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It is often said that Watchmen is the most influential comic ever to be released. That comics wouldn’t be where they are without it, for good and for ill. But how did we get here, exactly? More to the point, just what influence did Watchmen provide to the larger world of comics? What, ultimately, is the legacy of Watchmen? Who watched the Watchmen?

As the first major response text to Watchmen, Legends is a tough book to find a starting point for discussion with, and an even more difficult one not to simply rant unabated on. The easiest may be the title as a statement of intent. In the immediate wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths, not only had endless ‘historical’ details profoundly shifted – the sprawling endless multiverse deleted, reams of stories cast aside, character-informing backgrounds rearranged – but the day-to-day status quos of the major players were palpably shifted. While Batman had a newfound spark of mythic import, Superman had shifted from a starlost godling forever seeking his place in a world not his own to a contented yuppie who was thrashed on the cover of his new #1; Flash and Green Lantern found replacements constantly framed in-text as being of dubious merit; Wonder Woman was a fledgling figure only making her debut to the larger world at the climax of this very miniseries; at the nominal center of the shared universe the Justice League of America was composed of charitably third and fourth-stringer heroes. In the midst of this iconic void, the likes of the Teen Titans, Blue Beetle, and Captain Marvel could now be positioned as tent poles. Following this collective deliberate scaling-down, building the first post-Crisis ‘event’ entirely around reasserting the primacy of these characters and the superhero concept was a reasonable, even inspired mission statement.

Legends is a title with an entirely different charge, however, when said superhero concept had just been turned on its ear. Crisis On Infinite Earths, first and foremost a paradoxical celebration and condemnation of DC’s history from a fan-minded continuity standpoint, had begun formal development in 1982; Frank Miller had only recently taken over writing duties on Daredevil and Alan Moore had yet to make his stateside debut in Swamp Thing. By the time Legends rolled off the presses in 1986, The Dark Knight Returns and, to a lesser extent, Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow? had given definitive capstones to the companies’ two biggest characters, and Watchmen was in the midst of completely rewriting the rules of the game. Legends found itself in the position of defending a traditional interpretation of an idea at the exact moment in the industry’s history when said idea was most comprehensively and popularly uprooted.

Its approach to doing so is, again, right there in the name: ‘Watchmen’ is associated with a phrase evoking skepticism and accountability. ‘Legends’ are distant, misty, ahistorical. Unimpeachable. [Read more…] about Who Watched The Watchmen?: Watchmen’s Legacy on… DC’s Legends