Doomsday Clock #12: Nothing Ever Ends

Writer: Geoff Johns / Artist: Gary Frank / DC Comics Delays happen in comics all the time. Either by adding issues or droughts between issues, this is almost standard operating procedure at this point, but the stakes for Doomsday Clock were different. As they were a means to explain the numerous reboots and interwoven with some existing storylines, the delays of the comic really hurt it in the most predictable ways. What wasn’t typical and surely not in the planning of this comic, was the explosion of The Watchmen TV show. By most critical accounts, it has been regarded as one of the best shows of the year and is the identifiable 2019 Watchmen content that people will recognize first. For perspective, issue #11 was released on September 4th of this year. The Watchmen didn’t come on TV until late October and aired all nine of its critically acclaimed episodes before we got the finale of Doomsday Clock. If you count all the delays (not just between 11 & 12), then Doomsday Clock would’ve wrapped up well before HBO debuted its first episode. But instead, it claimed the dominant versions of Dr. Manhattan, Adrian Veidt, etc, etc and now Doomsday Clock feels like an afterthought. Which is super unfortunate because the book had gained some great momentum on the back half of its issues. We were finally set up for the confrontation between Jon & Clark…then we waited for three months. Which could’ve still been fine, but we weren’t waiting alone. Not if we had a subscription to…