What will/should spin out of Doomsday Clock?

[superduperman]

My honest feeling is that it's gotta just be delays on the creative side, because I cannot imagine that Johns would be made to rewrite Doomsday Clock without word of it reaching Bleeding Cool.

I'd hazard a guess that Johns is part of the lateness, not just Frank. He's been writing movies and TV scripts. He's even a showrunner on the Stargirl series. Compared to those projects, comics writing is small potatoes. Lowest priority.

Guess that means we'll never see that third volume of Earth One Batman.

[CaptCleghorn]

Maybe you should actually read the book before commenting on its contents in every single thread about it, but that's just me. Considering how the JSA has been persona non grata for so long, I'd say they are very important to the story. Besides, the poster I was replying to said "they were big parts of the mini initially and now they aren't mentioned at all"...I don't know if that poster is still reading Doomsday Clock or not, but figured a little info might be of some use.

Looking at DClock and the JSA's role in the story, I'd suggest it's not the team that matters to the story, but the gap their absence has left. And I may be splitting hairs and playing with phraseology, but after 10 of 12 issues, I'm getting the feeling that DClock will set up a reversal of the conditions that erased the JSA, but that story and scenes of them coming back are going to be elsewhere. The possible shifting of Geoff Johns status with DC may have changed the ending (many of us believe it has, I'm withholding actual statements as I do not know for sure). The JSA appearing on a page saying "Face it, Tiger, you just hit the jackpot" may be all we get. I can live with that, though.

[Ascended]

My honest feeling is that it's gotta just be delays on the creative side, because I cannot imagine that Johns would be made to rewrite Doomsday Clock without word of it reaching Bleeding Cool.

I'd hazard a guess that Johns is part of the lateness, not just Frank. He's been writing movies and TV scripts. He's even a showrunner on the Stargirl series. Compared to those projects, comics writing is small potatoes. Lowest priority.

That's my assumption as well. He's still doing a lot of larger media stuff, and comics have to fit around that. And I figure they're doing Clock for the trade sales. A Watchmen sequel is going to be an evergreen seller, so it doesn't matter if the individual issues are late, since it's the long-term everyone is looking at here. Shazam has seen some delays too, but that's a standard ongoing and can't suffer long delays like Clock can. And Clock is probably the best/hardest thing Johns has ever written, that's gonna take extra time.

And without doubt when the power dynamics in the office shifted, that meant a little re-writing too. Probably nothing too major, since I suspect Clock was never meant to have major, direct ties to current DC events (can't be evergreen if Superman has energy powers for reasons no one will understand in ten years), but enough to slow Johns down when he was already crawling.

As for its impact on DC? At this point who knows. Snyder and Bendis have taken the JSA and Legion, which seemed the two most likely outcomes of Clock. I also suspected that Clock would set the stage for DC's next big Event, which would see the missing decade restored (never thought Clock was gonna do that itself). Now it seems like Snyder's the one building to a reboot. Also sorta expected at least some of the Watchmen to end up in the DCU going forward....and I still think that might be on the table. But otherwise I think this is going to end up a lot more self-contained than people expected, and likely more than Johns originally intended.

[married guy]

I had such high hopes for this mini series.
I thought it was the one that would bring back the DC legacy characters and make a real change in the DCU.
Now, it's just another Watchmen sequel/tie in that has no relevance to much of anything.
Yeah, it's an enjoyable story (when it actually ships) but it's not what I thought it was going to be.

[WonderScott]

I kinda wanna see Marionette and Mime trapped on Prime Earth and hanging out in Gotham. They've got a lot of potential, especially now that Harley Quinn and the Joker are, more or less, estranged.

[EmeraldGladiator]

Maybe you should actually read the book before commenting on its contents in every single thread about it, but that's just me. Considering how the JSA has been persona non grata for so long, I'd say they are very important to the story. Besides, the poster I was replying to said "they were big parts of the mini initially and now they aren't mentioned at all"...I don't know if that poster is still reading Doomsday Clock or not, but figured a little info might be of some use.

