Snyder has been telling this story on a cliff's edge since the start; every issue, the story seems close to falling over the side due to all the weight Synder is making it carry. In this issue, Snyder makes the situation worse as he adds more rocks to the story's pack without removing older rocks.
In other words, the addition of the Green Lantern prophesy and the return to the Carver Coleman mystery feel like unnecessary complications to an already opaque narrative. Snyder seems to be revealing this series is really about Superman going all "Infamous" on Dr. Manhattan, but I hope it's not, for obvious reasons of redundancy. To make matters worse, it seems increasingly unlikely we're going to get any real explanation of why Dr. Manhattan created the DCnU/Rebirth realities in the remaining five issues.
The developments, in no particular order:
- In 1940, Dr. Manhattan moved the Green Lantern (i.e., the lantern itself) sitting near Alan Scott on the fateful night when his train rode over a bridge as it collapsed. As such, Scott never grabbed the Lantern in his panic and instead died, never becoming Green Lantern. But, Snyder never really tells us why Dr. Manhattan decided to kill Scott. In the present, Johnny Thunder's discovery of the Lantern allows Veidt to summon "power," and Snyder goes into obsessive detail leading us to this moment. We learn someone in 960 discovered a meteorite that spoke to him, saying its metal would bring fire three times: to bring death, life, and power. The man fashioned the metal into a lamp and, in 1940, another man fashioned it into the Lantern. I'm not sure why we care so much, but it shows the extent to which the Lantern story hijacks this series' narrative in this issue.
- We learn Bubastis is a compass for Dr. Manhattan, as she's cloned from the ashes of the original Bubastis. The original Bubastis' ashes merged with Dr. Manhattan's ashes when Veidt destroyed them both in "Watchmen." The new Bubastis leads Veidt and his team of misfit toys to the Comedian, and Veidt uses the traces of Dr. Manhattan's presence on the Comedian and the Lantern's power to summon the man himself.
- Dr. Manhattan knows everything Veidt has done. He knows Laurie refused to make the journey with him, so he brought Marionette and the Mime with him instead. Manhattan says Veidt mistook him saving Marionette for him caring she was pregnant, but really he saw what her "child would do" and chose to save him. He also informs Marionette she's pregnant again. Dr. Manhattan then confirms for Rorschach that Veidt manipulated him: he doesn't have cancer. Reggie is appalled, but Veidt says he saw what he wanted to see, as he always does. We learn Byron protected Reggie from learning the original Rorschach actually broke his father; his parents died alone and loathing each other, not in a loving embrace. Later, Rorschach renounces his identity and mails a mysterious packages to Lois Lane.
- Veidt asks Dr. Manhattan why he's on this Earth, and he says it was originally because he thought he could find a place among them. But, it then became about something else: he can't see more than one month in the future. We learn he sees Superman -- "the most hopeful among them...now hopeless" -- flying at him. He can't tell if Superman kills him or if Dr. Manhattan destroys everything, because after that encounter he sees nothing. This conversation doesn't explain why Dr. Manhattan removed ten years from this world's timeline (or killed their Alan Scott or saw a place for himself on this planet in the first place). Adding to the mystery, Batman says he knows him, presumably from "The Button" arc but maybe not. The story really goes off the rails as Dr. Manhattan implies it's all connected somehow to the Carver Coleman murder because "everything ends." He then disappears, ending the conversation.
- At some point, Veidt implies Dr. Manhattan wanted Rorschach to find Johnny Thunder (the past) and Saturn Girl (the future) but I can't for the life of me figure out the reason. Saturn Girl says she's here to cleanse an anomaly that threatens Superman (presumably Dr. Manhattan), though I'm not sure why Veidt would imply Dr. Manhattan purposefully brought her here. Maybe he's implying he subconsciously brought her here? Later, when Veidt returns to the ship, he knocks out Johnny and Saturn Girl and announces he has a plan to save "everything and everybody."
Just to be clear, I'm not losing hope here. It's usually around this point in a 12-issue miniseries that you start getting frustrated, as it's usually the last time the author is adding mysteries and not solving them. But, I think we have enough at this point. If Snyder isn't going to rely on deus ex machina at the very end, he's got to start wrapping up some of the loose ends next issue. Otherwise, it's going to be another "Death of the Family."
No comments:
Post a Comment