The comic-within-a-comic Tales of the Black Freighter (and specifically its story "Marooned") provided just one of many levels of meaning in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. That harrowing tale of a doomed sailor struggling to stop a demonic vessel now has its own parallel in Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's Doomsday Clock, thanks to the in-universe film noir The Adjournment. However, one big difference between the two is that The Adjournment is based on a pre-existing DC character, Don McGregor and Gene Colan's Nathaniel Dusk.

In fact, Johns told Newsweek that he and Frank "will get into [Dusk and his onscreen portrayer Carver Colman] more as the issues progress." Therefore, since DC published two Nathaniel Dusk miniseries in the mid-1980s, today we're examining them for clues about Doomsday Clock.

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Nathaniel Dusk In Print

Nathaniel Dusk in Who's Who
Nathaniel Dusk, pencilled by Gene Colan and inked by Dick Giordano, from Who's Who #16

Although the two Dusk miniseries were titled Nathaniel Dusk (cover-dated February-May 1984) and Nathaniel Dusk II (October 1985-January 1986), the first was subtitled "Lovers Die At Dusk" and the second "Apple Peddlers Die At Noon." Each miniseries ran four issues; with each issue written by Don McGregor, pencilled by Gene Colan, colored by Tom Ziuko and lettered by John Costanza. Since the art was produced directly from Colan's pencils, there was no inker. Alan Gold edited the first miniseries, while McGregor edited the sequel.

Nathaniel Dusk is a New York City private detective, ex-cop, and ex-World War I pilot (he even flew a Sopwith Camel). The two miniseries cover just over five months of Dusk's life, from January 31, 1934 to July 4, 1934. Despite having entries in various DC encyclopediae, there's no indication that Dusk was supposed to be part of DC's shared superhero universe; and with one satirical exception (a cameo in July 1995's Lobo issue #17) he doesn't appear alongside any other DC characters.

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Dusk left the NYPD in 1931 because he couldn't stand its corruption. His main ally is Lieutenant Murray Abrahams, a rare honest cop. Oscar Flam runs the newsstand near Dusk's office and looks after his polio-stricken son Albert. Ex-Wall Street millionaire Freddie Bickenhacker shines Dusk's shoes.

However, the character who most informs Dusk's adventures is his girlfriend Joyce Gulino. Joyce's death in "Lovers Die At Dusk" drives Dusk's overall character arc, both because he failed to save her and because he doesn't want to alienate her two young children. Although Joyce told Dusk that her parents and husband were dead, she was really hiding out from said husband, mobster Joseph Costilino. After she left Costilino in the wake of his cheating (and venereal disease), he never forgave her for that, or for taking his only son from him. When he learned about her relationship with Dusk, he ordered both of them killed. In a perfect film-noir twist, one of the hitmen ended up shooting Costilino in order to get to Dusk. (The hitman's reputation would have been in tatters if he'd failed to kill Dusk.) At the end of the first miniseries, Joyce's kids go to live with her mother, who wasn't dead after all; and Dusk continues to see them throughout the second miniseries.

In Nathaniel Dusk II's "Apple Peddlers Die At Noon," socialite Amanda Cooper hires Dusk to protect her father Cranston Clement. He's another ex-businessman reduced to streetcorner vending, namely selling apples. This miniseries' plot is a little more complicated, involving ribbon manufacturing and the eventual war against Hitler. In any event, Dusk fails to protect Clement (who, to be fair, didn't exactly welcome the protection) but still solves the case, rescuing Amanda from the killer in the process.

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Appropriately enough for a character inspired by pulps and classic detective stories, these miniseries visit a dizzying amount of violence on Dusk. Besides the usual fare of being shot at and beaten up, Dusk is almost thrown off a building, nearly impaled by a unicorn statue, left to drown and/or be chopped up by a boat propellor, injected with rat poison, and locked in a too-hot sauna. NDII's big finish involves a chase through Coney Island and a fight aboard a biplane.

