Watchmen's Clockwork Origins Span Comics, Quantum Physics - WIRED

"All the nuclear superheroes that existed in comics previously have been ones who, by the great gift of radioactivity, suddenly find themselves not with leukemia or some form of tumor, but with miraculous powers," Alan Moore explained in 1988:

"Other than shooting bolts out of their hands willy-nilly, there were never any of the implications of nuclear science and particularly quantum science -- they're not considered. We're now 40 years post-Einstein and it's time we tried to confront some of the things Einstein said. On a quantum level, as I understand it, reality does not work! Things can be in two places at once; they can move from point A to point B without passing through the distance that separates those points ... and this is what Dr. Manhattan does."

Moore took Dr. Manhattan in a totally different direction than his more conventional predecessor, having him abandon his humanity for more celestial considerations or expostulate at length on quantum mechanics rather than energy-bolt everything in sight.

Moore based Watchmen's second Nite Owl -- the slumped, impotent Dan Dreiberg -- on the second version Blue Beetle, known as Ted Kord and created by Ditko. - WIRED.com

NVDL: Fascinating how much work and thought went into 'just a comic'.

clipped from blog.wired.com With Zack Snyder's cinematic adaptation of Watchmen hitting theaters Friday as 2009's must-see comic book movie, it's time for a deep dive into that fountain of influences. Watchmen's origin story starts with characters from Charlton Comics, which DC Comics acquired in 1985. Moore and Gibbons' brilliant revisions of Charlton's stable of heroes -- characters like The Question, created by the legendary Steve Ditko -- became immortal copies of their original sources. Moore's literary influences didn't stop at comics, though. He cited greats like Burroughs, Herman Melville, Graham Greene, Joe Orlando and many, many others. In the process, Watchmen revolutionized comics with a dizzying intertextuality packed with density and allusion, becoming one of the most lasting artistic exercises pop culture has ever known. Still, Watchmen isn't impenetrable or inaccessible.