33 Facts About Watchmen

Watchmen is an American comic book maxiseries by the British creative team of writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins.

Watchmen originated from a story proposal Moore submitted to DC featuring superhero characters that the company had acquired from Charlton Comics.

Watchmen depicts an alternate history in which superheroes emerged in the 1940s and 1960s and their presence changed history so that the United States won the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal was never exposed.

Commercial success, Watchmen has received critical acclaim both in the comics and mainstream press.

Watchmen was recognized in Times List of the 100 Best Novels as one of the best English language novels published since 1923.

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Watchmen, created by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons, first appeared in the 1985 issue of DC Spotlight, the 50th anniversary special.

Watchmen is set in an alternate reality that closely mirrors the contemporary world of the 1980s.

In keeping with the realism of the series, although the costumed crimefighters of Watchmen are commonly called "superheroes", only one, named Doctor Manhattan, possesses any superhuman abilities.

Watchmen reveals that he had murdered The Comedian when he discovered his plan, arranged for Manhattan's past associates to contract cancer, staged the attempt on his own life in order to place himself above suspicion, and killed Moloch in order to frame Rorschach.

Moore said that Watchmen was designed to be read "four or five times", with some links and allusions only becoming apparent to the reader after several readings.

Watchmen made a concerted effort to draw the characters in a manner different from that commonly seen in comics.

Structurally, certain aspects of Watchmen deviated from the norm in comic books at the time, particularly the panel layout and the coloring.

Watchmen decided to use the extra pages to fill in the series' backstory.

Watchmen uses the bodies of his dead shipmates as a makeshift raft and sails home, gradually descending into insanity.

Watchmen admired Burroughs' use of "repeated symbols that would become laden with meaning" in Burroughs' only comic strip, "The Unspeakable Mr Hart", which appeared in the British underground magazine Cyclops.

Moore mentioned that "[t]he whole thing with Watchmen has just been loads of these little bits of synchronicity popping up all over the place".

Watchmen added that to place faith in such icons was to give up personal responsibility to "the Reagans, Thatchers, and other 'Watchmen' of the world who supposed to 'rescue' us and perhaps lay waste to the planet in the process".

Watchmen wrote that the story "develops its heroes precisely in order to ask us if we would not in fact be better off without heroes".

Richard Reynolds states that without any supervillains in the story, the superheroes of Watchmen are forced to confront "more intangible social and moral concerns", adding that this removes the superhero concept from the normal narrative expectations of the genre.

Watchmen was first mentioned publicly in the 1985 Amazing Heroes Preview.

Watchmen was published in single-issue form over the course of 1986 and 1987.

Watchmen received critical praise, both inside and outside of the comics industry.

Original series of Watchmen is the complete story that Alan Moore and I wanted to tell.

Sequel to Watchmen, entitled Doomsday Clock, is part of the DC Rebirth line of comics, additionally continuing a narrative established with 2016's one-shot DC Universe: Rebirth Special and 2017's crossover The Button, both of which featured Doctor Manhattan in a minor capacity.

Watchmen thought there was an interesting dichotomy between Superman—an alien who embodies and is compassionate for humanity—and Doctor Manhattan—a human who has detached himself from humanity.

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Watchmen explained that Doomsday Clock was the "most personal and most epic, utterly mind-bending project" that he had worked on in his career.

Watchmen extended the fight scenes, and added a subplot about energy resources to make the film more topical.

The director's cut and the extended version of Watchmen both include Tales of the Black Freighter on their DVD releases.

HBO version of the Watchmen was referenced in the Arrowverse's Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover.

Critical and commercial success, Watchmen is highly regarded in the comics industry and is frequently considered by several critics and reviewers as comics' greatest series and graphic novel.

In 2009, Lydia Millet of The Wall Street Journal contested that Watchmen was worthy of such acclaim, and wrote that while the series' "vividly drawn panels, moody colors and lush imagery make its popularity well-deserved, if disproportionate", that "it's simply bizarre to assert that, as an illustrated literary narrative, it rivals in artistic merit, say, masterpieces like Chris Ware's 'Acme Novelty Library' or almost any part of the witty and brilliant work of Edward Gorey".

Watchmen was one of the two comic books, alongside Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, that inspired designer Vincent Connare when he created the Comic Sans font.

In December 2017, DC Entertainment published Watchmen: Annotated, a fully annotated black-and-white edition of the graphic novel, edited, with an introduction and notes by Leslie S Klinger .