WARNING: The following post contains spoilers for the first six issues of Doomsday Clock, as well as possible spoilery speculation.


Geoff Johns and Gary Frank’s 12-issue Doomsday Clock is many things. First, it’s a sequel to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal 12-issue miniseries Watchmen, so it has to deal with all that attendant baggage and controversy. Second, it’s a Big Event which promises (not surprisingly) to reshape DC’s shared superhero universe for the foreseeable future. Third, it’s the culmination of Johns’ own work in reshaping said universe, from 2011's Flashpoint miniseries – which changed DC's cosmos pretty radically – through 2016's restorative DC Universe: Rebirth special.

Accordingly, the expectation is that the DC Universe at the end of Doomsday Clock will look a lot like it did before Flashpoint. Most notably, the Justice Society of America and its Golden Age colleagues will be restored collectively to their familiar place in DC’s timeline, and the whole thing will have a glossy, reader-friendly sheen.

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Before that happens, though, there’s still the matter of a story which needs to be told. Although Johns has promised that issue #7 will change things significantly, right now we’re not quite sure what Doomsday Clock’s story really is. Therefore, today we’re sussing out where D-Clock has been and where it might go.

What's The Question?

Time is a flat circle
Batman ponders the meaning of "The Button," from its conclusion in The Flash #22

Perhaps the most critical difference between D-Clock and its inspiration is that Watchmen stood alone. In fact, Watchmen took pains to separate itself from the rest of DC’s newly-restructured superhero titles. By contrast, Doomsday Clock is all about the fate of the DC Universe itself. Doctor Manhattan’s involvement with the DC timeline has been teased for the past two years, starting with 2016's Rebirth special and continuing in series like Justice League, Titans, Detective Comics and Action Comics. The Batman-Flash crossover “The Button” also dealt directly with the Comedian’s infamous accessory, brought into the Batcave in the Rebirth special. Indeed, the Rebirth special assumed that its readers were well-versed in both Watchmen and the state of DC superheroes before and during the New 52 period.

RELATED: Geoff Johns Promises, Doomsday Clock #7 Completely Changes the Story

While all this cosmic tinkering raises the stakes for Doomsday Clock, it sure doesn’t help the narrative. Watchmen started with a simple question – who killed the Comedian? – and used that to build a complex world. Regardless, knowing who killed the Comedian remained central to the story even as it grew. D-Clock has gone the other way, starting with the sprawling DC Universe but not quite getting to the central question.

Consider this quick summary of D-Clock’s first six issues:

– Ozymandias, Rorschach II and Mime & Marionette escape from their home universe literally as a nuclear missile explodes behind them. Looking for Doctor Manhattan, they track him to DC-Earth, where Ozymandias goes to visit Lex Luthor, Rorschach breaks into Wayne Manor and Mime & Marionette cause trouble in the Gotham City underworld.

– The Comedian, plucked from Watchmen's timeline just before his death, shoots Luthor and throws Ozymandias out a window. After Rorschach gives Batman his predecessor’s journal, Batman tricks Rorschach into an Arkham Asylum cell.

– Saturn Girl, lost in time from the 31st Century, helps Rorschach escape Arkham. The two head for Pittsburgh, where they meet the elderly Johnny Thunder, himself escaped from an old-age home. All three are looking for the Golden Age Green Lantern’s power battery.

– After confronting Ozymandias, Batman is captured and beaten by an angry mob. He ends up a captive of the Joker, who drags him to a meeting of supervillains. The Comedian breaks up the meeting, but is captured himself after he tracks down Mime & Marionette.

– Percolating in the background is the social unrest caused by the "Supermen Theory," a faux conspiracy designed to whip up resentment against (and within) the United States for its outsized population of super-people.

Compare that to the first six issues of Watchmen, which follow two basic tracks: Rorschach's investigation of the Comedian's murder, and Doctor Manhattan's geopolitical role as a nuclear deterrent. The murder mystery soon involves a vast conspiracy targeting ex-superheroes – for example, issue #5's attempted assassination of Ozymandias. By the end of issue #5, Rorschach is in police custody. Meanwhile, suggestions that Doctor Manhattan killed his loved ones through radiation poisoning drive the superhuman off Earth entirely. This sends the United States and Soviet Union careening towards nuclear war.

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Now, clearly the above paragraph doesn't do justice to Watchmen's staggering amount of detail, nuance, and character- and world-building. Still, on a basic level we see that it's headed somewhere: Find out who killed the Comedian, and thereby save the world. The notion that everything's connected not only feeds the conspiratorial tone and enhances the murder-mystery aspects, it unifies the plotting.

At first Doomsday Clock presents a similar quest: Find Doctor Manhattan, and thereby save the world. However, by sending Ozymandias' little band to the screwed-up DC-Earth, D-Clock soon finds itself sidetracked by DC-Earth's problems. Before too long the group of four Watchmen-world characters has encountered Luthor, Batman, the Joker, Johnny Thunder and Saturn Girl – each representing particular aspects not just of the story, but of DC's own voluminous history.

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What About The Protagonist?

