I just finished re-reading Watchmen for the first time in many years. Every time I read I notice some new detail or nuance I had never noticed before. I used to pretend that non-comics readers might one day ask me to recommend a comic book or series to read, but that almost never happens. Over the years my choices have changed somewhat (and it would depend on that imaginary person's tastes in any case), but rarely have I considered Watchmen because it was not likely a non-fan could possibly appreciate it the way I appriciate it, but I have since changed my mind. It is so layered that a practiced reader couldn't help but appreciate it, maybe not in the same way I do, but in a way uniquely his or her own.
But I'm not here today to talk about Watchmen; I'm here to talk about what came after. I'm going to start with the nine titles collectively known as "Before Watchmen" which were released in 2013. I have read these series (and one one-shot) only once, in the order they were released. It struck me at the time that there should be an ideal reading order but, as I indicated, I have yet to even read any of them ininterrupted start to finish. By the time I am fiinished with thise phase of "Before & After" I hope to have a better idea of in which order to read the series. All I have now is a vague notion that Minutemen should be first and Comedian should be last. This is the order in which they were released:
- Minutemen
- Silk Spectre
- Comedian
- Nite Owl
- Ozymandias
- Rorschach
- Dr. Manhattan
- Moloch
- Dollar Bill
The series are either 1, 2, 4 or 6 issues. Because some are lengthier than others, some which started later ended sooner.
FIRST UP: Minutemen
Replies
I enjoy reading periodical comics but what I enjoy more, I think, is reading comics in a "satisfying chunk" (a term I picked up from Heidi McDonald), especially in this era of "writing for the trade." I enjoyed these series when they were first released in 2012, but I read them in the order they were released: Minutemen #1, Silk Spectre #1, Comedian #1, Nite Owl #1, Ozymandias #1, then the second issues of all those titles, then Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan were folded intoo the mix. I enjoyed all these series much more the second time through, reading entire series at a time. At first I thought I might assemble some sort of "preferred reading order" for the series, but I have since come to the conclusion that, although the titles are collectively known as "Before Watchmen," they are very much intended to be read after Watchmen; that's the nature of a prequel.
It occured to me that these series are very much supplements to the original. Then it occured to me that they might be read in addition to (or perhaps even instead of, for those already familiar with the original) the actual supplents which appeared throughout Watchmen. For example, Minutemen could be read alongside the exerpts of "Under the Hood"; Dr. Manhattan would follow #4; Rorschach would follow #6; Nite Owl would follow #7; and so on. I haven't mentioned it yet, but the first 28 issues of "Before Watchmen" include a two-page-at-a-time serialization of "Tales of the Crimson Corsair," which complements the supplement about pirate comics in Watchmen #5. And Ozymandias leads directly into Watchmen #11-12.
This concludes "Phase 1" of this discussion.
NEXT: "Phase 2"
"Tales of the Crimson Corsair" was collected with Ozymandius in the final Deluxe Edition collection. I enjoyed the dark pirate atmosphere, but the writing was so florid and overwrought that I tired of it maybe a quarter of the way in and skimmed to the ending. I suppose that it would have been easier to read in the original two-page form; possibly a rare case of collection working against the readability of the story.
Ah. I did not know that. But I have the individual issues and have no desire to own the collected editions. In any case, I doubt I'll be reading "Tales of the Crimson Corsair" again anytime soon.
INTERLUDE:
There is a school of thought which maintains that the "mistake" made with Crisis on Infinite Earths is that only some and not all of the titles were rebooted. Those who subscribe to this theory are the same ones who believe Superman "wears his briefs outside of his tights," in other words, DC editorial. Consequently, in 2011, DC Comics set out to correct both "errors." The first thing they did was to initiate Flashpoint, which rebooted the entire DC universe and brought about "The New 52." I gave it a try but personally found the whole thing virtually unreadable. DC must have realized their error because, only five years later, they tried to course correct by rebooting the entire universe again in a line-wide "Rebirth." It's funny because each subsequent "universe" is less successful than the last. Consider this: the original DCU lasted 46 years; the post-Crisis DCU lasted 25 years until Flashpoint; the New 52 lasted only six years; and the one after that, Future State, was scrapped before it was even published. So what does all this have to do with Watchmen?
