Thoughts on Doomsday Clock

This book was more or less what I'd hoped it would be.

So why didn't I like it?

One of the issues, I think, was the issues. Waiting sometimes multiple months for the next issue did not enhance my reading experience.

The first few issues were genuinely exciting to read. I had bought into the hype. But by the end I found that nothing could really grab me, except for the ideas.

Some notes:

The New 52 is officially over. It exists somewhere out there as another Earth. Earth 52.

The ongoing theme of the book was finding hope. How do you take a morally gray world like Watchmen and reconcile it with the pervasive hopefulness of Superman? What happens when cynicism and despair clash with optimism and hope? What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

The answer is change.

But what changed exactly? Superman's world is more or less restored. The JSA is back. The Legion is back. Even Ma and Pa are back. Superman's world looks the same as ever. We have discarded the uncomfortable unfamiliarity of the New 52 and have fully embraced nostalgia.

The thing that changed was Watchmen.

Watchmen was a world without hope. But when you pit an ideology like that against Superman, Superman always wins. So naturally the story of Watchmen now ends (or newly begins) on a more hopeful note.

This alteration to the world of Watchmen is an interesting "political" statement. Perhaps the writer was watching MSNBC one day and thought to himself, "The world is running out of hope. This is like the beginning of Watchmen. What can I do to change the narrative?"

The writer understands that cynicism is not sustainable. A soul cannot survive on it. A soul needs hope. So changing Watchmen from a story of cynicism to a story of hope is a bold political statement indeed--certainly when you consider how sacrosanct the original story is.

Or was.

Perhaps part of the meta narrative was that the writer wanted to break the "hold" Watchmen had over the rest of the comics industry. Its cynicism seemed to infect all the other books in some way, and it poisoned an entire cinematic universe starting with Man of Steel (directed by the director of Watchmen). In other words, he wanted to put Watchmen in its place, contain its influence.

Well, there's no better way to defeat Watchmen than to give it hope.

So I was completely on board for the meta narrative alone. I think the weakness of the story was the, er, "narrative" narrative.

By about halfway through the series, I just stopped feeling it. The initial hype was gone. I lost interest in the mounting conflict. I only cared about how it ended, not how we got there.

And the book was repeatedly delayed.

Nothing kills momentum like a delay. It's one of the reasons why I primarily read this stuff in collected volumes. But I was so hyped, I knew I couldn't wait that long. Yet I wound up waiting a long time anyway.

There's a longer conversation to be had about the ideal way to publish and read comics. All I can say is that following a book for 2 years when it should only have lasted 1 year does affect my enjoyment of it.

Detaching myself from the actual timing of publication, reading stories on my own schedule--my own terms--is the best way for me to enjoy comics. Reading a single chapter every few months is not.