Superheroes & Cynicism

So since I have all these streaming services I've acquired the time (kinda) to watch "The Boys" and I realized something about the current state of American superhero comics and Japanese superheroes, let's dive in.

"Doomsday Clock" Review

DC Comics has been in a rather screwed-up state for a while, haven't they? At least in my humble opinion ever since 2011's "Flashpoint" series and the introduction of "The New 52" DC has been a steady decline. I have no clue if this is true or not, but again in my humble opinion, this reboot of the universe caused me to view Grant Morrison's "Final Crisis" as the series finale to The DC Universe. And DC Comics has rebooted itself once again with DC Rebirth back in 2016 culminating in the miniseries in question, "Doomsday Clock". "Doomsday Clock" serves as an epilogue to the DC Rebirth storyline as well as a sequel to Alan Moore's maxiseries "Watchmen". Talk about big shoes to fill, I need not discuss the impact "Watchmen" had on the comic book scene at large both negative and positives and I need not discuss the utter and absolute failure the HBO series was (which was itself a sequel to "Watchmen"). Instead, I'm going to focus this review on what "Doomsday Clock" tried to do, and explain what it should have done (not doing it in the first place notwithstanding). So join me in this rabbit hole of craziness we call "Doomsday Clock"...

Watchmen S01E01"It's Summer And We're Running Out Of Ice" Review

"Watchmen", "Watchmen", "Watchmen"...one of the 3 comics DC unfortunately believes are among the only comics that matter ("The Dark Knight Returns" and "Death Of Superman" being the others) and oddly enough, "Watchmen" has been making something of a comeback. I won't attribute this entirely to the upcoming (or concluding) DC comics event "Doomsday Clock", which will (in some respects) serve as an honest to God canon sequel to Alan Moore's original "Watchmen" (for better or worse, I'll let you know after I read it), and I won't attribute this entirely to DC Comics having come out with prequel books for many of the Watchmen characters in the series "Before Watchmen", and I definitely won't attribute this to the 2009 film directed by Zack Snyder that brought "Watchmen" to the masses. I can't attribute this series to any of those factors because, in reality, a "Watchmen" series was always in the works WAY before a movie was.

"Watchmen" has been one of those hot properties for a long time now, the book came out in 1987 and that's a long time for something that literally shook the comic book industry to its core (not an exaggeration) to be sitting on the shelf. Before a movie was even proposed people talked about doing a mini-series, HBO was involved before But Alan Moore's work has largely been considered unfilmable, mostly by Alan Moore himself but that didn't stop people from wanting to do it and Zack Snyder managed to do it (and in my opinion, well). But I'm not going to belabor the history of "Watchmen", just pointing out that now we're about to have 2 (count'em), 2 sequels to the same series one for the canon story or the print version of "Watchmen" ("Doomsday Clock") and one for the film ("Watchmen" the HBO series). And while The HBO series doesn't consider itself a sequel to the films, let's be 100% honest and say the mainstream aren't going to care or be aware of the comic books.

So...going into this series...I'm gonna be 100% honest, I think this is going to suck, and I say that without an ounce of care because in all honesty, I don't care. I had no real expectations going into this and once it was announced I simply rolled my eyes and said "Whatever." because the idea sounds bad on its face. For starters, if "Watchmen" were to have a sequel, it'd have to be done IN PRINT (hence why I'm more interested in "Doomsday Clock" than I am this) and second, this won't feature the "Watchmen" characters, just greater ramifications of the fallout of the events of "Watchmen"...which again I'm not interested in. The ending to "Watchmen" is left ambiguous for a reason, did Ozymandias managed to save the world? The ending is left open for you to determine who's in the right...but sadly, in the words of Dr. Manhattan "Nothing ever ends." and that includes people's obsession with this series which brings us back to this series. Which I can only imagine was conceived because "Game Of Thrones" was ending and The HBO execs were like "Holy sh*t, we need to fill airtime! What other property can we produce that already has an established fanbase?".

So am I expecting this to be good? If by production and acting quality, absolutely, but that's about it. The cast is nothing to write home about apart from Don Johnson and Jeremy Irons (playing an aged Ozymandias, how he'll manage an American accent will be fun to watch) having played 2 DC roles (Alfred and now Ozymandias) and that's about it. The writer and showrunner for the series is Damon Lindelof...and he's a huge fan of "Watchmen", and I enjoyed "L O S T", but ever since then, at least in my opinion lightning really hasn't struck (then again I never watched "The Leftovers" which might have been good...wasn't interested, I'm not too keen of works adapted from books) so having him as writer for this...I don't know. I'm gonna dive into the pilot episode and give you guys my take on the series when we come out the other end, just know I go into this not exactly wanting to hate it, but not exactly looking forward to it. We'll see how I'm doing after the break;