How Different Would Watchmen Be If It Had Charlton Comics Characters?

title says it all, Its a question I had since I learned Alan moore was originally going to use Charlton Comics characters.

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It would depend entirely on how far Moore was willing to go in reinventing the characters for his own story. Strictly speaking, you could switch out the names and the character designs, and the story wouldn’t change drastically. That doesn’t mean that Moore would have told the exact same story if he used the Charlton characters.

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Good point, sometimes I wish he was allowed to use Charlton characters because then Charlton characters would be more recognizable.

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The Question is now the world’s most beloved hero.

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Yeah i didn’t know any of the Charlton Characters till later down my road of reading comics and was shock to learn that they were suppose to be used instead of original characters.

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Personally, I’m glad the Question wasn’t turned into a complete sociopath. And I’m glad the other characters were preserved as well. This is a prime example of good editors safe guarding established characters. Instead of appropriating somebody’s favorite character, Moore was required to create something new. And in interviews, Moore has even admitted, it was a good decision.

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I mean—

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Oh i did not know, but yeah maybe if it weren’t for the editors telling more moore to use original comics instead, we probably wouldn’t have these characters today.

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I’ll admit there’s 2 characters from Charlton comics I like way more than Watchmen being Captain Atom over Dr Manhattan and Ted Kord’s Blue Beetle over Nite Owl. But I like Rorschach over Question, Comedian over Peacemaker, Silk Spectre over Nightshade, and the latest Mime & Marionette over Punch & Jewlee. So I really don’t know but I would love to see someone try in the sense of what @AlexanderKnox said before.
Personally, I’m looking forward to Watchmen characters being brought into the main continuity. I would love to see them as part of the JSA set back in the like the 50s or 60s. I just hope that in doing that they don’t get rid of characters like Captain Atom and Ted Kord just to make space for these characters. It’s actually funny when I first heard they were bringing Watchmen to the main continuity it’d been awhile and I forgot some of their names so I thought Nite Owl was like Owlman and was former Talon like that Calvin Rose character. Would LOVE to see that!

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Personally I prefer watchmen being set in its own continuity.

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To each their own.

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Yeah, same. It shouldn’t have even been continued at all, it’s supposed to be a stand alone, and it’s perfect.

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That’s how I feel about Batman Beyond. Do not like at all that it’s supposed to be the future of the mainline comics.

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That’s fair. I’m still getting used to Batman beyond being canon…

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Agreed @American-Alien. One of the reasons why Watchmen resonates with readers in such a unique and distinctive way comes from the fact that the storyline lives within its own continuity, a continuity filled with characters and situations whose strength is derived from the seclusion it thrives in separate from the rest of the DC experience.

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I will admit, I did love doomsday clock…

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The biggest difference would probably be Silk Spectre. Though ostensibly based on Nightshade, the final draft of Laurie drew more influence from Bronze-Age Black Canary than her Charlton counterpart. With Nightshade, you’d lose the whole aspect of her being a legacy hero.

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Gotcha’ @SuperBlueGrodd. Doomsday Clock while thoughtfully written and executed left me kinda’ flat because the story just wasn’t able to pay off on the anticipation of seeing regular continuity DC characters engaging with the Watchmen cast. It had some cerebral twists and turns but ultimately it came off very similar in execution to the HBO Watchmen series- a fun interpretation but pretty much devoid of any meaningful structural substance and profound connective tissue to the original story.

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Good point, although moore could retcon it into being a legacy hero.

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Agreed, I like to see other takes on characters, but call it Elseworlds.

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