Watchmen is one of the most beloved and influential comics of all time, but not everyone was so hasty to jump aboard the hype train. Writer Grant Morrison was one of the earliest critics of Watchmen, pointing out how its deconstruction of the genre had a negative impact on superhero comics going forward.
Morrison got the chance to work out their feelings in their ultimate DC Comics masterpiece, The Multiversity. Released from 2014-2015, The Multiversity highlighted a different universe in each issue. The fourth issue, Pax Americana, takes place on Earth-4, made up of the old Charlton Comics heroes. Here is where the Watchmen connection comes in, as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ landmark comic series was originally supposed to feature those old characters, recently acquired by DC at the time. Plans ultimately changed, so instead of Blue Beetle, The Question and Captain Atom in Watchmen, fans got Nite Owl, Rorschach and Doctor Manhattan. For Pax Americana, Morrison flips the script, now using the original Charlton characters as a way to comment upon Watchmen.
Recently, Grant Morrison has been annotating The Multiversity via their newsletter, Xanaduum. The most recent installment covers Pax Americana, and it’s here Morrison begins to lay out their whole thesis on Watchmen and its overall effect on superhero comics. Written by Morrison and with art by the incomparable Frank Quitely, Pax Americana’s story is told in reverse – beginning with the assassination of President Vince Harley and moving back through the story to find out why he was killed. The story “ends” with Harley as a young boy, finding a gun in his father’s office. Just then, his father sneaks into the house through the window, and it’s here we learn that he’s the masked hero Yellowjacket. The young Harley is startled by who he thinks is a stranger, and shoots him in the head – only realizing what he’s done once he pulls the mask off his dead father…
Pax Americana Comments On The Use of Violence Within Comic Book Innocence.
“The hole in the domino mask, like the blood on Watchmen’s smiley pin, speaks of violence done to a symbol of comic book innocence,” Morrison writes in their annotations, carefully unpeeling the layers upon layers of subtext and symbolism found within the pages of Pax Americana. By having a superhero mistaken for a burglar and killed by his own son holding a loaded gun found in his father’s office, the imagery of the scene is rife with meaning and open to a wide scope of interpretations. For Morrison, it all comes down to Watchmen’s deconstructionism ultimately “killing” the genre; basically overpowering the simple wonder of the childish genre by invading it with adult concerns. Morrison elaborates further in their annotations: “The hero is confused with a criminal, a thief, a monster threatening children – the absent father at the heart of the superhero concept, the fallen idol, the mythic made flesh and mortal, the betrayal of idealism. It’s Watchmen’s shot to the head of the American superhero.”
“Watchmen’s Shot To The Head Of The American Superhero.”
It’s an interpretation with two sides: on the one hand, it could be argued that imbuing these childish characters with more adult themes is a large part of what has led to the superhero genre’s dominance in modern popular culture. On the other, the superhero comics that once entertained children for generations have been left behind in the decades since Watchmen’s original publication, as modern stories cater to an older and increasingly-shrinking audience. Video may have killed the radio star, but – according to Grant Morrison, at least – Watchmen killed the American superhero.