In light of all this carnage, it's no wonder that Dusk's main motivation is to keep from losing people -- not just to death, but to personal fallings-out. Towards the end of the first miniseries, Dusk learns that Oscar betrayed him after getting an offer he couldn't refuse. In the second miniseries, when Amanda becomes the target, Dusk's efforts to save her parallel his attempts to connect with Joyce's resentful son Tony. Dusk saving Amanda and reconciling with Oscar and Tony allows the miniseries (and, ultimately, Dusk's comics adventures) to end on a hopeful note.

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Nathaniel Dusk On "Screen"

Dusk and Abrahams in The Adjournment
Dusk and Abrahams at The Adjournment's crime scene, from Doomsday Clock #3

Very little of the Dusk comics lore appears in The Adjournment, the movie Doomsday Clock shows us in bits and pieces. Indeed, according to the text pages of D-Clock issue #3, only one of the six Dusk films seems to have been taken directly from the source material.

That said, we're not sure that in the context of D-Clock there was any literary source material. In other words, we don't know if the Dusk movies were adapted from pulp novels or, heaven help us, comic books. We know only that Ring Lardner Jr. wrote the screenplay for 1947's Murder At Home; that erstwhile Golden Age superhero Jonathan Law wrote the screenplay for 1954's The Adjournment; and that 1952's Lovers Die At Dusk seems to have covered essentially the same ground as the first miniseries.

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Not so with The Adjournment, which involves a double murder on Christmas Eve. Even that setting diverges from the comics, since Joyce was murdered on January 31 and the LDAD movie apparently takes place just before Christmas. Moreover, Murray Abrahams is a plainclothes detective in the comics, but wears a uniform in The Adjournment. There are other differences as well. Because she was murdered so close to Christmas, Joyce had left Dusk a present, as yet unopened; and instead of her kids going to live with their grandmother in New York City, they've relocated to Indiana with two living grandparents.

As for the plot, Murray asks for Dusk's help in solving the murders of banker Alastair Tempus and his neighbor Bentley Farmer (who happens to be Murray's brother-in-law). Tempus was a rich widower with grown children, while Farmer was a poor childless divorcee; but both were shot during a game of chess. The main question, which Doomsday Clock repeats a couple of times, is who was the main target. Along the way Dusk and Abrahams find Tempus' accountant Jasper Wellington, who had asked the banker previously for a loan for gender-reassignment surgery, and who straight-up took the cash once Tempus had been killed. The Adjournment only appears in D-Clock issues #3 and #5, with a brief introduction in issue #2, so the plot doesn't seem that far along. However, in issue #3 a random fan (specifically, an Arkham Asylum guard) mentions the "big twist" that one of the victims was a killer himself.

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Otherwise, D-Clock issue #3's text pages summarize both the Dusk movies and the life of their star, Carver Colman. There were six Dusk movies from 1943 to 1954, all but one directed by real-world directors like Otto Preminger and Jacques Tourneur. The first, Nothing Left To Lose, was apparently "notori[ous] for using words like virgin and abortion," which may refer to Dusk and Joyce's conversation about contraception in Nathaniel Dusk issue #1. The two Preminger-directed installments, A Killer Calls and A Killer's Kiss, featured the same "mysterious murderer." Listing Don McGregor as the director of Lovers Die At Dusk (for which he won the Academy Award) is an obvious shout-out to Dusk's co-creator.

(By the way, on our world John Ford won Best Director for 1952's The Quiet Man, while Gary Cooper won Best Actor for 1952's High Noon.)

