8 Biggest Things To Come Out Of Doomsday Clock #3

5. 'The Supermen Theory' Gains Traction

Much like Watchmen was a product of the Cold War milieu, Johns' Doomsday Clock has rooted itself squarely in the zeitgeist of November 2016. Conspiracy theories abound, bigotry is resurgent, and the established heroes of the DCU are no longer granted the reception they once were.

These are testing times, clearly, and one way Johns chooses to both allude to this and further plant the seeds of Manhattan's machinations is to reference something called 'The Supermen Theory'. As the theory goes, DC's populace have finally alerted to the US-centric nature of superhero-dom, with most if not all of the DCU's heroes originating in the USA and not elsewhere.

On the surface, a stat like that would be cause for suspicion. In DC's case, the suspicion has manifested in opposition towards the government, with the Department for Metahuman affairs having created Metamorpho (a retconned origin for the former Outsider), and against the heroes themselves too, with Lex Luthor profiting from the world's metaphobia (?) by selling a series of bio-scanners that can detect superpowered individuals, stoking a superhuman arms race in the process.

This seems like more than just a case of contemporary political allegory though, and when you consider Veidt's past comments that Manhattan could have even been responsible for the creation of the superheroes already out there, the fact they're concentrated in one area could yet lend weight to that theory.