"Nothing Ever Really Ends"

The phrase originated as a thought-provoking statement. But having looked over DC Comics' Doomsday Clock by Geoff Johns & Gary Frank it seems to be repurposed into a threat.

I didn't really want to read Doomsday Clock, but as a contributor to The Grand Comics Database I read a little bit of anything - anything which isn't already indexed at the GCD. I noticed they lacked indexing on the three Doomsday Clock trades (one 2 volume hardcover set and one complete softcover collection). I put holds on them at my library and received them immediately - a little odd, considering it's one of the 'hot' comics of 2020 and I'm currently about one month in on my wait for Jonathan Hickman's first X-Men trade.

I had no great expectations for this comic. I'm one of those who think Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons' Watchmen was a perfect comic that could only be diminished by revisiting. If DC characters must meet Watchmen characters (and they don't have to, no), then that issue of The Question where the Question tries to imitate Rorschach is about as far as I'd like to see it go.

It's a very slavish attempt to recreate Watchmen's format - 12 issues, told mostly in 9-panel grids, text features in the back. These are creative decisions Johns & Frank would never have made on their own - it's simply parroting what fandom expects from a Watchmen comic. The entire project is a very safe one, a conservative attempt to have the characters' universes brush up against each other. Moore & Gibbons' complex storytelling where words & images were deftly intertwined is not recreated.

And indeed, if you want a conservative DC Comics writer you could look no further than Geoff Johns. 20 years ago he was a mere fanboy-turned-writer. But in these twenty years he's... not changed, really. He was the company's Chief Creative Officer prior to writing this series. But I was struck by how much Doomsday Clock reads like his 20-year old JSA comics. Not because the JSA cast are here (although they are) but because he still writes his conflicts to a point where the solution to the problem (for some reason) is a double-page spread of various super heroes posing.

There might be a great story to be told about how Watchmen influenced the direction of the DC Comics characters even before the company tried to fuse them into a shared universe. But considering the tone the series is going for -- the attempt to be reconciliatory towards the two universes -- it shouldn't have been written by a fan service writer. As Moore's own reaction to Watchmen's popularity was to move from deconstruction to reconstruction, I feel a better story could have been told by a reconstruction writer -- that is, Kurt Busiek, Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Tom Peyer or someone of their ilk. Doomsday Clock takes the path of least resistance. It's the sort of comic where, if the Joker should appear, the 9-panel grid has to be abandoned because, wow, the Joker, oh my goodness, who could have imagined seeing the Joker in a DC Comics book, my expectations are shattered.

Ultimately I realize I am not the target audience for Doomsday Clock. To be fair, no one in comics fandom is the target audience. The target audience is the executive board of Warner Bros.

Bradbury 31, Day 25: "Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!"

Well then; this is Ray Bradbury's story about mushrooms conquering the world. And yet, despite the hokey premise, it first appeared on the rather grounded program Alfred Hitchcock Presents titled "Sepcial Delivery." It's also known as "Come into My Cellar," but "Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!" is just the most fun title. It concerns precisely what the title indicates as boys raise mushrooms and soon the people who consume them are part of an alien plot. The story contains a quote from Macbeth which points to the title of another Bradbury work: "Something Wicked This Way Comes." The Hitchcock adaptation is perfectly creepy.

In 1989 it returned to television under the "Boys!" title via The Ray Bradbury Theater, but I'm not particularly fond of that version - it plays the idea for laughs. I mean, it is a rather laughable idea, but so are many horror stories - played straight, it's effective. Of course, in the era of the Red Scare the concept of children turning on their parents was a more insidious one; by 1989, the Cold War was being served its pink slip.

Fortunately, another great adaptation was on its way; Topps comics enlisted the one and only Dave Gibbons to draw an adaptation (as "Come into My Cellar") in 1992. Gibbons' legendary mastery of pages with plenty of panels was used to good effect in this version, as seen above with the tightened focus perfectly representing the sense of agitation and indescribable fear. It's one of the best of the Topps comics.

More spooky Bradbury tomorrow!

Watchmen Babies Noir

A few months ago I spoke to a professor of film studies about "film noir." As the term has become quite elastic, I wanted to hear how he defined the phrase. He admitted he held a very broad view on what could be considered film noir - in fact, he had taught a class on film noir using the John Ford film The Searchers, a western film renowned for its color photography and widescreen vistas, none of which are elements we commonly associate with noir. However, he argued that because the protagonist was a man returning from the war who finds himself an outsider and thrust into a situation of moral ambiguity, there was a valid basis for considering The Searchers film noir.

There was a time when film noir meant more than black & white photography or the lead being a detective. Film noir as it was originally understood meant Out of the Past, Double Indemnity or Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, but because the term leant prestige to films, fairly soon it was taken over by marketing until today we find "film noir" is a virtually meaningless descriptor.

Above: "Film Noir" Barbie clothes

On that note, here's a recent solicitation from DC Comics:

WATCHMEN NOIR HC

Written by ALAN MOORE Art and cover by DAVE GIBBONS

Now presented in stark black and white, highlighting Dave Gibbons dark, moody artwork, experience the greatest graphic novel of all time as never before! WATCHMEN begins as a murder mystery, but soon unfolds into a planet-altering conspiracy. As the resolution comes to a head, the unlikely group of reunited heroes—Rorschach, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, Dr. Manhattan, and Ozymandias—test the limits of their convictions and ask themselves where the true line is between good and evil. Collects the original 12-issue WATCHMEN series in black and white for the first time! On sale NOVEMBER 23 • 416 pg, B&W, 7.5” x 11.5”, $39.99 US

"Watchmen Noir." Not simply "Watchmen in Black & White" but "noir." The term is used as a buzzword; it's printed in black and white? By Gar, it must be noir!

What is the purpose of reading Watchmen in black and white? The only idea I can conceive is that one might find a new way of appreciating Dave Gibbons' artwork without the colouring of John HIggins. Certainly, when I bought the black & white Essential Spider-Man back in 1997 I found a new love for Steve Ditko's art. Mind you, I also loved the book's $20 price tag - if I could have had the same content in colour for the same price then I would have switched to colour.

Watchmen Noir is like the reverse of Ted Turner's flamboyantly garish colorized films. But, here's the thing, Watchmen was not in colour by mistake. Gibbons didn't accidentally load his pages in the washer with his colours and go, "Whoops! I guess this has to be a colour comic now!" Part of why Watchmen continues to elicit such strong reactions from its audience - and is a mainstay of college comics studies - is that the creators had such fine control over their storytelling, that virtually every line, word and - yes- colour on the page was there intentionally and held a meaning. Black & white is a very worthy medium in comics, one I've enjoyed seeing creators such as Milt Caniff, Stan Sakai, Jeff Smith and Dave Sim labour within. But on the occasions they worked in black & white, that informed their artistic decisions.

But aye, as Will Smith once said, "there is the rub." Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons' creative control over Watchmen has long since become a joke, a mocking sneer from the publisher they trusted, an unwilling parent to generation after generation of Watchmen Babies. And yet, despite these repeated attempts to mine Watchmen's success, the work continues to stand, still considered a great achievement in comics storytelling. Moore and Gibbons may have had to bargain with a monkey's paw in order to see their work published, but they can rest secure on its continued reputation - which is more than you can say for the Watchmen Babies.