To many, Donald Trump’s election last November felt like something that could only happen in a comic book. As it turns out, DC Comics head honcho Geoff Johns was profoundly influenced by the 2016 U.S. presidential election while in the writing process of DC’s ultra-huge event series, Doomsday Clock.
In a trailer DC released on Friday morning, Johns talks about writing Doomsday Clock while previewing new art from the upcoming event series. In regards to Trump, Johns said he tried to look for the “thematic viewpoint” of Alan Moore’s original Watchmen and what it meant in 2016, the year DC Rebirth began and the publication of DC Universe: Rebirth #1.
“And then in 2016 November,” Johns explains, “the election happened in the U.S., and a lot of other things happened in the world. I was looking at everything, and then I reread Watchmen, and suddenly everything just went [poof] in my head.”
Besides Trump, what’s interesting about Doomsday Clock — the climax DC Rebirth has been building towards since it began in June 2016 — is that Johns didn’t have the complete idea until November of last year. That means that when fans got to the end of DC Universe: Rebirth and saw Batman pluck out the Comedian’s button in his Batcave, even the man who wrote it didn’t have the complete story. Unlike Watchmen’s Ozymandias, Johns didn’t have a master plan all along.
DC’s Doomsday Clock #1, the first issue of twelve, will be released on November 22.
