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DC Comics To Release Doomsday Clock #1 At 11:57PM, Tuesday, November 21st

DC Comics has had midnight release events before, in which comic stores are given permission to sell a new release at midnight on the day of release, rather than waiting for the store's general opening hours. These generally happen when there are special variant covers available, that sort of thing. Well, because this is Doomsday Clock #1 by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank, playing up on the Watchmen imagery, they are releasing it three minutes early.

The Doomsday Clock is meant to indicate how long humanity has to its destruction, based on the lifespan of the human race so far. In Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, the imagery on the cover moved from 12 minutes to midnight, to midnight, over the length of the series.

In real life, the Doomsday Clock was moved forward from three minutes to two minutes to midnight after the war of words over Korea.

The 11:57 PM release event for Doomsday Clock on the evening of Tuesday, November 21st (hrm, an unexpected birthday gift) will see participating stores receive Gray Frank lithographs, badges/pins, a black-and-white 11:57PM release exclusive cover

Which might, at a guess, look a little something like this.

Doomsday Clock is part of the DC Rebirth line of comics and continues the narrative established with 2016's one-shot DC Universe: Rebirth Special #1 and 2017's crossover The Button. The miniseries will introduce characters from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen into the DC Universe. Doomsday Clock will feature twelve issues releasing over a year-long period.

The story will include many DC characters but has particular focus on Superman and Doctor Manhattan. Johns felt like there was interesting story to be told in Rebirth with Doctor Manhattan. He thought there was an interesting dichotomy between Superman—a character who embodies and is compassionate for humanity—and Doctor Manhattan—a character who has detached himself from humanity. This led to over six months of debates amongst the creative team about whether to intersect the Watchmen universe with the DC Universe. He explained that Doomsday Clock was the "most personal and most epic, utterly mind-bending project" that he had worked on in his career.

It is possible that Alan Moore may disagree. Indeed this will now be released three days after Moore's 64th birthday, It is always possible he may be minded to say something.

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