easier to compare Ozymandias(the smartest hero who turned villain to save his world) and Lex(the smartest villain who turned hero to save his world). And they both have connections to the big blue of their worlds(Manhattan and Superman).I love that Grant 'Scottish Tribute Band' Morrison got to play with the real characters for Pax. Talk about insult to injury.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
What? DC has a deep well of stories that hasn't been made into movies. That's not how this works.
Father_Brain
Banned
In all fairness, there are pretty strong thematic underpinnings revolving around the Rebirth stories that serves to highlight the relative cynicism of the Watchmen universe versus the much more hopeful and optimistic nature of the DC Universe. It's a pointed contrast that's not only self-aware, but pretty much seems to serve as the main driving force of the story.
stating openly what the theme is intended to be (which may or may not actually carry through into Doomsday Clock, as Rebirth #1 was written well before Johns had an actual story idea for the Watchmen crossover) doesn't mean it actually aligns with the text of Watchmen, the DCU under Johns, or the character of Dr. Manhattan in the original story.
LordOfLore
Banned
Errr...Johns had an idea by the time he wrote the book. He didn't have one when he talked with the higher ups at DC and they came up with the Manhattan twist more than a year before the issue was published.
I always loved that they tried to give some Manhattan flavor to Captain Atom in the New 52
TheSecondSpitter
Member
Oh, they get it. They just don't give 2 fucks. Also, money.
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
Ooo. That's pretty interesting. Nice parallel.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
For anyone that still believes you have to follow this story, you don't. You can completely ignore this story since it largely doesn't interrupt the current books.
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
The 80s ongoing was clearly inspired by Miracleman, too.
MisterHero
Super Member
Not Doctor Manhattan aka Captain Allen Adam is a Superman analogue, he was in Superman Beyond 3D. I know Manhattan was more based on an old version of Captain Atom but DC has twisted him in a different direction.
Watchmen openly calls Manhattan a figurative Superman, but it could be interesting if they were literally the same person from different universes.
Not sure I'm following you here. In comparison to the DC Universe, the Watchmen universe is certainly an inherently more cynical fictional universe, both within the perematers of the universe itself and on a thematic, meta-textual level. Just look at how Ozymandias "saved the day" at the end of that book by engineering the mass-murder of millions of people to unite humanity by fear. Of course, and as people often have a tendency to forget, there are definitely elements of hope and optimism to the story too (Manhattan's epiphany on the sanctity and miraculousness of human life, Laurie and Dan's genuinely tender burgeoning relationship), but as a whole...I would argue Watchmen is very much a treatise on why comic book heroism just wouldn't work in the real world, and how real life "superheroes" would only be driven to do the things they do on account of crippling psychological hang-ups (Rorshach), or a deep-rooted desire to inflict violence on other human beings (The Comedian). Doctor Manhattan himself is an intensely nihilistic, emotionally disengaged individual who even despite his revelation on Mars, embodies a lot of the core themes that Watchmen represents. For the most part, there's a pervasive, deconstructionist tone of Watchmen, which at its basest level is very easy to contrast with the much more lively, hopeful and adventurous tone of the DC Universe by its very nature as an emphatically superhero driven world. In terms of "aligning with the text of Watchmen" or "Doctor Manhattan", on some level, all Rebirth seems to have wanted to achieve, both based on the text already laid out for us in the comics and emphasized by the writers themselves, is utilizing the clash of tones and ideologies of those two universes as fuel for telling a new kind of story. So criticizing the writers involved for not seeming to understand the irony of combining an "anti-superhero comic" and a "superhero comic" doesn't only seem to miss the point...it's basically making the very point the writers seem to be making themselves.
I don't know. The jury is still out, obviously. We need to see how the story plays out to its conclusion before we can get too much in whether this particular story worked or not at a thematic or narrative level. But at the very least, from what we've seen, there seems to be enough self-awareness in what they're doing to maybe garner some confidence in the story that they're trying to tell. Maybe.
Apologies if I misinterpreted the point you were making, incidentally. If so, feel totally free to dismiss my reply.
SargerusBR
I love Pokken!
WTF Clayface is a hero now?
iamdarkcloud
Member
So I guess the big question is when DC is going to start mining other Alan Moore properties that they have snatched up over the years (all of his America's Best run under Wildstorm) - I can't wait to see Tom Strong & Promethea start popping up....
It's a really good story. Batman basically recruits him. He says "look, I know that deep down you're a good person that had something horrible happen to them. Come work for me and pay back society by doing good-and I'll do everything in my power to find a cure for you. "
In any other story, the villain would be secretly plotting to betray the hero at some point in the future, but Clayface actually enjoys being a good guy for a change and likes having this family of heroes that believe in him. He's a really tortured soul and they touch on that a lot-plus the series has some pretty crazy out-there manifestations of his powers.
DeathoftheEndless
Crashing this plane... with no survivors!
I'll believe it when I see it. I fully expect the typical superhero crossover where the good guys of both series have to team up against the bad guys of both series.
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
Razgriz-Specter
Member
Current Detective Comics is one of my favorite runs(from setup alone) in comics in my nearly 25+ years as a comic fan.
George Oscar Bluth II
Banned
Hey, so I finished that first arc of Detective Comics...
Sgt. Kabukiman
Banned
Cass and Tim fans were put on this Earth to suffer. That is our lot in life.
Meanwhile, Jason has his own comic. Embrace the pain.
LordOfLore
Banned
Hey, so I finished that first arc of Detective Comics...
Check over to the ComicGAF thread in like 2 minutes. Posting the preview of the arc
where he escapes back home.
George Oscar Bluth II
Banned
My heart keeps breaking though I should know better.
I never clicked on spoilers so hard. Yee boi
LordRaptor
Member
As a fan of that run who thinks its sorely underated, I don't see that at all - even assuming his heel turn into Monarch in Armageddon 2001 had happened as originally planned (and DCs ruining two series I was enjoying instead of just one by making Monarch Hank Hall for no reason).
It was much closer to a Le Carré military thriller in tone.
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
I mean specifically metatextually taking past Captain Atom comics and using them as the basis of a fabricated backstory. It's just one piece of it, but it's a clear inspiration for that piece.
I liked that run of Captain Atom a lot, too. I also love LeCarre.
ForsakenLotus
Member
I understand the trepidation and even the cynacism, but DC was able to do a magic trick where they combine New 52 with a lot of the good/important canon from before to give us mostly a best of both worlds all while wrapping it up in a mystery involving Dr. Manhattan being responsible. They might completely screw it up, but that's a genius and really interesting idea. Plus, Rebirth has been pretty damn good (other than Justice League, yuck).
And yeah, if the event is typical crossover shlock it will be very frustrating; but I'm hoping it won't be.
And yeah, if the event is typical crossover shlock it will be very frustrating; but I'm hoping it won't be.
Hey, so I finished that first arc of Detective Comics...
It was good right?
George Oscar Bluth II
Banned
Real good
Eh, bad form quoting myself but just remembered this :
Is this the same or a coincidence?
Deadstarone
Member
Eh, bad form quoting myself but just remembered this :
Is this the same or a coincidence?
Its the same. Veidt must have expanded Noir into cosmetics. Also people speculate thats Lauries new costume.
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
Nostalgia, isn't it? Thought he'd moved on to Millenium at the end of Watchmen...