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The story so far…

The Comedian is dead and nobody cares…because he was a scumbag who tried to rape one of his own team, treated the closeted gay man like dirt, killed his baby mama after she sliced him for abandoning her and their unborn child after winning the Vietnam War (alternate history), and treated everyone else like dirt as well. And yet he learned something and only Rorschach, one of the few remaining active superheroes, is curious what it is. In our last chapter the former Silk Spectre, tired of her boyfriend Doctor Manhattan seeming to lose his humanity, left him and spent time with the former Nite Owl II (not like that…yet), but returned to learn that during a talk show appearance, Doc Man was accused of giving his previous lover cancer just by existing (he did not, however, turn into a car…Harry Partridge lied to me!) and teleported the paparazzi away. Based, but then he ran off to Mars.

Skimming the omnibus I’m reading from we seem to have reached a part of the story that will focus on each of the heroes that make up the Watchmen, which I know is not a team name but it’s an easy way to group our main cast. Just letting you know I’m not stupid. (I’m only an idiot.) This gives us not only a chance to look at each of the heroes individually, but compare them to the hero that Alan Moore intended to use versus how they appear in the comic. Now it’s possible that the change in character from messing up newly bought licenses to do whatever you want original characters altered the plan. Still, it’s fun to think about what might have been, so let’s start here.

The Captain Atom DC inherited was Captain Nathaniel Adam, an Air Force expert in nuclear energy and weapons who got caught in his own rocket, blewed up real good, but because Charlton Comics was a Bronze Age universe operating under Silver Age rules (which might have been what hurt them having read and reviewed his various Charlton appearances), he not only survived but gained superpowers. He could alter his molecular structure, fire nuclear blasts, and he developed a special armor that could hide under his skin when he didn’t have his powers active while still protecting the outside world from his radioactive body. If none of that makes sense, welcome to Charlton. I found that happening a lot.

Doctor Manhattan, the only character in the book with actual superpowers because Alan Moore, has far more powers. We already saw him teleport an entire studio of people away and the Comedian noted there were a ton of ways Doctor Manhattan could have stopped him from killing the pregnant woman but didn’t. We’ll discuss the Captain Atom we did get but for now we can speculate what Captain Atom would have done. As far as going to Mars, Cap A once flew into space to fight a dragon that a kid could project himself into playing with Puff The Magic Dragon style when he slept, and fought numerous alien invaders, even going to their planet to beat them up. Let’s not pretend hanging out on Mars would have been impossible.

Doctor Manhattan is such a litterbug.

Watchmen #4

DC Comics (December, 1986)

“Watchmaker”

WRITER: Alan Moore

ARTIST/LETTERER: Dave Gibbons

COLORIST: John Higgins

EDITOR: Len Wein

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