Dr Manhattan In The DCU

With Doomsday Clock in full swing, questions are being asked about where Dr Manhattan is hiding in the DCU. The possibility’s been raised that he might be masquerading as someone, perhaps a hero, but if so, then who?

Captain Atom is the obvious – perhaps too obvious – choice as he was the character Manhattan was based upon in the original Watchmen series.

Superman or Dr Fate are possibilities – one’s super strong, the other could be masquerading Manhattan’s reality altering abilities as magic.

Maybe he’s Zatanna – he could easily swap his gender if he wanted to hide in plain sight.

Or maybe . . . maybe he’s not a person at all . . . maybe he’s a thing . . . an object . . . carefully placed to listen in on superhero conversations . . .

Can we get a close up on that mug the Atom’s using?

Oh my God! He’s here, everybody – Dr Manhattan’s here!

Masquerading as a coffee mug!

I, for one, did not see that coming.

Scan from JLA #77, March 2003. And if Doomsday Clock references this mug, you read it here first, folks.

Cheating On My LCS

It’s all the fault of the Brave and The Bold, I tell you.

I’ve been getting my comics from my local shop for almost thirty years. Sure, I’ll buy trades from Amazon – and before that, play.com if anyone remembers them – in order to save myself a few pounds and get them delivered the next day, but for my weekly fix, for the regular series on my pull list, I head to my comic shop on a Friday or Saturday.

The owner’s been good to me over the years – he knows what I like and has suggested stuff every now and then that perhaps I wouldn’t have tried. Some of it I enjoyed, some I didn’t, but it’s nice to have that interaction.

With Dark Nights: Metal, I told the owner that I’d be getting the main series but not the one-shot tie ins; as you’ll see soon enough, I’m having to build a new bookcase to house my ever expanding collection of comics, and yet more physical copies just didn’t sit well with me.

A few days ago, I was browsing Comixology more out of curiosity than anything else. I’ve bought a handful of items from them – the digital Crisis on Infinite Earths and the War of The Gods collection – when I saw Brave and The Bold #28 to #30 on the site, the first appearance of the Justice League of America. While I have the issues in the Showcase Presents collections, and the Archive editions that came out years ago, the chances of me owning the actual issues are remote. However, for under a fiver, I could get the three of them digitally. A few clicks of a button later and there they sat, in my books in the Comixology cloud.

And then I started looking around at what else was out there.

And started to succumb.

I bought all twenty three issues of Fate, the ridiculous 90s series that came out of Zero Hour and transformed Dr Fate into a dagger wielding, pouch strap wearing magician. I have both Guy Gardner: Reborn and Guy Gardner: Warrior on my wish list, alongside Captain Atom and LEGION. I’ve even saved Anima for later – you know, because I’m currently annotating Bloodlines so it sort of counts as research.

And now I find myself looking at the Dark Night: Metal tie-ins.

Even though I told my comic shop I didn’t want them.

What to do . . . ?

More Minifigs

Or at least miniature pictures of characters. Sort of.

Looking back at some old copies of Justice League America and Justice League Europe recently and I remembered the little pictures of characters that used to appear in the issue number box on DC comics back in the early 90s. Oddly, despite the larger membership at the time, the JLA only had two pairs:

JLE fared a little better:

and even managed to get a few more in after their revamp and new members:

I’d thought for a while that JLA/JLE were the only titles with those but a quick look through my collection turned up these from Green Lantern: