For about two pages after a relentless and lengthy deconstruction of hope and inspiration.
It’s like ending an hour long diatribe with “oops, just kidding”. And even then, it’s just a delayed doomsday, because as we’re shown with all the subtlety of a Cirque de Soleil piece, Rorschach’s journal can unravel the fragile peace.
Watchmen is cynical. The ending does not change that. It actually reinforces it.
There was a line-wide house writing style that made nearly every character surly and unlikable. That style finally started to break down with the surprise success of Harley Quinn’s book, so in the last couple of years, they have tried some non grim and gritty offerings, but it is overwhelmingly not the core characters of the DCU that benefited from that latter-day shift.
Superman is the character that suffered most, because he doesn’t work in a grim, cynical universe were people try to shoehorn in some exaggerated sense of “realism”. The Grant Morrison run on Action wasn’t bad, but it was a lower-power, street level Superman (‘grittier’, if not ‘grim’ - though they killed the Kents again) and as soon as he left, that title began to flounder as badly as its sister title, Superman.
So yeah, you can point to a few bright spots - at the fringes, later on, after they admitted to themselves that cynicism wasn’t working - but nobody is saying that the New 52 was one hundred percent grim and gritty from beginning to end, they’re saying it was too grim and too gritty for their tastes, and that’s why people stopped buying it.
Dendarii Dame:
Depending on how long “these days” means to you, you might not have missed a thing. Legion hasn’t had a regularly published series in three years, and their last appearance anywhere in a DC Comic was about two years ago.
And their last appearance was largely an afterthought. A bunch of Legionaires had been stranded in the present and then their book was cancelled. The last appearances was in some third-string Justice League book and had something to do with Ultra The Multi-Alien getting them back to the future as part of a bigger plotline. So they really went out with a whimper.
In the DC Rebirth comic, we see the back of some blonde female Legion member (almost certainly Saturn Girl) who’s being questioned by the police and gives a hopey-changey speech about how everything’s gonna be all right because she’s “seen the future”.
That’s right. Ambush Bug has made more regular appearances.
Hell, so have Sugar and Spike.
…or not. The last page comes down to, will Seymour make the choice that Rorschach did, or will he make the choice that Dan and Laurie and Adrian and Jon did? It’s up to the person reading the story whether the world is saved.
Is “cynical” the right word for Dan, deciding what’s important is keeping billions of people from dying? Is “cynical” the right word for Laurie, deciding what’s important is saving the Earth? Is “cynical” the right word for Adrian, deciding what’s important is working against the end of the world? Is “cynical” the right word for Jon, deciding what’s important is preserving life and perhaps creating some?
Find me a character who imagines people crying out for him to save them, so he can look down and whisper “no” – okay, maybe call that guy a cynic. But people who choose to take a stand against armageddon? I look at that last page, and – well, the optimist in me of course hopes that guy will act to preserve life instead of making a monstrous choice, but, again, that’s me; we were talking about Jon.
What, on that last page, would Jon want that guy to choose?
Where did we leave Jon? As someone who wants humanity to live, or the opposite?
Because even a demigodlike being whose awareness spans the spacetime continuum can be just another gorny hi.
It is cynical to believe that murdering millions of people and framing an innocent man is even necessary to prevent billions of people from dying. That they make themselves complicit in the supervillain’s act of mass murder because they believe he is right is cynical as hell.
Well, doesn’t that depend entirely on whether he is right?
If he’s right, and they really do have a choice between preserving life or dooming it; if he in fact was looking at the otherwise-inevitable extinction of humanity, and found a way to instead save the lives of billions; in that case, what’s the optimistic thing to do? What’s the pessimistic thing to do? What’s the cynical thing to do?
Yeah, this is what doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve seen some reviewers saying “Well, it kind of makes sense that it’s all Dr. Manhattan’s fault; after all Watchmen helped start the whole grim-and-gritty comics trend.” But just because Watchmen is grim and gritty doesn’t mean Dr. Manhattan is grim and gritty. If anything, his defining personality trait is that he’s so detached; he only manages to care about the fate of mankind after he realizes that life is interesting in a sort of mathematical sense.
If the big reveal was that Alan Moore used his omnipotent powers to make comics dark and grim, that would make more sense. 
…incidentally, does anyone want to hazard a guess as to who planted the Comedian’s smiley-face badge in the Batcave? I mean, yes, we can bicker all day over whether Doctor Manhattan left WATCHMEN on a hopeful note with the desire to preserve and create life, and whether his character here fits with that; but what I’m asking is, why would Doc at the end of WATCHMEN, or Doc here, or anyone else put that there?
The Other Waldo Pepper:
Maybe Rorschach did? Leaving a clue for the World’s Greatest Detective to unravel in case something happened to him sounds like something he might do. Nite Owl might have also, he doesn’t seem too have 100% accepted the morality of Ozymandias’s actions.
So the idea is, Dan knows the location of the Batcave, and slips in and out without being noticed, and instead of leaving a note leaves a clue that’s evidence of – wait, what the heck is that evidence of? You recognize it as the bloodstained smiley-face badge from WATCHMEN, but would Bruce?
You say he doesn’t seem to have 100% accepted the morality of Veidt’s actions; for the sake of argument, okay, let’s go with that; how does this help? I mean, yeah, world’s greatest detective – but, what, you think Dan put that in the Batcave so Bruce would somehow get the hint to start looking into a murder he’s never heard of in a solar system he doesn’t know exists?
(And where did he even get it? Last we saw, wasn’t Dan dropping it into a coffin’s freshly-dug hole at a graveyard?)
:dubious: If you think that Geoff Johns isn’t going to keep doing the same stuff he’s been doing, or that all this stuff fans are reading as the return of optimism isn’t just Geoff bringing in more bodies to kill, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.
The Other Waldo Pepper:
All fair points. I’m just speculating that it’s someone in the Watchmen universe who is not on board with the Ozymandias/Doctor Manhattan “cynical” world view. How the specifics would play out, I haven’t the foggiest idea, but I imagine that with enough imagination, a professional comics writer can work those details out.
The optimistic thing to do is to not assume that the only way to stop the elected government of the United States from doing something they absolutely do not want to do (i.e. get themselves nuked) is to murder millions of innocent people.
Sure, but Rorschach is not the Riddler. When he wanted the world to know what he knew, he literally mailed a book which explained everything to the press.
I’m not sure whether you’re disregarding my point or embracing it.
I’m asking: assuming Veidt was correct, what’s the optimistic thing to do? And what’s the pessimistic thing to do? And what’s the cynical thing to do?
You’re replying that the optimistic thing to do would be – to assume Veidt was incorrect. Are you saying the optimistic thing to do is to assume he’s wrong even if he’s right? Because if you’re defining optimism as “being incorrect”, and cynicism as “being correct”, then you can maybe win the argument over whether Doc represents cynicism; but at what price?
THE TRUTH: “Do this, or billions of people die as life on our planet goes extinct.”
PESSIMIST: “Okay, let billions of people die as life on our planet goes extinct.”
THE CYNIC: “What? No, I’m on the side of love and life! Let’s save billions!”
OPTIMIST: “Let’s do something else!”
THE TRUTH: “That won’t work.”
PESSIMIST: “But my plan will leave everyone dead?”
THE TRUTH: “Yes.”
THE CYNIC: “And mine will save the lives of billions?”
THE TRUTH: “Yes.”
OPTIMIST: “And mine?”
THE TRUTH: “…will also leave everyone dead, yes.”
If that’s how you define optimism and cynicism, then you’re welcome to it.
Is “cynical” the right word for Alan Moore, who decided to only give his characters completely fucked choices? Yes, yes it is.
Jesus, did nobody else get this? I’ve been seeing crap all over the internet wondering if the Comedian as the Joker left it there. The smiley face materialized out of Wally’s lightning field and embedded itself in the walls of the Batcave with an audible noise.
Well, see, I can get behind that. But I figure that still makes Jon – and Adrian, and Dan, and Laurie – characters who strive to make the best choice available, working to preserve life where they can and save as many lives as possible.
And if I want to start railing against Alan Moore, I’m going to soon stop and scratch my head and say sure, he put those characters in a bad situation, but he chose to have them pick the least bad option, with smiles and hugs and peace and love and the survival of humanity and a new surge of social optimism.