Doomsday Clock - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• Alan Moore's 1986 graphic novel, Watchmen, which is set in 1985 during the heightening Cold War, makes extensive use of the image of the Doomsday Clock. There are several overt as well as veiled references to it, often through the use of clock faces showing times close to midnight figuring in many panels throughout the book. The idea of clocks and time (especially of time running out) recurs throughout the novel, with the many-layered title itself ("Watchmen") partly being a reference to this. The book is made up of twelve chapters, with a clock face gradually approaching midnight printed on the front cover of each. Another major symbol in the novel is the smiley face, whose roundness is similar in shape to an analog clock. The smiley face appears mainly as a badge worn by one of the central characters (The Comedian); the book begins with The Comedian's death, in which a drop of his blood falls on the smiley badge in the form of a minute hand (roughly shaped like an arrow) pointing towards the upper left edge of the badge (which would indicate a few minutes before midnight on a round clock face). The story is set in 1985, with Chapter 1 published in September 1986—both of these dates fall within a period when the Doomsday Clock was at its most perilous point in decades—namely 3 minutes to midnight, when dialogue between the two superpowers had virtually ground to a halt; it would stay in this position from 1984 until 1988.