DC UNIVERSE: REBIRTH:
I don't recall how long in advance of the release of DC Universe: Rebirth it was announced that the Watchmen universe would cross over with the DCU proper, but I want to say it was about a year. In any case, the end of the issue (cover-dated July 2016) announces: "The Clock is Ticking Across the DC Universe!" so that's when I'll start the countdown. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I've just read DC Universe: Rebirth #1 for the first time in eight years, and for the second time ever. It is possible, desireable, even, to skip directly from Flashpoint to Rebirth and skip the entire "New 52" nonsense without missing a beat. The entire issue is narrated from the point of view of the pre-Flashpoint Wally West. The very first page contains a warning that "This tale takes place after Justice League #50 and Superman #52, so read those first!" I'm sure I did that in 2016, but I didn't bother today. Page four foreshadows Batman: Three Jokers, which wasn't published until 2020. Apropos this discussion, page 13 clearly implies that the post-Flashpoint universe was not, in fact, created by the Flash travelling though time to the past, but rather by someone else (*cough* Dr. Manhattan *cough*). In addition to that, the story's epilogue makes it even more explicit.
Okay, July 2016. "The Clock is Ticking." Keep that in mind.
NEXT: "Button, button... who's got the button?"
I recognize your irritation with all the reboots and especially New 52 (did Dan Didio ever have a good idea?), as I see it in the mirror often enough. But I would like to note for the record that there were some good ideas in the New 52, mostly around the edges. Frankenstein and the Agents of S.H.A.D.E. was good enough that James Gunn is adapting it for his new DC movie universe.
From DCU: Rebirth, Wally West describes "Flashpoint" from his POV:
"As our time line reformed, someone stole ten years from us. A decade was removed like a Jenga piece. I don't know exactly how or why, but it changed everything. Heroes that were legends became novices. Bonds between them were weakened and erased. Legacies were destroyed."
That's about as good of a metatexual description of Flashpoint as you're likely to find.
PHASE 2:
"THE BUTTON":
After DC Universe: Rebirth readers were kept waiting an entire year (well, eleven months), until the next chapter, the four-part story "The Button" which ran through two issues each of Batman and Flash. As the story opens, the Gotham Blades are playing the Metropolis Mammoths in the western conference hockey finals in the Gotham city Arena. In Arkam Asylum, an unidentified woman we know to be Imra Ardeen (Saturn Girl) watches from the common room. In the Batcave, Batman watches as well, while contemplating the mystery of the bloodied "smiley face" button. He switches off the game and tosses the button onto a nearby table where is interracts with the mask of the Psycho Pirate. Suddenly a man dressed in a bat suit, whom Batman recognizes as his father, Thomas Wayne, appears briefly in the cave.
Batman puts in a call to the Flash (Barry Allen), and asks him to swing by the cave. Flash is busy dealing with an invasion of "Samuroids" but promises he;ll be there when he finishes up... in about a minute. Almost immediately, someone appears but it is not the Flash, it is the Reverse Flash, who proceeds to beat Batman within an inch of his life for the next 57 seconds. He finds the button, picks it up and disappears. He reappears moments later with half of his body disintigrated, and dies. It is then that Flash arrives, a few seconds late.
Meanwhile, a 90-year-old Johnny Thunder is standing on the roof of his nursing home in the middle of a thunderstorm. He is shouting gibberish, and the attendants wrestle him back inside and sedate him. Back in the Batcave, the Flash begins examining the crime scene while Bruce rests upstairs in his bedroom. The last thing Reverse Flash said before he died was to claim he had seen God. "God" of course, is Dr. Manhattan, although we've not supposed to know that yet (unless we've been waiting a year for this very story), who is reffered to by the pronoun "they" throughout which annoys me to no end. Flash informs Bruce that he plans to use the cosmic treadmill to trace reverse Flash's energy signature, which is identical to that of the button. Batman insists on coming with him. The treadmill explodes enroute, and they land in an alternate version of the Batcave, that belonging to the Batman of the "Flashpoint" universe, Thomas Wayne, Bruce's father.