I am reading it, but to me this qualifies as hardly mentioning. Where is Johnny, where is Imra? The whole moving the Lantern away from Alan affecting the JSA's history was mentioned early on and this page referenced is just a repetition of that, no advancement whatsoever on either teams return besides the revelation of the antagonist behind it. I find it hard to believe John's would squander a "Rebirth" (a very important part of his restoration brand) on what happened to Wally, in Heroes in Crisis, and to just say if you want to see more of the JSA and LSH, read JL and Superman. I refuse to believe all DDC is, is an excuse to bring a handful of Watchmen characters to crowded earth, but I could be wrong.

[H-E-D]

I think, as Ascended said above, the highest priority with Doomsday Clock was to craft a sequel to Watchmen that can be sold as an evergreen trade.

I'm expecting the situation with the JSA and Legion to be a lot like when Secret Wars #9 was released after Invincible Iron Man #1, and so the ending with Doom's face restored was spoiled.

[Thor-Ul]

I was expecting a Firestorm series (explaining what the hell with Dr. Stein), but I also had expected a Firestorm series from Brightest day.

[EmeraldGladiator]

I think, as Ascended said above, the highest priority with Doomsday Clock was to craft a sequel to Watchmen that can be sold as an evergreen trade.

I'm expecting the situation with the JSA and Legion to be a lot like when Secret Wars #9 was released after Invincible Iron Man #1, and so the ending with Doom's face restored was spoiled.

Wow if all of this was just for an evergreen trade, I feel hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray. Geoff Rebirthed a sagging franchise (Green Lantern) into the envy of all comicdom, he took an exiled franchise (JSA) and made it a top selling pillar of DC, so when DC universe Rebirth was announced I was expecting way bigger than an evergreen watchmen sequel. Selling it as game changing and only delivering that is penny wise and pound foolish, you get your trade but you tarnish the Rebirth brand.

Maybe Geoff is trying to become the Jeff Loeb of the DCU ( the go to guy for all the properties tv and movie projects ) but if that's the case don't tarnish your writing legacy on the way out.

[Decoy]

I figure we’ll get a new JSA book, Power Girl, LSH, maybe a Return of Jade and Obsidian as well as Alan Scott (once Rip or Booster foxes time)

[superduperman]

So much of DDC seems to be depending on the rest of the DCU going along with the larger story in it. Well, they're not. There's been no indicator in any other books that they're leading towards this "Superman Theory" or whatever it's called. No references to it anywhere else. We're now two years out (in real time) since DDC started and no other books are referencing it or heading toward the events mentioned in it. I think this is a dead end. We're getting the JSA back in JL and it doesn't look like DDC will have anything to do with that. Past that, I don't see this leading anywhere.

[Ascended]

Wow if all of this was just for an evergreen trade, I feel hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray. Geoff Rebirthed a sagging franchise (Green Lantern) into the envy of all comicdom, he took an exiled franchise (JSA) and made it a top selling pillar of DC, so when DC universe Rebirth was announced I was expecting way bigger than an evergreen watchmen sequel. Selling it as game changing and only delivering that is penny wise and pound foolish, you get your trade but you tarnish the Rebirth brand.

Maybe Geoff is trying to become the Jeff Loeb of the DCU ( the go to guy for all the properties tv and movie projects ) but if that's the case don't tarnish your writing legacy on the way out.

Oh, I think there *were* plans for Clock to have a bigger impact. But I never expected the book itself to be that big, line-wide story; I figured it was only ever going to open the door and set the stage.

That way DC would get both the big Event game changer *and* the evergreen trade.