Therefore, to borrow from screenwriter and comics fan Todd Alcott, let's ask "what does the protagonist want?" Our most obvious protagonist is Ozymandias, whose actions drive D-Clock's plot. After he screwed up a perfectly good cold war, everyone's mad at him, and he's dying from a brain tumor to boot. Naturally, he gathers a few uneasy allies and starts looking for the one being who can fix things. This leads to DC-Earth, where Ozymandias' group fans out and starts meeting the locals. By the end of issue #6 (actually, by the end of issue #5, since he doesn't appear in issue #6), Ozymandias is alone and in hiding, although his pursuers are either hospitalized or captives of supervillains. So what does Ozymandias want? The same thing he wanted in Watchmen: To save his planet from mutually-assured destruction, this time by finding Doctor Manhattan instead of incapacitating him.

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Nevertheless, Ozymandias' quest is complicated by the amount of time D-Clock spends on DC-Earth's problems. While much of this is Johns' way of showing that DC-Earth is in the middle of a Watchmen-esque cold war, boy-howdy is there a lot of detail about society's imminent collapse. Effectively it reframes Ozymandias' quest to be not so much about redemption, but survival. Turns out Doctor Manhattan has been hiding on DC-Earth; and since he seems to send the Comedian after Ozymandias, the implication is that Manhattan doesn't want to be found.

Save the blue guy, save the world
Ozymandias outlines the mission, from Doomsday Clock #1

Of course, this only emphasizes the need to find him, not least because D-Clock's narrative devices don't really suggest a more traditional superhero solution. Its imitation of Watchmen includes the same sort of tonal detachment, conveyed by the nine-panel grid with which the earlier work became synonymous. In Infinite Crisis, Blackest Night and Flashpoint, Johns and his artistic collaborators crafted large-scale fight scenes featuring scads of super-people; but they weren't playing by the Watchmen rules. Ironically, therefore, a story which is about the creation of literal super-armies doesn't appear likely to end with such a super-battle.

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Still, Johns is intent on showing that the DC Universe hasn't lost its wide scope. This choice diffuses the narrative by splitting its focus to correspond with the group's first encounters with familiar DC characters. As a result, Ozymandias is in the wind, while Rorschach has joined Saturn Girl and Johnny Thunder's quest to find the Green Lantern power battery. That leaves Mime, Marionette and the Joker on the hunt for Doctor Manhattan. In fact, Marionette treats Ozymandias' quest almost as an afterthought on the last page of issue #6. Problem is, Doomsday Clock has already laid the groundwork for an alternative solution, namely the power battery.

Thus, while D-Clock hasn't forgotten entirely about Doctor Manhattan, the series so far has seemed more concerned with crossover matchups and paying off Rebirth threads. If the story changes significantly with issue #7, we're tempted to say it's because Johns has tightened up the plotting. As Alcott reminds us, the protagonist's goal may change during the course of the story, but it won't be lost entirely.

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What's Out There?

Again, our supposition about Doomsday Clock's ultimate effects comes from reading all the tea leaves in the past two-plus years of DC's superhero comics. We can connect D-Clock's use of Saturn Girl, Johnny Thunder and even Doctor Manhattan fairly easily with their previous appearances, particularly in the Rebirth special. Although we're hardly surprised that D-Clock is resolving those subplots, its own threads threaten to get lost in the shuffle. Ozymandias is dying and wants redemption for what he did to his world; Rorschach is still suffering from the psychic squid attack; and Mime & Marionette want to find their baby. While each might imagine that the omnipotent Doctor Manhattan could solve their particular problems, Doomsday Clock risks wrapping up all those concerns with some literal (blue) hand-waving in the miniseries' closing moments.

RELATED: Can Doomsday Clock Actually Redeem The Comedian from Villain to Hero?

Moth + battery = ?
Detail from the cover of Doomsday Clock #7

Put another way, once Ozymandias and company crossed the quantum threshold into the DC Universe, Doomsday Clock turned from a Watchmen sequel into a Big Event with Watchmen trappings. To be sure, it's a Big Event told from a the perspective of characters who are new to the DC Universe, so it unfolds almost at arm's length. Nevertheless, that only emphasizes the shift away from the fate of Watchmen's Earth, and by extension the fates of that Earth's characters. For them, coming from a world whose fate rested on the temperament of a single superhuman, navigating the armies of super-people must seem like swimming through a ball pit filled with hand grenades.

Accordingly, Doomsday Clock's real strength is its mood. The first two issues showed Watchmen's Earth descending quickly and uncontrollably into a terrifying nuclear nightmare, and the "Supermen Theory" side effects have darkened DC-Earth noticeably. A mob of regular people smashes the Bat-Signal and whales on Batman, while Superman has his own nightmare and then eavesdrops from above on Luthor and Lois Lane's conversation. No one is quite in his or her element, and nothing is as stable or as settled as it usually is.

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What's Next?

