Doctor Manhattan

• 1. Introduction

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  Doctor Manhattan, the blue-skinned superhuman of the graphic novel Watchmen, wears a mark that nobody assigned to him. Military planners prepared a hat for his public unveiling, decorated with crossed ellipses meant to suggest an atom. Jon Osterman, the physicist he used to be, did not see the resemblance. He declined the hat and etched a stylized hydrogen atom onto his own forehead. If he had to carry a symbol, he said, it should at least be one he respects. That small act of defiance hints at a larger story. Here is a man who can rebuild matter particle by particle, yet slowly loses the ability to care about the people around him. How did writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons shape such a character? What did one laboratory accident do to his sense of time? And why does he keep appearing long after Watchmen ended?

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• 2. Designing a Quantum Hero

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  Alan Moore's original proposal for Watchmen was built around Charlton Comics' Captain Atom, a hero overshadowed by the threat of nuclear war. Moore soon found he could do more with a character he called "a supreme super-hero" than he ever could with Captain Atom. The finished Manhattan is partly based on Captain Atom, though he has more in common with Gold Key Comics' Solar.

  Moore wanted to dig into nuclear physics and quantum mechanics. He reasoned that a being living in a quantum universe would not experience time as a straight line. That difference would then color how the being judged human affairs. Moore also did not want an emotionless figure like Spock from Star Trek. So he let Manhattan keep "human habits" at first, then slowly grow away from them and from humanity in general.

  Dave Gibbons had already created a blue character, Rogue Trooper, and he reused the idea of blue skin for Manhattan. Blue suggested electrical or atomic energy, yet it still sat close to human skin in tone. In Gibbons's words, it read as Jon Osterman's skin would have read, only in a different hue. Moore built color into the story, and Gibbons noted that the comic's wider palette made Manhattan stand apart.

  Nudity was another design question. Moore recalled being unsure whether DC would let the creators show the character fully unclothed, and that doubt partly shaped their approach. Gibbons chose his full frontal shots carefully. He drew "understated" anatomy, like a classical sculpture, so that readers would not notice it at first. Before any of that design mattered, though, the character needed a past, and it begins with a watchmaker's son.

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• 3. A Watchmaker's Son

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  Jonathan Osterman was born in 1929 to a Jewish-American family of German descent. He planned to follow his father into watchmaking. Then the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. His father declared the trade outdated and pushed him toward a career in nuclear physics. The story treats this moment as a foreshadowing of how Manhattan will later see time, as something predetermined, with even his reactions and emotions fixed in advance.

  Jon attended Princeton University and earned a Ph.D. in atomic physics. In early 1959 he moved to a research base at Gila Flats. Experiments there targeted the "intrinsic fields" of physical objects, which, if tampered with, make those objects disintegrate. At Gila Flats he met a fellow researcher named Janey Slater, and the two became lovers.

  The accident began with a broken watch. During a visit to an amusement park in New Jersey, Janey's wristwatch stopped working, and Jon promised to fix it. A month later he realized he had left the repaired watch in his lab coat inside a test chamber. He stepped in to get it, and the door shut and locked behind him. Researchers outside could not open the door or override the countdown. The force of the generator tore Jon to pieces.

  Then came months of strange events. Ghostly appearances led the researchers to speculate that the area was haunted. In fact, Jon was slowly rebuilding himself. First a disembodied nervous system appeared, with a brain and eyes. Next came a circulatory system, then a partially muscled skeleton. Each sighting lasted only seconds. Finally he returned as a blue-skinned man glowing with a "flare of ultraviolet". The United States government was already waiting to put him to use.

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• 4. Weapon of the Cold War

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  The government gave him the code name Doctor Manhattan, a reference to the Manhattan Project, along with a costume he accepted only begrudgingly. His fondness for simple material mechanisms marked the start of his declining humanity. The costume shrank over time, from a black leotard to shorts, then a brief, then a thong. By the end of the 1970s he refused clothing altogether, except for mandatory public appearances. The costume had only ever served to make other people comfortable.

  President Richard Nixon asked him to win the Vietnam War, and Manhattan secured an American victory. That success allowed Nixon to repeal the 22nd Amendment and serve up to five terms. His presence tipped the balance of the Cold War in the West's favor, and United States foreign policy grew more militaristic. Far from solving underlying tensions, he exacerbated them while stifling their expression, and that pressure inevitably built toward disaster. Because he could destroy Soviet nuclear missiles while also devastating large areas of Russia, he became central to American deterrence strategy.

