DC Comics and Watchmen Collide in Doomsday Clock

When DC Comics’ Rebirth Special #1 was released last year, it opened the door to a very special crossover and since then, the publisher has been quietly building toward this moment. Now, DC Entertainment’s CCO Geoff Johns has confirmed the worlds of the DCU and Watchmen will collide in a new mini-series event titled Doomsday Clock.

Speaking with Syfy Wire, Johns confirmed that the upcoming story is not a sequel to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal comic series but “something else.”

“It is Watchmen colliding with the DC Universe. It is the most personal and most epic, utterly mind-bending project I have ever worked on in my career. With Rebirth, I opened the door to Manhattan. Part of that was I loved the real-world influence Watchmen has. I put Manhattan out there, and always thought there was a Manhattan/Superman story to be told, but then … it grew. And grew. It took my heart and soul over. Still, at the core of it, there’s a being who has lost his humanity, and distanced himself from it, and an alien who embodies humanity more than most humans. I love the idea that Watchmen influenced DC, but what would that look like in reverse? And it goes well beyond that.”

Johns will script the series, which has artist and frequent Johns collaborator Gary Frank on pencils, with Brad Anderson on colors. Johns goes on to reveal the series won’t be like other crossovers with no spin-off one shots and additional comics to “get the whole story.”

“We’re not going to do a story like this unless we one-thousand percent believe in it. It is all about the story; it is only about the story. There are no crossovers. No watered down one-shots or mini-series on top of this one. This is a standalone story. There is only Doomsday Clock. We had no interest in doing a crossover with this. We didn’t want to see Doctor Manhattan facing off against Superman in Action Comics, with all due respect. That is not what this is about. It is about something different … It will have an impact on the entire DC Universe. It will affect everything moving forward and everything that has come before. It will touch the thematic and literal essence of DC.”

Doomsday Clock will begin to count down this November.