Itâs 1985 and there is a Crisis On Infinite Earths.
Itâs April the 18th 1938, and Siegel and Shuster donât yet realise what they will lose as a result of giving the world a hero.
Itâs February 2020 and Iâm reading the conclusion of a 12 issue series that has taken just over two years to reach the finish line.
Itâs 1987 and the first collected volume of Watchmen appears, an event that will ultimately see Alan Moore disavow his creation and any associated spin-offs or incarnations in other media.
Itâs 34 years since Moore dedicated an issue to Manhattanâs perception of time, and the device feels neither fresh nor necessary here. Like the adoption of Rorschachâs syntax by Reggie, it seems a hollow echo of the source, an unnecessary cover of a classic song just to show the band knows the greats.
Itâs two days before I read the comic, and a Twitter thread discusses how Pax Americana and Pete Cannon, Thunderbolt both understand, engage and seek to transcend the sacred Gibbons and Moore text, building on what came before rather than just echoing it. It positions Doomsday Clock at the opposite end of the scale, lacking a true understanding of the text and being shackled by it, trapped in the shadows of a better work. It doesnât seem an unfair assessment.
Itâs December 18th, 2019, and this book hits the stands, apparently promising an eternity of Crises on as many earths as it sees fit, forever and ever and ever amen.
It is now, and I donât disagree with the central thesis here that Superman is central to everything that makes the DCU what it is (either within the fiction of the DCU or in terms of the company that screwed over Siegel and Shuster), that he makes each universe better for being there, that he inspires his reality to be heroic and that he can be reborn for every age to keep inspiring, in the hope that one day reality will finally catch up with what he represents. I feel happy to see the Legion, to see their Superboy connection acknowledged (even though I never cared for Superboy, I do appreciate his importance to the Legion), but wonder what the point was of all the Legion foreshadowing if they amount to a quick cameo and proof that Clark remembers things once erased from history.
Flight rings in the 21st century and Imra in Arkham seem to have had very little significance in the end. Which I suppose is representative of the series as a whole- hyped extensively (it is May the 25th, 2016. Batman finds the Comedianâs bloodstained badge in the Batcave. Hype builds. It is April 2017. Batman and the Flash investigate the button. Nothing much comes of it. Later that year, Doomsday Clock 1 is released, promotion indicates it is a significant event in the DCU. It is 2020 and I canât really remember the details of any of this stuff and remain unconvinced of any great impact, whether on the fictional universe or the medium), but seems to end with little more than the promise of ever more events and reboots, as though hype is all there is. Rather than engaging with the medium, challenging it or changing it, it just reiterates its past and promises further reiterations of the same old things, well beyond the lifetimes of current readers.
I am sure there are good things here- it looks good, it seems to have been something Johns was passionate about- but I struggle to find anything that I have enjoyed in the series, beyond moments of fan service style recognition. Much of this is due to its failure to be in any way representative of Watchmen- to willfully take on a work that (like it or not) towers over much of the superhero genre suggests great hubris. To do so in a way that suggests, at least to me, that you didnât really get what it was about, is the very downfall that the Greeks warned hubris would lead to.
Moore looked at time: aging, the loss of innocence, the change of public opinion and trends, the struggle to make sense of your place in a world where things are not constant- the clock ticking down was as much the one on your wrist as the one maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (it is 2020 and the hand is at 100 seconds to midnight), because time is against us all. Heroes must grow up, retire, die. Vigilantes cannot fight the same fight forever, because society changes and what was once âun-Americanâ now is not, and what was once a scientific endeavour that ended a World War is now the Sword of Damocles hanging over all our heads. The sins that were once justified as being in the interests of peace are seen as the cold manipulations of powerful men willing to sacrifice innocent lives in the interests of little more than their own ego. There are no true absolutes in Watchmen.
Doomsday Clock promises an infinity of crises, resetting things to better suit the age, but still the same- Superman as the promise of justice, the same heroes fighting the same evils. Maybe one day he will be black, or female, or something once unimaginable to past readers stuck in their particular period, but that change is superficial at best, everything else is a form of recycling, just as the syntax of Rorschach, the time travel of Jon and the grid layout of Gibbons are reused throughout.
It feels like everything Moore would be against, like the logical and heartbreaking result of losing your creation to a corporation. Whether you are Superman or Rorschach, you are now trapped in the infinite loop of crises, never really having to face up to the ticking of the clock, taking comfort in the fact that doomsday will only bring you back to the start, safe in your role forevermore, archetypes that will never really have to change or truly face change.
It is 1986, and Watchmen is heralded as a sign of a new maturity in superhero comics, an indicator of new life in a genre (rightly or wrongly) perceived as childish and lacking in wider appeal, caught up in its own continuity and lacking both moral and narrative complexity.
It is 2019 and we are promised a future filled with the same characters being reborn time and again, the past always being brought back, rather than the past giving way to the present, and the present surrendering itself to the future. Here, the Doomsday Clock cannot be allowed to reach midnight, because what (or who?) the book represents fears what may come with a new day, fears change, fears not belonging in the world the way it once did. Everything Moore wanted to leave behind to seek new forms and stories is determined to hold the medium in a frozen moment of perpetual Rebirth.
From Doomsday Clock 12, by Geoff Johns, Gary Frank, Brad Anderson & Rob Leigh