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Who Watched the Watchmen? Alan Moore’s “What We Can Know About Thunderman”

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Alan Moore’s relationship with superheroes in the wake of Watchmen has been… contentious, to say the least. This is due in no small part to Alan’s relationship with DC Comics. To be perfectly blunt, DC Comics’ attitude to Alan Moore can be best compared to an abusive ex-boyfriend who has never gotten over being dumped. So he (DC) routinely calls his former girlfriend (Alan) at the dead of night, engineering schemes to get her back, all the while badmouthing the poor woman to anyone he can pull into listening to him ramble like an incoherent drunk at a third rate bar that doesn’t even have any decent rats. All the while the woman is just trying to move on with her life, but everyone from old friends to complete strangers to new co-workers simply won’t stop asking her about the ex.

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At one point, she’s working in the same office as her ex (because the son of a bitch bought out the whole building without her knowledge), and she makes it perfectly clear that she wants nothing to do with her ex. And, for a short while, the guy acquiesces. But when she begins to work on something personal and difficult, something that could get the ex into trouble with the sort of people you should make life more miserable for (and one thing that was so arbitrary, you have to assume he knew it’d piss her off but did it anyways), the ex decides to butt in and make it impossible for her to do the gig. So, naturally, she quits.

Then, one day, the son of a bitch sends one of her old friends—a term used loosely given what’s about to happen—to ask her to help with something they did together a few years back. She says that she wants absolutely nothing to do with it, but won’t say anything negative about it. Offhandedly, the friend notes, “that’s good, he said you would be quietly compliant.” At this, she explodes at the world, cuts off most of her friends who stood by the abusive ex while he did unconscionable things to her, and badmouths the sons of bitches who weren’t there but think nothing truly unconscionable happened (or, rather, profit off the unconscionable). In response, the ex decides to hurt her best friend, whose brother is in hospital at the time with something that looks fatal.

So yeah, Alan Moore and DC have a rocky relationship, to say the least.

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X-Men #15-17 in Review—Return to the Vault!

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Credits: Gerry Duggan writes; Joshua Cassara arts; Guru-eFX colors; Clayton Cowles letters; covers by Martin Coccolo (#15, #17), Giuseppe Camuncoli (#16) with colors by Jesus Aburtov (#15-16) an Neeraj Menon (#17)

“Collapse Theory” / “The Mutant We Left Behind” / “Size Matters”

This three-issue Children of the Vault arc is the first Forge-centric story we’ve had in many years, and it’s three issues! Granted, it’s not entirely focused on Forge, but this was a major spotlight for the character, albeit not exactly the most flattering one!

For 21st-century readers who know that Forge (birth name unknown) is a Cheyenne Native American but don’t understand why he’s never depicted as connecting with his heritage, Claremont’s foundational work with the character will show you his fraught relationship with his cultural upbringing. Forge’s limelight is pretty much restricted to the Claremont run, especially in the years after his 1984 debut in Uncanny X-Men #184, (also Rachel Summers’ fourth ever appearance and Selene’s fifth—foundational indeed!). There was also Howard Mackie’s late-stage X-Factor run of the late ’90s, really the last gasp for Forge fans.

If you’re pressed for time and want some wonderful audio entertainment instead, I highly recommend checking out Connor Goldsmith’s recent Cerebro episode on Forge with guest Josh Trujillo, comics writer for Adventure Time, Captain America, Rick and Morty and most recently Blue Beetle, as well, and also part Cheyenne himself.

Here we can say, long story cut much too short, Forge sees himself as a man of science and technology who wants nothing to do with the very real mysticism that was part of his upbringing as a shaman in training. And the devastating trauma behind this aversion at least seems mostly unrelated from more fraught territory that white writers like Claremont and after were not prepared to deal with, that is, those all-too common stories of white society nearly wholesale destruction of indigenous culture and the tortured process of assimilation, which has frequently involved much self-shame and even hatred while white people look on oblivious (speaking as someone whose family encompasses both perspectives in the long history of Southern poverty, and I certainly don’t feel equipped to this story from a Native (Choctaw and Cherokee) perspective, either).

Forge’s personal story treads more lightly over the history of white genocide against Native Americans, although Claremont certainly acknowledged the reality as far as comics of the time would allow (which was far more than most creators back then), and instead focuses on his experiences in the Vietnam War—something many Americans of all colors would have identified with less than a decade after the US defeat and withdrawal there (much more disastrous even than the tragic chaos of our pullout from Afghanistan*).

After losing a hand and leg in a “friendly fire” B-52 attack, Forge called on his abilities as a mystic and, utilizing the souls of his dead comrades all around him, summoned the Adversary to kill enemy soldiers as they closed in on the bomb-devastated area. The cost of summoning a chaos demon? His fallen friends tormented eternally in a hell dimension, apparently. To be clear, though, this was a decision he made during an unimaginably horrifying trauma—in excruciating pain, rage and fear in a foreign jungle at night. Add to that, Forge’s subsequent horror and desolation at his own knee-jerk reaction.

He had so much power on call, and the first time he really used it, it did not go well for anyone—except that he lived, albeit with horrific survivor’s guilt. So, yeah, he swore off the magic after that. And as a mutant techno-genius, he built himself some gloriously chrome prostheses, proud of his (lightly) cyborg nature now.

So, when you look at Forge and think, Oh, there’s that techy quad squad jock, there is a lot of pain that went in to making this Tony Stark of Krakoa.

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Pax Americana and The Infinite Loop Of Imperiums

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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?

Rebirth hadn’t yet happened.

Doomsday Clock was not a thing.

Rorschach and the Watchmen TV show didn’t exist.

Only Before Watchmen did.

DC had only made one serious attempt to milk Watchmen and cash-in on it before. And it had bombed, big time. Nobody liked it or cared for it. It was over. They knew it. Everybody did.

And so there was that brief period of time- the quiet calm, the gap between the first big attempt and the next big attempt-wherein it felt like we could perhaps move forward from Watchmen nostalgia. Wherein we could get past it all. And if we were to engage with it, it wouldn’t be literally, by sequelizing it or using characters from it, but rather through the challenges it offered via its formal daring and political critique.

And so let us journey backwards, into that frozen moment, that small gap of time, where the prospect of creators reckoning with Watchmen held a spark of real intrigue.

Welcome to The Multiversity: Pax Americana #1.

A one-shot story utilizing the original Charlton characters upon whom the Watchmen characters were based, constructed for an all new post-Watchmen, post-9/11 world and climate.

Brought to us by the creative team of Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, Nathan Fairbairn, and Rob Leigh.
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