DC Rebirth & The Doomsday Clock

It seems these day I very rarely talk about comic books and when I do talk about comic books I very rarely have anything nice to say. That being said, while I'm not gonna start saying anything nice now, I am going to talk about them and say what's going on thus far and offer some thoughts.

So as it stands, it should be to no one's surprise (at least now, a year after the fact anyway) that DC Comics has gone ahead and (for the most part) integrated The Watchmen Universe into official DC continuity, no, we did not get Rorschach taking on Batman or Ted Kord trading blows with Niteowl, instead we got a subtle and not so subtle hint in DC Rebirth #1 which featured Batman finding The Comedian's bloodstained smiley face button (lodged in his cave wall, for some reason...) and the book ending with the dialogue exchange from Adrian & Dr. Manhattan, indicating that Dr. Manhattan is the culprit behind the plague of grimness that The DC universe currently suffers from by stealing 10 years (from where, exactly is unknown) from DC continuity.

The one time where we did expect The Spanish Inquisition

I won't exactly be sharing my thoughts on the integration of The Watchmen characters into The DC Universe, that's another article altogether and at this point in time, it's still WAY too soon to see how exactly they'll be integrated. And it should go without saying that somewhere, Alan Moore is probably seething with rage and probably invoking Glycon to smite his enemies. I will, however, discuss what this could possibly lead to in terms of future stories and what I'm curious about.  Let's be real despite being one of the most pivtol comics ever, "Watchmen" is a done story. And by "done" I mean it told the story it needed to tell with those characters and in any other context with any other characters that story could not be told.

Luckily, they're not retelling the Watchmen story but rather asking the simple question of Dr. Manhattan's abilities and what that would mean for the greater DC Universe. Out of all the characters of "Watchmen", Dr. Manhattan is the ONLY character with super powers and his super powers effectively make him a god in that universe but in the DC Universe, Dr. Manhattan is...to put it bluntly a small fish in a large pond. Let's be real, The Justice League has faced villains far more powerful than Dr. Manhattan, Darkseid immediately comes to mind, and certain members of The Justice League Captain Marvel (still refusing to call him Shazam out of sheer principle) and The Spectre could easily hand Dr. Manhattan's ass to him, as Dr. Manhattan is a product of science and wouldn't have any understanding of magic.

Black Adam could hand Dr. Manhattan his ass 6 times over.

Dr. Manhattan has only shown the ability of trans-elemental mutation which in layman terms, means he can basically manipulate objects at a subatomic level and transform them into whatever he desires. But so what, Elemental Lad, Metamorpho & Firestorm can do that. Not only has he shown this ability with objects but with himself, as he can basically transform himself to nearly any size, shade, he has the power to be in 2 places at once by replicating himself, and while he hasn't shown any ability to travel through time, his perception of time is anything but linear and an ability to travel through time may just be secondary.

Sure, Dr. Manhattan killed Pandora, a character who defeated The 7 Deadly Sins, blah, blah, blah, but let's face it, Pandora has yet to build up an impressive pedigree for me to put any stock in her death. Killing Pandora is one thing, but it doesn't stir me to my warm nuggetty center like The Shadow Pact nearly beating The Spectre (still gives me goosebumps) and it doesn't fill me with rage like watching The Martian Manhunter get slaughtered by Libra. Pandora was just a sacrificial lamb, a jobber to be fed to Dr. Manhattan to make him appear to be a credible threat in this universe when in reality he's not so much, again being BRUTALLY honest.

Who cares?

This brings me to DC's upcoming event book titled "Doomsday Clock", a 12 issues book (which we haven't seen since "Crisis On Infinite Earths") that will feature Superman & Dr. Manhattan as the primary characters. Despite whatever hype machine that may pump this book up as a clash between Superman & Dr. Manhattan, I don't think that'll be the case. I doubt Geoff Johns is going to allow the conflict between these two characters to be boiled down to a fist fight. And beside, Dr. Manhattan is too apathetic to engage in fisticuffs, let alone defend himself (as there's nothing that Superman can really do to harm him). What this book is speculating is a clash of worldviews, a clash of ideas.

But here in lies the rub, is Dr. Manhattan an essential character for this story to use? In "Watchmen", Dr. Manhattan was an interesting character due to the fact that out of everyone he's the only one with superpowers and the ability to stop the world from going to nuclear war with the (literal) snap of a finger and yet his increasing detachment from humanity not only makes him shed his clothes but ultimately leads to him being completely apathetic toward the ultimate fate of man as in his eyes it's already a done deal, he's read the spoilers. In "Watchmen", Dr. Manhattan's existence was more of an idea than it was a character. He was above everything and therefore had nothing to lose nor gain from stopping Adrian.

He works for "Watchmen" but what could his involvement be in The DC Universe? Why take 10 years from their lives? And the most important question is this New 52 Earth the one he decided to create at the end of "Watchmen"? NO, I am not suggesting Dr. Manhattan created the DC Universe, that's a stupid claim, what I am saying is that Dr. Manhattan replicated the inhabitants of The DCU and reset them minus a few relationships and watched them go. After all, at the end of "Watchmen" Dr. Manhattan did (ominously) say he wanted to create life. Is it so far-fetched to believe that the New 52 Universe are clones of The DCU characters manipulated by Dr. Manhattan? After all didn't Mr. Oz tell Superman "You and your family are not what you believe you are and neither was the fallen Superman." What could that mean?

Also, can we talk about the possibility that Mr. Oz is Ozymandias? Not much of a stretch, they both Have O and Z in their name, they both have a habit of pontificating to themselves while watching events on large monitors, and despite his sudden acquisition of powers (which could be attributed to his staff) he pretty much talks and sounds like Adrian, but that'd be too much on the nose, wouldn't it? One of the things about "Watchmen" is that despite the fact that the story is over it doesn't mean that universe ceased to be. What I mean is perhaps after the events of "Watchmen" Ozymandias maybe managed to discover the fact that 52 Universes existed and found a way to tap into them. After all, he was able to replicate Dr. Manhattan's abilities, transporting a giant alien monster couldn't be the only use Ozymandias got out of that.

Long story short, I won't be finding out until probably sometime late next year as I'm planning on buying this when it comes out in trade form. But long term, I just don't see where this story could go, after all Rorschach is dead, The Comedian is dead, Niteowl & Silk Spectre are retired and Niteowl is in NO shape to be fighting with any DC villain. Including The Watchmen characters in the DC seems like a good idea on paper but beyond this story I see no longevity and maybe that's the most curious thing about this, what are DC's long term plans or is this just a marketing move to get people to buy comics? Of course, in any business all things are marketing  but let's hope that by the end of "Doomsday Clock" we know what's up with the DCU. Anyways, what do you guys think? See ya next time.