Posted in: Batman, Comics, Crisis, DC Comics, Doomsday Clock | Tagged: dc comics, Doomsday Clock, flashpoint, flashpoint beyond, geoff johns, Watchmen

The Return Of Dr Manhattan's Son In Flashpoint Beyond #0

Published Thu, 10 Mar 2022 12:50:12 -0600

by Rich Johnston

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DC Comics has issued a preview of the upcoming Flashpoint Beyond #0 by Geoff Johns, Eduardo Risso, Trish Mulvihill, and Rob Leigh, featuring Batman, the characters Mime and Marionette from Watchmen sequel Doomsday Clock. The full preview runs below, and in all DC Comics titles out on the weeks of the 29th of March and the 5th of April. but here are a few highlights.

Rip Hunter's blackboard not only tells us that 5G is no longer happening (even if Dark Crisis suggests much of it might be). The Death of The justice League is teased as is a replacement. And that Deathstroke's daughter, Rose Wilson, will rejoin the Justice Society. And someone is hunting the Tim Masters.

That's them, including Rip Hunter, alongside Bonnie Baxter, Corky Baxter and Jeffrey Smith.

We also have the return of Mime and Marionette from Doomsday Clock.

Two villains placed into the world of Watchmen in Doomsday Clock, with Mime still using his invisible handheld weapons. And Batman knowing.

Then there are notes for what is described as the Divine Continuum. DC. All the rest of existence is a subset of DC. Hypertime is separate to the Omniverse, but the Omniverse contains the Multiverse, the Dark Multiverse, the Metaverse (as seen in Doomsday Clock and the pantheon that is the Sphere Of The Gods.

While Sally Dreiberg is the daughter of Nite Owl and Silk Spectre at the end of Doomsday Clock, where the son of Mime and Marionette, Clark, adopted and raised by Dr Manhattan has now found a home – with all the Manhattan powers within him. Remember?

There's more of course. Such as Janey Slater's watch.

Janey Slater was the first girlfriend of John Osterman, then Doctor Manhattan. In Watchmen, a photographer, mistaking the two for a couple, takes a picture of them. Slater's watch then falls off her wrist, breaks and a man steps on it.

Osterman, being the son of a watchmaker, promises to repair it in his hotel room. After they examine the watch's damage, they have sex for the first time.

Later, going to fetch her repaired watch, he gets trapped as the intrinsic field is turned on, gets taken apart and later reassembles as Dr Manhattan. Her watch, present in the moment of change, becomes a symbol of a moment in time that cannot be changed.

After sacrificing everything to help The Flash put the universe back together and save Bruce Wayne's life, Thomas Wayne wakes up in a world he thought was no more. Forced to don the cowl once again, Batman prowls the streets of Gotham City searching for answers to how this world still exists, but what he starts to uncover will send him hurtling around the globe. The hunt for the Clockwork Killer starts here!

"Collaborating with Eduardo has been a dream my entire career," said writer Geoff Johns. "The chance to work on a story with such an iconic and legendary artist, centered around the troubled Thomas Wayne, made returning to the world of Flashpoint and its vengeful Batman special. Our goal was to create an event that's every bit as emotional as it is epic, not only revealing the how's and why's of Thomas Wayne's returning timeline but what it means to the past, present and future of Bruce Wayne and DC. We hope readers enjoy the ride."

Flashpoint Beyond #0 is published on the 5th of April.