Watchmen

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of graphic violence, violence against animals, suicide, alcohol addiction, and attempted rape. The source text also contains outdated, racist, and misogynistic language, which is reproduced in this guide only through quotations.

In a world of costumed heroes and masked vigilantes, Dr. Manhattan is a genuine superhero, an omnipotent and immortal being who experiences every moment of his existence all at once, enabling him to see some aspects of the future. He was born Jon Osterman, the son of a watchmaker, and experienced a classic origin story when a laboratory accident transformed him into a superhuman. Invulnerable, wielding absolute power to manipulate matter, and existing beyond the normal human experience of space and time, he is immediately heralded as the trump card in the Cold War. As one news anchor declares, “the superman exists, and he’s American” (123), but like the nuclear weapons to which his name alludes—the “Manhattan Project,” the US effort to build an atomic bomb during the World War II—his power is more threatened than utilized. He is seen vaporizing a criminal in one of Moloch’s clubs and helps the US win the Vietnam War, but otherwise, it is mainly his presence that deters Soviet aggression—his relocation to Mars is allegedly what leads the Soviets to invade Afghanistan and ratchet up tensions.