History Headscratchers / Watchmen

** I was talking about his crappy [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] revival pieces, like Supreme, and Tom Strong. Those seem to me like an "Oh shit, what have I done! I'd better try to bring comics back to the way they where before Watchmen!" attitude.

** Unless you like that kind of thing. I myself am a huge fan of the so called [[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark Age]].

** Basically, after Watchmen came along, a huge portion of the comic book industry devoted itself to 'deconstructing' the superhero genre through a lot of gratuitous violence. Whether you like UsefulNotes/{{the Dark Age|of comic books}} or not, it was missing the point. As gritty ultra-violence and malevolence became the norm for supeheroes, the best way to deconstruct comics ''again'' would be to go for something LighterAndSofter. Hence, the stuff which seems like an 'apology' from Moore is really just more of the same, with different pants on. I think the real source of disappointment here is that he hasn't made anything quite like Watchmen again since - but really, it's lightning in a bottle. You very often ''can't'' do something like Watchmen twice.

* UsefulNotes/{{The Silver Age|of Comic Books}} was part of a backlash agianst comics started by the book ''The Seduction of the Innocent'' In the Watchmen universe, "The Seduction of the Innocent" was never published, the feds shuting down the guy who wrote to protect the reputation of "comic inspired" opperatives in the US military.

!Comicbook/{{Watchmen}}

For technical reasons, Veidt Enterprises has moved some folders into their own pages.

[[Headscratchers/WatchmenEnding For folders about the ending and the villain's plot, go here]].

[[Headscratchers/WatchmenCharacters For folders about characters, go here]].

* Folders courtesy of Veidt Enterprises. Please drink responsibly.

* Did Dr. Manhattan really killed people permanently? I mean it looks like he does to them the same thing that happened to himself (removing their magnetics fields) so is possible that if any of them had the same will to come back they could rebuild themselves but for some reason none of them haven't he might be doing this to see if someone else could pull the same trick at some point. I like to fan wank that Roschard will to punish crime would allow him to come back as a dark more willing to kill because of his own initiative Dr. Manhattan. Maybe he could call himself Dr. Antarctica.

* Er... what Watchmen immitations, exactly? A lot of the Dark Age of Comics seem to have been far more inspired by action and sci-fi cinema of the 1980s than by Watchmen. All that "kewl" stuff with big guns, big explosions, musclebound characters, isn't in Watchmen and doesn't seem to be inspired by anything that is in Watchmen. We had to wait a lot more for actual Watchmen immitations to start appearing in comics, like Identity Crisis and Supreme Power.

** Also, note Jon Osterman's origins as a "watchmaker." This is a reference to the theory in Deism in where "the world is a watch and God was a watchmaker who left the universe to move on and work on another watch(or world). This "watch" theme is also displayed through the reoccurring "bloody smiley" that symbolically resembles a clock ticking five minutes away from twelve. Keeping up with the Deist themes is the ending where Jon(now Dr. Manhattan) leaves Earth to "perhaps create some life out there." Practically, although Jon is now a God and above normal men, he is still a watchmaker, and he is done with the world and is now moving on to better things by metaphorically creating other watches. [[IncrediblyLamePun Thus, because the world is a "watch," we are all little "watchmen" in it watching over one another.]] It alludes to what John F. Kennedy said about us all being "the watchmen of the world."

** Dr. Manhattan warned that the IFR process was not going to produce creature like him again. He didn't exposed any more on the topic, so there was possibly a chance that Dr. Manhattan himself could find impossible to reassemble himself. Sort of "once in the universe" process. Tiny chance, but what ''else'' was Veidt supposed to try? Asking him to sing the whole π ?

* Er... what Watchmen immitations, exactly? A lot of the Dark Age of Comics seem to have been far more inspired by action and horror cinema of the 1980s than by Watchmen. All that "kewl" stuff with big guns, big explosions, musclebound characters, etc. isn't in Watchmen and doesn't seem to be inspired by anything that is in Watchmen. We had to wait a lot more for actual Watchmen immitations to appear in comics, like Identity Crisis and Supreme Power.

* Actually, I don't mind so much the fact that Watchmen's world lacks superhero comics, as I see it as more of Alan Moore being clever in showing us an interesting case of how an alternate universe could have alternate pop culture. What REALLY gets to me is when people say that Watchmen "proved" that in ANY universe where superheroes are real, there would be no comics or movies or whatever made of them, with some folks even extending the rationale to aliens or vampires or ghosts and saying there really is some kind of "law" that says if X exists, then you can't have pop culture with X. This really gets to me because: 1) it's completely silly to treat as a "law" a suposition that can't ever be proved, as long as we don't have superheroes or aliens or vampires in our universe. 2) Even if real X appeared in our world and that somehow killed interest in fiction with X, it wouldn't prove that that would be the same in every possible alternate timeline. But mostly 3) we live in a world that does have cops and lawyers and doctors, and we do have plenty of popular fiction with cops and lawyers and doctors. 3A) To the folks who say real superheroes would somehow kill the fun of sillier superhero stories or something and any fiction in that universe would have to be deadly serious, I'd say that the existence of real cops and soldiers has not caused cop and soldier fiction to be restricted to only serious, realistic stories. Even the comment about 9/11 above misses the fact that in the decade after 9/11, we already have plenty of action, superhero and horror movies blowing up New York, people can't be traumatized forever. Okay, that is the end of my rant.

** The answer is fairly simple: The kind of person who kills people for ideological reasons is usually pretentious, and a pretentious person would prefer to use the more formal "lesbian." That's why Bible-inspired crazies prefer the King James translation. (This is not intended to be insulting towards the religious people here at Wiki/TVTropes who aren't crazy, so please, no flame war.)

*** Do keep in mind that the film invented the whole sequence about Ozymandias creating generators to make infinite free energy out of nothing (somehow) using Dr. Manhattan-based technology. I don't remember that in the book at all -- the book just said that Dr. Manhattan was able to manufacture enough lithium cells by magic to make cheap electric cars practicable. He's made a very efficient * battery* , in other words, but he hasn't invented an * energy source* . Electric cars still use up petroleum -- they use it up more efficiently, through the power grid, but you still have to burn something to get the energy. And look up "Jevons' Paradox" on Wiki/TheOtherWiki; increased efficiency is never really a solution to an energy crisis. Unless we actually replace petroleum as a source of power, a more efficient use of petroleum will just lead us to * use more petroleum* . Flying cars are incredibly wasteful compared to ground-based transportation when it comes to energy consumption, but once the price of oil drops enough what was incredibly wasteful just becomes a relatively common luxury. The rate of consumption just keeps going up and up; consumer demand is an endlessly voracious black hole and technology can't solve that. Only legal regulation and social change can, and that's Mr. Amoral World Conqueror Ozymandias' department, not Dr. Manhattan's.

--> Disclaimer: Wiki/TVTropes.org is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Veidt International Enterprises. All inquiries should be directed to Veidt Headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. Revenue growth for the third quarter remain strong thanks to an increased popular interest in memes driven by the declining threat of global annihilation. ''NoteToSelf: TV Tropes may be a good subsidiary to finance my sequel plot, titled simply ''Boys''.''Literature/TheBoysFromBrazil''? More study is needed. --Veidt''

** You might as well ask [[ComicBook/IncredibleHulk Bruce Banner]] why gamma radiation gives him super strength and kills virtually anyone else. It's just a convention of the genre that weird shit can happen inside a nuclear reactor.