The thing is, "Flashpoint" is not an alternate reality, it's an alternate history (just as the pre-Flashpoint DCU is now an alternate history) and shouldn't co-exist with the "Rebirth" universe. Batman and Flash spend the better part of an issue in this alternate timeline, giving Thomas and Bruce the chance to bond while Flash rebuilds the treadmill. when it comes time for them to leave, Batman asks his father to join them (because this reality will dissolve, they postulate), but Thomas Wayne, instead requesting that Bruce give up being Batman and live a normal, happy life. On their way back to their own reality, they encounter Reverse Flash. Their timelines have crossed, and this is Thawne on the way to his own death. Flash tries to warn him, but R-Flash doesn't believe him.
He then disappears and goes to meet his own death. the treadmill falls apart, leaving Flash and Batman trapped in the time stream. They are rescued by a costumed man wearing a "Mercury" helmet, but neither of them recognize him as Jay Garrick. (He is drawn to resemble John Wesley Shipp, which I also find kind of annoying in the same way I do when Superman is drawn to look like Christopher Reeve.) Jay materializes in the Batcave but cannot remain, just as Wally West could not remain in DCU: Rebirth, because neither Batman nor Flash are his "anchor." The story just kind of peters out after that, but we do get an explict epilogue linking the DCU to Dr. Manhattan and a double-page ad for Doomsday Clock, for which we will have to wait another few months.
By that time, though, Doomsday Clock will appear monthly.
(Yeah, right.)
Set the WABAC machine to sometime before the plethora of Watchmen prequels and sequels in various media. Do you remember what the second most popular Watchmen-related topic of conversation was? In my experience, it was "What happened after Watchmen #12?" Did the New Frontiersman publish Rorschach's journal? If so, what became of the uneasy detente engineered by Ozymandias? I always said I had my own ideas, but I don't think I ever shared them... until now. Here's my take. In the world of Schrödinger's comic book, it depends on a sequel being pulished. If one is, and it remains unread, then it exists in a world of quantum flux in which the journal is both made public and not made public until someone reads the sequel. Until such a time, hell yes, let the story have a happy ending. It's still a murky grey area because Adrian Veidt's plan required the sacrifice of New York City, but it's unsatisfying (to me) to have such a plan not succeed. However... if a sequel is published and read, Veidt's plan must fail, otherwise there's no story.
Did you ever wonder why Watchmen, published in 1988, was set in 1985? It's because Alan Moore started working on it in 1984 with the idea that it would be published the next year. But as long as it took Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons to bring Watchmen from the initial idea to completion, it took Geoff Johns and Gary Frank at least as long on Doomsday Clock. From the design work to the pacing and the script and the lettering and even the ad campaign leading up to it, everything associated with this project was as much like Watchmen as they could make it... except its timeliness.
I have already said how much I still enjoy reading periodical comic books. Nevertheless, I oftentimes find myself "losing the story" halfway through a partictularly dense and compelling narrative with multiple plot points. And that's when it ships on time. Doomsday Clock started as a mothly comic in November of 2017, and actually maintained that status for three issues; then it became bi-monthly for the next four issues; then it became quarterly. The longest span between issues was four months between issues ten and eleven. Ultimately it took 25 months to release twelve issues of a "monthly" title. If you factor in the time it took from DC Universe Rebirth to Doomsday Clock #12, that's three and a half years to release 17 issues. Did I lose the story during those 43 months? You bet I did! But did I stop reading? Hell, no! (Under normal circumstances, the answer would have been yes, but I was determined to stick with it.) This will be my first time reading the series in its entirety not in a single sitting, but in a short span of time. I plan to cover one issue at a time, but perhaps more than one issue per day.
DOOMSDAY CLOCK #1 - "That Annihilated Place"
"He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess what powerful but unrecorded race Once dwelt in that annihilated place." - Ozymandias, Horace Smith
Late November 1992. The world is in chaos. Ozymandias' plan has become public knowledge, the risk of war is imminent, and there is rioting in the streets. Adrian Veidt has disappeared, and none of the other Watchmen are to be found, either... none of the originals, anyway. Rorschach breaks into prison to free Erika Manson (a.k.a. the Marionette). (Waitaminute... "Rorschach"? Isn't he dead?) In order to convince her that he is not the original Rorschach there to kill her, he removes his glove to reveal the hand of an African American. Rorschach uses a picture of her son to entice her to come with him, but she insists on freeing her husband, Marcos Maez (a.k.a. the Mime) as well. ["Marionette & the Mime" are modeled on Charlron Comics' villain "Punch & Jewelee."] She refuses to leave without him, and Rorschach reluctantly agrees.
