Much the generally-accepted knowledge about Watchmen and its making would likely be loudly
shouted down by the book's creators, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
The inspirations for Watchmen, its creators' intentions, and the contributions each brought
to the table are often misunderstood or overlooked.
It's a strange irony that in a medium as concerned with images as comic books, the writers tend
to get most of the attention.
Watchmen is no exception.
As the comic's artist Dave Gibbons said when he spoke to Wired in 2008:
"People unacquainted with graphic novels, including journalists, tend to think of Watchmen
as a book by Alan Moore that happens to have some illustrations.
And that does a disservice to the entire form."
While being interviewed by Neil Gaiman in 1987, Gibbons said it was his idea for the
cover of Watchmen #1 to be of the now iconic blood-smeared smiley face.
It was Gibbons, with Moore's input, who designed the physical appearance of the characters.
And perhaps most significantly, it was Gibbons who brought life to Watchmen's world.
Watchmen was one of a number of superhero comic book series published in the mid-'80s
that are often associated with one another because they're said to explore the notion
of superheroes as fascist figures.
Examples include Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Marvel's Squadron Supreme, in which superheroes
with good intentions nevertheless turn the U.S. into a totalitarian state.
With brutal scenes in Watchmen of the Comedian and Dr. Manhattan killing Vietnamese soldiers
and civilians, Rorschach torturing victims for information, or the Minutemen using their
abilities and technology to break up protests, it's easy to see why readers make the association
with fascism.
But in a 1987 interview, Alan Moore said his Watchmen characters weren't fascists.
"Rorschach's not a fascist; he's a nutcase.
The Comedian's not a fascist; he's a psychopath.
Dr. Manhattan's not a fascist; he's a space cadet.
They're not fascists.
They're not in control of their world."
Arguably, Moore's stated intentions were much more damning toward superheroes than any series
before or since.
Moore said he and Gibbons weren't trying to reveal a fascist leaning in superheroes:
"Our intention was to show how superheroes could deform the world just by being there,
not that they’d have to take it over, just their presence there would make the difference."
When talking about what is unique about Watchmen, the darker subject matter and the violence
are the focus for most.
What's too often forgotten are the visual innovations it brought to comic books.
Take the covers, which were devoid of fight scenes or heroes posing.
They included a Rorschach drawing, a torn black-and-white photo, and a spinning perfume
bottle.
Each cover was part of the first panel of each issue.
In a 1987 interview, Dave Gibbons said:
"The cover of the Watchmen is in the real world and looks quite real, but it's starting
to turn into a comic book, a portal to another dimension."
A perfect example was its fifth issue, titled "Fearful Symmetry."
Each page and panel of Watchmen #5 was designed to act as a mirror to its opposite.
Likewise, the scenes of each page mirror their opposites.
It isn't a secret that the psychotic Rorschach was based on the former Charlton Comics hero
known as the Question.
But what you may not know is that Rorschach and his predecessor had a chance to meet one
another.
Kind of.
In The Question #17, Vic Sage, a.k.a.
The Question, finds himself leaning toward more brutal tactics, lamenting the opportunities
he's given his enemies because he supposedly hasn't dealt with them harshly enough.
While in pursuit of a fugitive, Sage takes a plane to Seattle and picks up a copy of
Watchmen at the terminal newsstand to read on the flight.
He doesn't like Rorschach's bigotry, but he's impressed with his skills in violence.
He falls asleep on the flight and dreams of the death of a private eye he knew except
in the dream, Sage is Rorschach instead of the Question.
When he lands and starts working on his case, he finds himself asking, "What would Rorschach
do?"
When a crook takes him out with a gun-butt to the head, Sage utters Rorschach's signature
"Hurm."
Toward the end of the comic, he regrets trying to emulate the more ultraviolent hero.
When he's cornered by the crooks and they ask if he has any last words, Sage responds,
"Yeah.
Rorschach sucks."
HBO's Watchmen debuted to rave reviews, and pretty quickly, a couple of things became
clear about the show.
First, the events of the series take place decades after the events of the original story.
Second, and more importantly, HBO's Watchmen is a continuation of the comic book story
rather than the movie.
A brief, memorable scene in the first episode confirms it.
As Angela Abar drives her son home from school, the city of Tulsa is pelted with a heavy torrent
of tiny squid-like creatures.
In the Watchmen graphic novel, we learn Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias, is behind a conspiracy
to violently bring about a utopia.
Veidt recruits the world's best scientists to create a fake alien behemoth that he then
transports to New York City the hope being that the world's powers will stop fighting
each other and unite to face this new threat.
In the 2009 film, this was changed so that Veidt manufactures an attack that appears
to be from Doctor Manhattan, with the same results.
Since we know the alien squid isn't in the film, HBO's Watchmen can only be a continuation
of the graphic novel.
It could be these squid storms will be what uncovers Veidt's conspiracy, and we're already
seeing hints of that.
In Watchmen's second episode, a news vendor is spouting conspiracies to a man delivering
newspapers.
One of the things Watchmen is known for is its alternate history.
In the graphic novel, Richard Nixon is serving his fifth term as president, and the civil
rights battles won in the '60s and '70s never happened because the superheroes were there
to stop the protests.
So when the first episode of Watchmen opens with a 1921 race massacre on the streets of
Tulsa, you might think this is more fictional world-building, but it isn't.
The Tulsa race massacre happened in the real world, and if anything, Watchmen only shows
the tip of the iceberg.