So how can issue #7 change the narrative? It may be unrelated, but Johns has reminded readers that each issue's text pages are important, as is the Nathaniel Dusk material. Paying attention to the text pages seems self-evident, and we've already talked about Dusk's possible importance. The question then becomes whether this narrative change will bring Doomsday Clock more in line with fan expectations with regard to the JSA and Legion; or whether it will be a more story-specific plot twist. It's not so much "how will Doomsday Clock end" as "where does it go from here?"

RELATED: Doomsday Clock #6, Annotated, Part 1 – Marionette, Mime & Bloody Mayhem

Well, for one thing, Ozymandias could head deeper into hiding, regrouping until he can come up with another plan. Other than steering the story farther away from its ostensible protagonist, this wouldn't be that much of a shift, since the other two threads are already getting a good bit of attention. That said, Ozymandias could link up with any number of factions across DC-Earth, and use their resources to implement whatever he comes up with. We're thinking specifically either of the mad scientists formerly of Oolong Island, who came together famously during 2006-07's 52 miniseries (which Johns co-wrote); or, more likely, with Black Adam's forces in Kahndaq.

Ride the lightning
Johnny Thunder wants answers, from Part 2 of "The Button" in The Flash #21

Meanwhile, the Justice Society could have a much earlier return. Both Johnny Thunder and the Green Lantern power battery represent powerful magic forces within the DC Universe, and the story has been building to Johnny's finding the lantern. Now that Johnny has it, what will he do? We're thinking either that Johnny's Thunderbolt is trapped inside the lantern, or that the lantern otherwise holds the key to freeing the T-Bolt.

However, one of Johnny's new companions may have more sinister plans for the lantern. We're not sure that Saturn Girl is really who she claims to be; and we wouldn't be surprised if she turns out to be Saturn Queen, the malevolent telepath working with the 31st Century's Legion of Super-Villains. The villainous group could even be the "they" which imprisoned Jay Garrick in the timestream. That would explain "Saturn Girl's" rather casual attitude towards the fates of those junkies in issue #5, as well as why she didn't immediately ask for Superman to visit her in Arkham Asylum. (To be sure, it would be at odds with her anguished cries at the beginning of Batman issue #21.) If Saturn Queen gets her hands on the Green Lantern battery and/or gains control of the Thunderbolt, it could mean real trouble. We could definitely see Ozymandias directing Black Adam and company against the LSV. Heck, we could see an invasion from the 31st Century unifying all the world's super-armies against a common foe. What could go wrong?

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Issue #7 could also feature a big revelation about the underlying forces which control the DC Universe. We don't expect Doctor Manhattan to come into this story until the last few issues, but that doesn't mean we can't learn about how he relates to and/or affects the DCU's physics. Right now Doomsday Clock is getting ready to tap into the Green Flame of Life which powers the Green Lantern battery. We're thinking that will also lead to awakening the 5th-dimensional Thunderbolt. Ozymandias and company came to DC-Earth via "quantum tunneling," and there's still a chance that they could encounter Captain Atom, master of the quantum field. Before too long we might even see Jay Garrick, the original Flash, emerge from his interdimensional prison. In the "Button" crossover, Johnny said that "the lightning told me to find my friends" and it was all his fault that "we lost the Justice Society." Maybe that's Jay trapped in the power battery, not Johnny's Thunderbolt.

Finally, as long as we're throwing out predictions, here's a follow-up to our Nathaniel Dusk primer. Remember, Doomsday Clock's Dusk movie The Adjournment involves a double murder. The victims, one of whom was himself a killer, were wealthy banker Alastair Tempus and his less-wealthy friend Bentley Farmer. While both were shot during a game of chess, the motive wasn't clear; so Dusk must figure out who was the main target. We're probably slow in realizing this, but if The Adjournment is D-Clock in a nutshell, then "Tempus" may symbolize the time-centered Doctor Manhattan, while "Farmer" would be the salt-of-the-earth Superman. In fact, if our earlier Dusk prediction holds up – that Carver Colman, the actor who plays Dusk, is actually Doctor Manhattan in disguise – Manhattan himself could have had the screenplay written to reflect what he knew would happen in the future. Did we just blow your mind?!?

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Therefore, if Ozymandias is the "killer" of his world (and remember, Manhattan himself has killed a number of people), he may already have doomed the "innocent victim" DC-Earth. One of issue #7's covers features Ozymandias playing with marionettes of Doctor Manhattan and Superman; and as much as we'd like to believe he has only the purest motives, we suspect he's not quite over his bad tendencies. Issue #7's big revelation may well be that Ozymandias is still manipulating people and events, specifically to use DC-Earth's resources to save his own world.

However it all shakes out, Doomsday Clock must find a way to refocus which deals with all this metatextual baggage. A significant portion of DC fans will be very disappointed if this miniseries doesn't bring back both the Justice Society and the Legion of Super-Heroes, and never mind that neither group was part of Ozymandias' original plan. D-Clock is at its halfway point, and therefore well past time to start looking towards the end. It can get there quickly, especially once the Thunderbolt and/or the Green Lantern are involved, but it has to start moving. Fortunately, although Doomsday Clock's conclusion is still a long way off, we should be getting some answers fairly soon.