Doomsday Clock #1: 10 Things Everyone Totally Missed

5. The Bedside Book

Doomsday Clock Rorschach
DC Comics

As we enter the bedroom of Superman, we see a book on the bedside table, presumably one he has been reading.

The book he's reading is Walden Two by B. F. Skinner, the father of behavioural psychology. Written in 1948, Skinner posited the idea of 'operant conditioning', which basically states that organisms can be conditioned by the proper environmental stimuli.

As such, behaviour and outcomes can be manipulated and predicted, and the book is about a utopian society created via this technique.

In a manner of speaking, this could be what Ozymandias was trying to do in the original Watchmen. But perhaps more importantly, it could be an allusion to what exactly it is Doctor Manhattan is trying to attempt with the DC Universe.

But why exactly is another question altogether.

Contributor
Contributor

Joe is a comic book writer out of South Wales, writing LGBTQ+ superhero series The Pride and also co-writing Welsh horror comedy series, Stiffs. He's also a comics reporter and reviewer who works with Bleeding Cool and now WhatCulture too. So he makes comics and talks about comics, but there's more to him too. Somewhere.