  Manhattan spent much of his time on research. He was single-handedly responsible for the shift to electric-powered vehicles. Adrian Veidt credits him with a huge leap forward across a myriad of science and technology sectors. As a result, the alternative 1985 of the Watchmen universe is far more advanced than ours. That world still held a different kind of danger, one that would force Manhattan to decide whether humanity deserved his attention.

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• 5. Mars and Antarctica

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  At the opening of Watchmen, Manhattan works at the Rockefeller Military Research Center and lives there with Laurie Juspeczyk, the second Silk Spectre. He had grown attracted to her during the only meeting of the Crimebusters group, and his relationship with Janey Slater ended acrimoniously. Rorschach arrives to report the murder of Edward Blake, the Comedian, and warns of a "mask killer" targeting former costumed adventurers. Manhattan is exempt from the federal law outlawing costumed heroes because he works for the government. He teleports Rorschach outside and encourages Laurie to go out with Dan Dreiberg, the second Nite Owl.

  A talk show appearance changes everything. A reporter ambushes Manhattan with allegations that he gave cancer to former associates, including Janey. He retreats to Mars, saying "I am tired of Earth, these people. I'm tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives". Laurie was his only remaining link to humanity, and the Soviet Union seizes the moment of his absence by invading Afghanistan. Laurie follows him to Mars to argue that he should help.

  She wins the argument without meaning to. During the conversation she realizes that her father is Blake, a man she despised for sexually assaulting her mother. Manhattan is amazed by the improbable chain of events that produced Laurie, and he calls it a "thermodynamic miracle". The same miracle, he realizes, applies to any living thing on Earth. That insight persuades him to protect humanity rather than dismiss it as insignificant.

  By then the trap has closed. Veidt had framed Manhattan as part of a plot to avert World War III by attacking New York with an engineered monster, which killed half of the city. Manhattan and Laurie arrive too late and teleport to Veidt's base in Antarctica. Veidt tries to disintegrate him, but Manhattan restores himself faster than Veidt expected. Seeing that the plan has averted war, Manhattan agrees to stay silent, because exposure would undo the peace treaties.

  Rorschach refuses to keep the secret and heads out to expose it. Manhattan rebuffs him, and Rorschach, unable to live with the knowledge, begs to be killed. Manhattan vaporizes him. He then decides to leave Earth again, hoping to find a galaxy "less complicated than this one". Veidt asks whether his plan worked out in the end. Manhattan answers, "In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends". Years later, in another universe, he would take those words back.

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• 6. Powers and Physics

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  Jon Osterman is the only character in Watchmen with real superpowers, apart from some psychics who never engage in costumed heroics. He is invulnerable to all harm, and even when his body is disintegrated, he rebuilds it in seconds. He can change his size, hurl huge objects with his hands, and never exhausts himself. He needs no air, water, food, or sleep, and he is immortal.

  His control over atomic and subatomic particles underlies everything else. He can transmute, create, and destroy matter, and he can turn his body into a wide range of elemental compounds. He can phase through solid objects without damaging them, produce independent copies of himself, project destructive energy, and generate impenetrable force fields. He can teleport himself and others across limitless distances. He is capable of true flight, though he mostly uses levitation. He can also move objects without touching them, reverse entropy, and repair anything, however damaged. He claims he can create life, and he says he has walked on the surface of the sun.

  His most unsettling power is perception. Because he sees past, present, and future at once, he experiences events in a way that no human can share. His ability to disintegrate people with a thought was shown on fleeing soldiers during the Vietnam War. It may work by nullifying their intrinsic fields, the same thing that destroyed his original body.

  The physics professor James Kakalios of the University of Minnesota served as a scientific consultant on the 2009 film. He explained that the intrinsic field has a basis in reality, because it represents a collection of the electromagnetic, strong, and weak nuclear forces. A being able to manipulate matter would have complete control over all three. Kakalios added that Manhattan's teleportation, while unlikely, could seemingly be achieved through quantum tunnelling, if he controlled his own probability wave functions.

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• 7. Rewriting the DC Universe

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  In 2016, as part of the Rebirth relaunch, Manhattan became a major character in the DC Universe. He had already returned in the Before Watchmen prequel, and he would be a central figure in the Doomsday Clock miniseries, published from 2017 to 2019. The story says he knew of the DC Universe because of blindspots in his vision, and that he came looking for a place among its people, perhaps beside Superman.

  Flashpoint is where the trail of his meddling begins. It is speculated that he deceived Pandora into convincing Barry Allen to merge three timelines: the DC Universe, the WildStorm universe, and select Vertigo titles. The result was Prime Earth. The merger let him erase ten years, which reversed the ages of its inhabitants and brought several dead characters back to life. It is also speculated that he used Abra Kadabra to trap Wally West in the Speed Force. That change removed the speedsters Jesse Quick, Bart Allen, Jay Garrick, and Max Mercury from history.