The 1921 Tulsa massacre has been largely lost from our history books because of systematic
attempts to cover up the events.
The Los Angeles Times reported:
"In the aftermath of the killings, attempts were made to cover up the events.
Stories were removed from newspaper archives, and some official accounts were destroyed."
This is likely part of the reason why the official death count of the massacre is 36,
but more recent estimates put the number closer to 300 killed, along with around 800 injured.
According to the Times story, the massacre began after news circulated that a black man
had assaulted a young white woman in an elevator, though later reports suggested he may have
tripped and fallen onto the woman on accident.
The white rioters, supported by the Ku Klux Klan, not only killed and injured black citizens,
but they destroyed the black-owned businesses of Tulsa, places so successful that Booker
T. Washington had coined the community as the, quote, "Black Wall Street of America."
If you're familiar with the graphic novel, the movie, or both, then one of the biggest
differences you'll notice right away is that in HBO's Watchmen, the masked men and women
are working with the cops.
In the original story, the Keene Act makes masked vigilantes illegal except for those
working for the government.
"Congress is pushing through some new bill that's gonna outlaw masks.
Our days are numbered."
The only heroes we see employed by the feds are the Comedian, Doctor Manhattan, and Silk
Spectre.
The rest of the heroes are either officially retired or, like Rorschach, renegades who
the police would love to get their hands on.
So it's something of a shock when, with the exception of the Rorschach-inspired Cavalry,
all of the masked people of HBO's Watchmen are police.
It seems likely this is a result of the White Night, an event that took place some years
before the events of the series, where the Cavalry broke into the homes of most of the
Tulsa PD and killed the officers and their families as they slept.
Most of the survivors immediately resigned, though Angela and Chief Judd Crawford refused
to back down.
So presumably part of the reason for the masks is to protect the officers and their families.
But certain officers apparently get special designation and rise above the yellow-masked
rank and file.
There's Angela, aka Sister Knight, Looking Glass, the Red Scare, Pirate Jenny, and Panda.
At least one character from HBO's Watchmen also appeared in the graphic novel: Adrian
Veidt, aka Ozymandias.
In the first episode, Veidt enjoys himself on a vast, idyllic castle property that he
appears to share with two beloved servants.
They serve him a cake with a single candle and gift him with an old pocket watch.
He tells them he's written a play he wants the pair to star in called The Watchmaker's
Son.
This is a little strange already, because you'd think in his waning years, the man who
believes he saved the world would want to write about himself.
But if you know Watchmen, then you know the Watchmaker's son can only be Doctor Manhattan.
Things get a lot weirder in the second episode.
We learn who we thought were Veidt's only servants are part of a series of identical
clones.
Veidt watches a rehearsal of his play, which climaxes with the accident that turns Jon
Osterman into Doctor Manhattan, including pyrotechnics that kill the actor playing him.
"Three, two, one."
No one seems particularly upset with this, and Veidt directs his clones to put the dead
actor in the basement with the others.
What's not as dramatic but still noteworthy is that his servants bring him another cake,
but this time with two candles.
Assuming these events happen concurrent to what's going on in Tulsa, we know a year hasn't
passed, which suggests the cake isn't a birthday cake after all, but something else.
The image of the watch recurs over and over again in the Watchmen graphic novel.
Each chapter ends with a ticking clock.
The fourth chapter, "Watchmaker," goes back and forth in time through the lens of Doctor
Manhattan's non-linear point of view.
The symbol on Doctor Manhattan's forehead looks something like a watch face, though
it's meant to be an atom, as does the blood-splattered smiley face that's become so iconic in reference
to Watchmen.
HBO's Watchmen continues this tradition, in images and sounds.
There's, of course, the foreboding "tick tock" chant of the Rorschach-inspired Seventh Kavalry.
"Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock..."
When the Tulsa PD raids a Cavalry safehouse, we learn the group is using old lithium batteries
from watches to build some kind of weapon.
And there's the pocket watch Adrian Veidt's servants give to him as a present, along with
the name of his play, The Watchmaker's Son.
What does it all mean?
On one hand, just as in the graphic novel, the watches serve as a countdown to something
cataclysmic.
This is also likely the reason why the candles on Veidt's cakes increase by one each episode.
On the other hand, Watchmen has always been very concerned with time and how we perceive
it, so the watches are a constant reminder of our strange relationship with time.
HBO's Watchmen hasn't forgotten its roots, and the evidence is everywhere.
There are plenty of callbacks to the graphic novel, including technological advances clearly
inspired by the heroes of the source material.
In the first episode, after some of the Kavalry members try to escape with their homemade
bomb in a small plane, Judd and Pirate Jenny follow in what appears to be the Owlship from
the comic.
In the second episode, we see someone in a winged get-up inspired by the Watchmen hero
Mothman.
He falls out of the sky while the police are investigating the crime scene where Judd was
hanged, and the Red Scare beats the winged interloper for his trouble.
Apparently in the world of Watchmen, Mothman technology is their version of drones.
There's also a "historical" show about the Minutemen called American Hero.
By the second episode, we get an entire bloody, brutal scene involving Hooded Justice and
a group of robbers.
The hero was only seen in flashbacks in the Watchmen graphic novel, and he's a perfect
addition here.
Considering his hood, the noose imagery, Judd's death, and his seeming secret KKK past, there's
something disturbingly poignant about Hooded Justice in this narrative.
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