Are Doomsday Clock's Mime and Marionette Metahuman?

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Doomsday Clock #3 by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank, on sale now.

The nuance and ethics of metahuman ability is something in the forefront of both Watchmen and its spiritual successor, Doomsday Clock -- and the event series' latest issue may have just complicated the issue in an unexpected way.

One of the tentpoles of the Watchmen universe has always been its dire look at just what a person who is granted the power of a being like Superman would actually entail. Dr. Manhattan is the cynical "real life" version of an all-powerful entity, a person who becomes so unmoored from humanity thanks to his essentially limitless abilities, that he retreats from Earth entirely. He is Watchmen's only proper metahuman character in a world populated by masked superheroes who are really just like Bruce Wayne or Vic Sage -- regular people who have some sort of combination of the money, the skill and the ambition to put on a costume and seek fame and fortune fighting crime.

The logistics of metahumans in the DC Universe have also been brought to the forefront with a concept explained in Doomsday Clock dubbed "The Supermen Theory," which alleges that metahuman populations in the United States are, in fact, the result of shady government conspiracy and experimentation.

Thematically, it's not hard to see the direct links in subject matter -- but there is a potential wrench in the works. Two new characters from the Watchmen universe -- The Mime and The Marionette -- were finally allowed to truly showcase their respective abilities in Issue #3, and in doing so, raised a whole slew of questions.

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Since their introduction in Doomsday Clock #1, Mime and Marionette have been a mysterious addition to the Watchmen mythos. At the outset, we saw Mime, well, miming the retrieval of weapons from a cache following the pair's prison break. However, it was left completely unclear as to whether he was just insane and living up to his gimmick, or if he was actually arming himself.

His actions were so odd, even Rorschach calls him out as being a little unbalanced. Either way, the only person who seemed to be playing along was Marionette, his wife and partner in crime. Through both issues #1 and #2, Mime had no occasion to actually use the "weapons" he may or may not have retrieved.

Marionette herself has also been shown fighting with weapons that are otherwise invisible. The lethal killer's skillset revolves around the use of razor wires, doubtless in service of her own puppet-style brand, so thus far it's made sense that we've been unable to actually see the strings and wires she's apparently using to slice through the bodies of her victims.

But in the latest issue, shots were actually fired -- in a very literal sense. As Mime and Marionette infiltrated one of the bars on Joker's turf, a fight broke out that turned deadly. In the midst of the melee, Mime actually killed several attackers with his invisible gun, and later with his invisible knives.

This begs the question: what, exactly, is allowing Mime and Marionette to interact with objects that are otherwise completely invisible? Are the weapons actually real, or are they being manifested somehow by what may or may not be metahuman abilities?

Obviously, the invention of transparent guns, bullets and throwing knives isn't totally out of the question in the sci-fi flavored alternate past of Watchmen, so it's entirely possible that both Mime and Marionette have been augmented in some way that has nothing to do with superpowers. However, the possibility that they might both be utilizing metahuman abilities, given the context of the greater story in play here, definitely shouldn't be overlooked.

If Mime and Marionette are metas, they'd be the first (that we know of) to come from the Watchmen universe, other than Dr. Manhattan himself, of course. The implications are massive -- not just for what it would mean for the scope of the Watchmen universe as a whole, but for the potential layer of complication it could add to the DC Universe's upcoming "Supermen Theory" problem. Considering Mime and Marionette aren't from the DCU, they clearly couldn't have been powered-up the secret government organization that has apparently been outed by characters like Metamorpho and Man-Bat. This leads us to wonder if this is another layer of meddling in the Watchmen universe by Manhattan, or if upon entering the DCU, the pair have begun to adapt to their new reality on a meta-level and are exhibiting abilities they didn't have in their home universe.

Doomsday Clock #4, Geoff Johns and Gary Frank, is scheduled to go on sale Wednesday, February 28. The remainder of the series will be released on a newly announced bi-monthly schedule.