  A blood-stained smiley face button shows the cost of crossing him. Eobard Thawne picks it up in the Batcave and is teleported away. He returns with half of his body charred to the bone and claims to have seen "God". Later, Manhattan vaporizes Thawne and leaves only the button behind. Even so, Manhattan could not erase or permanently kill Thawne, the Reverse-Flash.

  Doomsday Clock opens seven years after the events of Watchmen. Adrian Veidt, now calling himself Ozymandias, is determined to find Manhattan after Rorschach's journal exposed his world-peace plan. He can track Manhattan because Manhattan leaks electrons. Veidt follows that trail to Gotham City with Rorschach II, Marionette, and Mime.

  Manhattan reveals his deepest experiments through memory. On the 16th of July 1940, Alan Scott was riding a train over a collapsing bridge and survived by grabbing a green lantern. Manhattan moved that lantern six inches out of reach, so that Alan died and left no family. His own first arrival in the DC Universe, on the 18th of April 1938, put him in a diner with a man named Carver Colman. There he saw every moment of Carver's future until his death. He then witnessed the first appearance of the Golden Age Superman and the formation of the Justice Society of America. By removing the lantern, Manhattan came to see that this world is the Metaverse, with the Multiverse reacting to changes inside it.

  On Mars, many heroes gather around him, and Martian Manhunter broadcasts Manhattan's vision of a confrontation with Superman. Manhattan dissects Guy Gardner's power ring and calls the magic of Justice League Dark the "scraps of Creation". Ronnie Raymond attacks and harms him, so the heroes learn that he is not invulnerable and destroy him. He reconstitutes himself and incapacitates them all. The expected clash with Superman arrives during Black Adam's invasion of the White House. Manhattan confesses that he caused the deaths of Jonathan and Martha Kent, and he expects to be struck. Instead Superman protects him from Pozhar and tells him to use his powers for good.

  That answer changes him. He undoes part of his actions, and much of the pre-New 52 timeline is restored, including Superman's parents. He returns to the Watchmen universe with Rorschach and Ozymandias and makes all nuclear weapons disappear. He takes Mime and Marionette's infant son, whom he names Clark, so that the boy can become the planet's own Superman. His last thought is a daydream in which he lets Janey keep the watch unfixed, marries her, and raises two daughters and a son. He smiles, erases himself from existence, and passes his powers to the child. Now he says that "everything ends". The former Nite Owl and Silk Spectre adopt Clark.

  His energy outlived him. In Dark Nights: Death Metal, Wally West reveals that Manhattan's energy is Connective Energy, the opposite of Crisis Energy. A fusion of Batman and Manhattan, nicknamed "Batmanhattan", appears there too. The Batman Who Laughs transplants his brain into that body to gain its powers.

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• 8. Meanings and Screens

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  Media analysts read Doctor Manhattan as an exploration of the tension between absolute power and its moral use. They also see a commentary on American exceptionalism in the late 20th century. The character raises questions in the philosophy of time and eternalism, and in determinism and its relationship to ethics. He also prompts questions such as "What does it mean to be human?" and "Do the ends justify the means?" He is often cited as a picture of the dangers of a superintelligence, including detachment from humanity and a drift toward apathy.

  Billy Crudup played him in the 2009 film Watchmen, with Greg Plitt supplying the physical likeness and Jaryd Heidrick playing his younger self. In the film, Ozymandias uses Manhattan's energy research to destroy several large cities and frames him as a scapegoat. Jon corners Adrian at Karnak and, as in the books, leaves Laurie for Mars after killing Rorschach.

  In Watchmen: Motion Comic, Tom Stechschulte voices Manhattan along with every other character. The 2019 television series Watchmen cast Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in the role, with Darrell Snedeger as his original form and Zak Rothera-Oxley as his younger self. Here he first appears as Cal Abar, husband of Angela Abar, who is Sister Night. Despite his long detachment from humanity, he turns back and wants love and a relationship again. He is eventually destroyed, and it is implied that some of his powers pass to Angela. Michael Cerveris voices him in Watchmen (2024), and Crispin Freeman voices him in the video game Watchmen: The End Is Nigh.

  Other comics have echoed him. In Final Crisis #2, the exiled Monitor Nix Uotan sketches a figure resembling Doctor Manhattan. Grant Morrison described a Captain Atom from Earth 4 as an amalgam of the original Charlton universe and a Watchmen parallel world. That character, Captain Adam, appears in Superman Beyond #1 with blue skin and the hydrogen atom mark. He relies on drugs to keep his "quantum senses" in check, and even at full potential he struggles to control his powers, unlike Doctor Manhattan.

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