New York City is in the midst of being evacuated due to the threat of a nuclear attacks, but Rorschach leads them through the secret entrance to Dan Drieberg's underground garage where they are met by Ozymandias. His dream has died, and he needs them to save the world by finding Dr. Manhattan. [This summary is so "bare bones" I'm almiost embarrassed to post it.] In another eality, Clark Kent is sleeping next to his wife Lois Lane. He is awakened by a nightmare of the night of his senior prom, the night both his parents were killed. He admits to Lois that he has never had a nightmare before now.
Like Watchmen, Doomsday Clock, too, has supplemental features at the end of each issue.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: A number of newpaper articles, clippings and esoterica filling in the gap between 1988-1992. First off is the headline of the New York Gazette (dated November 2, 1992): "The Great Lie." Another clipping reveals that the New Frontiersman did, ineed, publish the contents of Rorschach's journal back in early 1989, but it was ignored ("as most things in the New Frontiersman were at the time). The journal had been in the posession of Seymour David (the employee who was last seen with it in Watchmen), but he was found beaten to death a few days after publication and the journal was missing. A young thief named Roger Jackson was accused, but their is some question as to his guilt or innocence. There is also a menu from a resaurant called Morning Joe's. Just as Watchmen had a series of b&w posters, each featuring a different character and a quote, so too does Doomsday Clock, in an identical style. This issue features Superman, Lex Luthor, Batman, Rorschach and the Joker (although te quotations accompanying each are from different characters).
Okay, so far so good. Off to a good start. I promise this discussion will not take me three and a half years to finish.
One disadvantage to reading the periodicals is that I cannot enjoy all of the alternate covers. (I genrally don't like the concept of "alternate covers" in the first place, but if we gotta have 'em, I like 'ell all in one place in a collected edition.) Something Doomsday Clock has (in addition to "Before Watchmen") is a full slate of alternate covers. when I was buying them off the shelf, I tried to pick the one I liked better (or best; #1 had eight), but sometimes it wasn't until after I read the story I realized I made the "wrong" choice.
DOOMSDAY CLOCK #2 - "Places We Have Never Known"
"We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known." - Carson McCullers
Ozymandias picked Marionette and the Mime to assist him and Rorschach because Dr. Manhattan and Marionette had something of a "history" as antagonists; he didn't pick Silk Spectre and Nite Owl because he's trying to manipulate Jon into coming back to their reality, and he thought him seeing Dan and Laurie together might have an adverse effect. After having separated Dr. Manhattan from his intrinsic field back in Watchmen, Ozymandias has discovered a way to track him across dimensions. They use the power of a nuclear bomb dropped on New York to power their journey. They arrive in Gotham City in the year 2017.
This is a differnet DCU than the one we are familiar with. The "Superman Theory" (which postulates that the reason the vast majority of metahumans is concentrated in the United States is due to a government conspiracy) has taken hold. The two most brilliant men in this world are considered to be Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne. LuthorCorp is ahead of WayneTech in cornering the market in metagene research and technology. Ozymandias goes to contact Luthor and Rorschach Wayne. They leave Marionette & the Mime handcuffed in "Archie" (Nite Owl's vehicle). the citizens of Gotham are rioting against Batman in light of the Superman Theory. When we first see Bruce Wayne, he is taking a Rorschach test for a mandatory company psychological exam for insurance purposes.
A popular form of entertainment is the "Nathanial Dusk" series of movies starring Carver Coleman. the last was directed by Jacques Tourneur in 1954 and released after Coleman was killed. (I forgot to mention last time that Ozymandias has cancer.) In Wayne Manor, Rorschach eats the breakfast (pancakes) Alfred left for his employer then, in a scene reminiscent of the original discovering Edward Blake's secret closet in Watchmen #1, discovers the entrance to the Batcave. The scenes of Ozymandias' encounter with Luthor and Rorschach's with Batman run simultaneouly. A single shot wings both Ozymandias and Luthor.Impossibly, it was fired by the comedian. Meanwhile, Batman and Rorshcach come face-to-face.
"You ate my breakfast."
"Yeah. I did."
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Three news items on "LexNet" concerning the Superman Theory, LexCorp and WayneTech, and Superman's reaction to the metahuman conspiracy theories.
-
2
-
3
-
4
-
5
-
6
of 8 Next