I thought it would play out like this; Clock would be a Watchmen sequel that would stand on its own. Clock would explain why Manhattan stole and manipulated the timestream, but wouldn't actually resolve it; ensuring that the only DCU found within its pages are the mostly classic-ish Rebirth versions we have right now (trunks and all). This also avoids a lot of continuity nitty gritty that does not benefit evergreen sellers. During the course of Clock's run, the other DC books would start to angle towards the Superman Theory and all the rest of it so that the DCU "hits" the beginning events of Clock just as Clock wraps, making Clock a short bridge in essential reading; the DCU catches up to Clock, then proceeds after it, forcing you to read Clock to get the whole story. When Clock ended, it wouldn't actually resolve the broken timeline but would point ominously towards the next big Event story; some Crisis like thing where the nuts and bolts of DC continuity would actually be addressed and rectified, resulting in a rebooted (un-booted?) DCU.

Plans changed somewhere along the way it seems, and Clock is even less important than it was supposed to be, but I dont think the maxi itself was ever going to delve into current DC events, it was just going to be a Crisis prologue. Which is still pretty important.

[KangMiRae]

I feel so God damn cheated. I feel like I was led to believe DdC was going to be something major and then the entire gravity of the situation was slapped away to other events that aren't even that interesting to me, if I'm being honest. Year of the Villain, Leviathan? Neither of those are really grabbing me.

[H-E-D]

I mean, ultimately the only thing that matters is whether Doomsday Clock is any good on its own terms.

Personally, I don't think it functions very well as a Watchmen sequel, if for nothing else than the fact that Johns seems to have totally misunderstood Dr. Manhattan. Perhaps deliberately, not accidentally, because misunderstanding Dr. Manhattan is the only way to get any sort of plot like this out of the character. And he's certainly not the first – JMS seemed to do the same for Before Watchmen. What it comes down to is this interpretation of him as a time-traveling reality warper, which is just fundamentally the opposite of what he is in Watchmen.

But, reading the most issue of Doomsday Clock... it wasn't a bad read. It just helps not to think about outside books too much.

[Clark_Kent]

Oh, I think there *were* plans for Clock to have a bigger impact. But I never expected the book itself to be that big, line-wide story; I figured it was only ever going to open the door and set the stage.

That way DC would get both the big Event game changer *and* the evergreen trade.

I thought it would play out like this; Clock would be a Watchmen sequel that would stand on its own. Clock would explain why Manhattan stole and manipulated the timestream, but wouldn't actually resolve it; ensuring that the only DCU found within its pages are the mostly classic-ish Rebirth versions we have right now (trunks and all). This also avoids a lot of continuity nitty gritty that does not benefit evergreen sellers. During the course of Clock's run, the other DC books would start to angle towards the Superman Theory and all the rest of it so that the DCU "hits" the beginning events of Clock just as Clock wraps, making Clock a short bridge in essential reading; the DCU catches up to Clock, then proceeds after it, forcing you to read Clock to get the whole story. When Clock ended, it wouldn't actually resolve the broken timeline but would point ominously towards the next big Event story; some Crisis like thing where the nuts and bolts of DC continuity would actually be addressed and rectified, resulting in a rebooted (un-booted?) DCU.

Plans changed somewhere along the way it seems, and Clock is even less important than it was supposed to be, but I dont think the maxi itself was ever going to delve into current DC events, it was just going to be a Crisis prologue. Which is still pretty important.

I think it'll still mostly play out the way you originally thought it would. I think the ending to Clock will be twofold: 1, an ending insofar as the evergreen hardcover will have an ending for the casual reader, and 2, there will be enough vague lines of dialogue that it will also act as a prologue to the big finish (next Crisis event). Casuals won't even know the story continues, but for comics readers we'll know where to go from there.

It's entirely possible that Manhattan will restore the universe to an extent, ending Clock, but the outside books won't really mention it much, if at all. We'll just continue to see things added back to the continuity, as we have since Rebirth started, and the explanation will just be "you're seeing changes brought on by Doomsday Clock. Enjoy." Then Snyder or whomever can pen the next Crisis, which will reference everything (including Clock), and then stuff will be fixed with a few broken parts just as it is after every Crisis.