Watchmen: Everything You Need to Know About the Classic Graphic Novel

As HBO and Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers, Lost) prepare to enter the world of Watchmen with their follow-up series, which debuts on October 20, this seems like a good time to catch up on the events of the original 12-issue graphic novel by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and John Higgins.

That seminal book was of course turned into a movie directed by Zack Snyder in 2009, though by its very nature the film had to drop or alter several elements from the comic. Additionally, the HBO Watchmen TV series is a continuation of the book, not the movie, set some 34 years after that story. (The movie, of course, had a different ending than the comic.) Read our first impressions of the Watchmen pilot.

So here's everything you need to know about the original Watchmen series, the men who made it, and the massive impact it's had on pop culture history.

Who Are the Watchmen?

The titular team is made up of six costumed heroes (although they’re never really called Watchmen in the comic). Our "in" character is Walter Kovacs' Rorschach, a desperate and deranged vigilante who will stop at nothing to find the truth. Edward Blake is better known as the Comedian, a Vietnam vet, mass murderer, and rapist whose suspicious death sparks the story. The only woman on the team is Laurie Juspeczyk, also known as the Silk Spectre, who took on that costumed-adventurer mantle from her mother. Laurie's romantic partner is the naked, blue, and omnipotent Doctor Manhattan, who began life as a nuclear physicist called Jonathan Osterman. Next on the slate is inventor Daniel Dreiberg, who took on the legacy title of Nite Owl from one of the Minutemen (the previous generation of masked heroes). And last but certainly not least is the super-smart Adrian Veidt, who worked under the historically ominous name Ozymandias.

The Watchmen’s Story

Watchmen is set in an alt-universe version of America where the country won the Vietnam War with the help of Doctor Manhattan, and Richard Nixon is still President after the repeal of the 22nd Amendment. Though in this universe masked crime-fighters were once a part of everyday life with the heroic Minutemen living as both vigilantes and celebrities, they have been banned by the time the book begins, leaving the former heroes in disarray. After the murder of the Comedian, his former teammate Rorschach dedicates himself to solving the crime, unitentionally uncovering a vast and terrifying conspiracy that reconnects the old team and will ultimately end up changing the face of the world as they know it forever. As Rorschach seeks out his old teammates, the history of the Watchmen is revealed in flashbacks even while their relationships unravel as the ragtag team tries to uncover who's really pulling the strings behind the death of their former friend.

Check out IGN's History of Awesome video below, where we delve into the importance of the year 1986 in comic books.

A Shocking Twist

When the book was originally released, Watchmen’s biggest surprise came in the final issue. It opens with a technicolor massacre, half of New York dead, and the world in shock at an apparent alien invasion. With the heroes finally reunited it's revealed that the big bad all along was in fact one of their own, Adrian Veidt, who -- along with some of the greatest minds in the world -- concocted the machiavellian scheme to save the planet.

In fact, Veidt had genetically engineered a giant, squid-like creature and teleported it into the middle of Manhattan, causing immense destruction and the deaths of millions of New Yorkers. This fake invasion accomplishes Veidt’s ultimate goal: The United States and the Soviet Union, which had been on the brink of nuclear war throughout the story, unite in the face of this supposed greater, alien threat. It was this bonkers plan that had driven the Comedian mad when he discovered it, leading to his murder at the hands of Veidt himself in order to keep it all secret. (In the movie, of course, the squid was dropped and Veidt's plan involved framing Doctor Manhattan as the threat that would unite the nations.)

Perhaps even more surprising, however, was the fact that the other Watchmen choose to stay quiet about this plan after confronting Adrian about his machinations, seeing the devastation, and hearing his justification that the world is now at peace, united against the faux-alien threat. The only one of the so-called heroes who doesn't play along is Rorschach, who's instantly killed by Doctor Manhattan for trying to leave in order to tell the world the truth. Seen as one of the biggest final act twists in comics, it turns the idea of superheroes on their head by making the characters that readers had spent a year following complicit in what is tantamount to a genocide, a brutal killing of the relative few for the betterment of the many.

Despite the heroes’ attempt to cover up the plan, the series ends with an intern at the local newspaper picking up Rorshach's journal, leaving open the potential to blow the lid off of Ozymandias' victory.

A Second Comic

One of the most interesting narrative and formatting choices that the creative team made with Watchmen was to include a secondary story which runs throughout the book, introduced through the pages of a comic that a young boy reads at a local newsstand. Tales of the Black Freighter is an in-universe comic which is seen as something of a classic, and it breaks up the main story, appearing in issues three, five, eight, 10, and 11 of the series. Moore came up with the idea of a pirate story after realizing that seeing as superheroes were real, the people who lived in that universe likely wouldn't really care about stories that feature them. Though it might seem like a random interjection, the story of a young man who ventures back to his hometown to warn them of an oncoming attack from the mysterious phantom ship known as the Black Freighter actually ends up thematically reflecting the journey of Ozymandias. It's a conceptual commentary on the idea of heroism and the lengths that people will go to "save the world."

This might not seem like it fits in with what we know about the Watchmen TV series so far, but Lindelof does appear to have been hinting at the importance of the story in the trailer for the show, where one can spot a yellow and black Jolly Roger flag hanging from a scythe.

A Lesser Known Inspiration

The Watchmen characters have become iconic in their own right, but the series began life as a way for DC to use their newly acquired IP from Charlton Comics. Though that never came to pass, each of the core cast still works as an analogue of the classic publisher's roster. Rorschach is a reworking of Steve Ditko's the Question. Both iterations of Nite Owl are inspired by the original two heroes who took on the mantle of Blue Beetle. The near-omnipotent Doctor Manhattan is Watchmen's version of Captain Atom. Silk Spectre was originally planned to be the Captain Atom superheroine known as Nightshade. The Comedian takes his cue from the pacifist-turned-vigilante called Peacemaker. And Ozymandias, posed as the perfect superhero, plays as a twisted reflection of Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt. Ironically, most of these heroes now exist under the DC banner in their own right, alongside the Watchmen characters they inspired.

An Unimaginable Impact

It's not hyperbolic to say that Watchmen changed the way that comics were both made and read. Watchmen has, since its release in 1986, never left comic book -- and, eventually, book store -- shelves. It was included in Time's 100 Best American Novels list, which introduced it to an entirely new audience and began the wider (and painfully late) reconsideration of comics as a true form of literature. The book has long influenced the way that comics were made for decades, with the gritty deconstruction of supers becoming the norm and their campy origins often forgotten, obliterated just like Rorshach was in the Antarctic.

Watch the trailer for HBO's Watchmen:

How will the original Watchmen story play into the HBO series, which will feature a mix of both new and old characters? The series debuts on October 20, so we’ll start to find out then! In the meantime, check out everything we know about the Watchmen TV series right here.

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