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Putting The Pieces Together

We're here for you, Jasper
The accountant spills his guts, from Doomsday Clock #5

So where does this leave us in terms of hidden meanings? The Adjournment's murder mystery involves two men, one rich and one poor, killed while playing chess. Clearly that suggests opposing forces trading strategic moves, which fits in with D-Clock's superhuman arms race. The fact that "one of the dead guys turns out to be a killer" doesn't mean necessarily that he killed his friend and then was shot himself. It could also refer to having a violent past. Nevertheless, we could see this stretched to fit Ozymandias' original plan, which definitely backfired; or the eventual out-of-control spiraling of the Supermen Theory. The accountant's plight, where he wants to leave the country and (depending on how you look at it) start a new life and/or unleash his best self, also sounds significant. He's taking advantage of the plot-gone-wrong to further his own personal goals. Maybe D-Clock has something to say about the "corruption" of superheroes and the potential for other genres to profit from it?

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Okay, deep breaths. Before going too much further we're careful to note that we don't have a lot information. After all, "Marooned" didn't really become important thematically until the end of Watchmen. Told across Watchmen issues #3, #5, #8, #10 and #11, mostly it provided a sense of impending doom. Eventually it built to the realization that the doomed sailor wasn't just warning the townspeople about the Black Freighter, he was inadvertently (and involuntarily) preparing himself to join its crew. The Freighter didn't want to pillage the town, just capture the sailor's soul.

In the same way, we might have to wait a little while to see where The Adjournment is going. With Johnny Thunder away from the nursing home, and no guarantee we'll be back at Arkham Asylum, perhaps we'll have to find a different set of viewers.

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As for Carver Colman, we're still standing by our earlier theory that the murdered movie star was really Doctor Manhattan in disguise. The clocks, the missing watch and the mysterious past all seem to be pointing in that direction, not to mention the fact that Colman's face was unrecognizable after the pounding it took. If this turns out to be true, it would mean that Doctor Manhattan lived a bittersweet existence as a Hollywood actor most famous for playing a heroic (and eventually tragic) crimefighter. That would be a significant contrast to the character's rather antiseptic adventures as his world's only superhuman.

Spoilers
Discussing The Adjournment's big twist, from Doomsday Clock #3

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In any event, the Nathaniel Dusk material invites us to examine a handful of themes:

  • D-Clock's overall goal of restoring hope to the DC Universe (by contrasting it with Watchmen's persistent nihilism);
  • The Dusk comics' aim to stop losing people;
  • The Adjournment putting forth two victims, one in the wrong place at the wrong time and one a killer;
  • The accountant's capitalizing on the banker's death to get what he wants for himself; and
  • Whatever turns out to be behind Carver Colman's brief Hollywood career.

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Finally, there is another motif at work here. Just as the Black Freighter stories were examples of pop entertainment (dare we say "low culture?") on Watchmen's world, so does Nathaniel Dusk appear to be a fictional character from DC-Earth's old Hollywood. Additionally, while Tales of the Black Freighter was produced by that world's version of DC Comics, The Adjournment's screenwriter Jonathan Law would "ordinarily" have been the Golden Age superhero Tarantula. Accordingly, on one level this is just Law's road not taken, like the chemical company which Tyler Chemicals would have replaced if there had been a Golden Age Hourman. Again, it's hard to gauge how important this is; but it's something to consider when analyzing The Adjournment.

Ultimately, for whatever reason it appears that Geoff Johns and Gary Frank took only the characters and basic outlines of Nathaniel Dusk's comic-book adventures, and created from them a story -- so far, a much less violent story than the comics -- tied particularly to Doomsday Clock's events and themes. As a matter of pure storytelling, there's nothing unusual about that; but it does make our own "detective work" a bit harder.

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Besides, we hope it brings Nathaniel Dusk a whole new audience. (A Nathaniel Dusk collection is scheduled for November.) From Camelot 3000 and Ronin to Angel Love and 'Mazing Man, DC in the mid-1980s was full of eclectic works which explored a wide range of genres. Although short-lived, Nathaniel Dusk clearly made an impression on at least one reader. Thanks to Doomsday Clock, the character might now have a hand (however indirect) in reshaping DC's superhero universe, so we'll be watching closely to see where he goes next.

How do you think Nathaniel Dusk will comment on Doomsday Clock? Let us know in the comments!