Doomsday Clock #10 Review

You Can't Outrun Your Past

Written By: Geoff Johns

Art By: Gary Frank, Brad Anderson

Cover Price: $4.99

Release Date: May 29, 2019

It's finally here, the thrilling continuation of the biggest thing coming out of DC Comics...... The Doomsday Clock.  We saw in the previous issue how the big hitter heroes all geared up and made their way to Mars to see what this mysterious energy signature that attacked Superman was and boy did they under-estimate Dr. Manhattan when they got there.  Not only did he single-handedly take everyone out, but also appeared to ruin their chances of survival as the Green Lantern's barrier, giving everyone air to breath was destroyed.  Let's jump into this issue and see what we get now.  Let's check it out.

Now for this issue of the Doomsday Clock there may be people who are upset or frustrated at the fact that we only really progress the story forward...... about a minute.  Beyond that though, we do take the time here to completely breakdown and show everyone who's captivated at home how the entire DC Universe has been affected by every Crisis and reboot since the beginning of Superman in 1939 and while there was a huge deal at the beginning of Rebirth about how Wally West was the symbol of hope that had been missing, which didn't really play out to our expectations, the idea that the Universe is based on the idea of Superman is something that I could fully get behind here because it is the legitimate beginning of what we now know as DC Comics....... and there isn't really anything to screw that up in the long haul.  

It's a really fascinating look at the different time lines throughout the generations that Dr. Manhattan has become compelled to witness and not only that....... affect.  That's right, it turns out that something that we thought we knew about our current continuity for the last eight years isn't exactly as we thought it was and the idea that something so small that could be affected could give us what we currently have actually left me feeling in awe at the magnitude at how connected some see the heroes of the DC Universe.  With that aspect to the story, we're also tying things up with the background character of Carver Coleman, the star of the Nathaniel Dusk movies and how he plays into everything that we've been reading so far and while initially when these aspects started showing up in the book, I kind of dismissed them as not really meaning much, it all plays out so well here that I kind of feel like a jerk for pish poshing them earlier in the series.  

All in all, I love how Carver Coleman is used in this issue as our gateway to Dr. Manhattan and the idea that a being coming from a hopeless world could inspire hope in someone so down and out, only to let time take its course, where Carver would meet his fate that Jon saw coming all along, while also affecting time for his own curiosity, effectively becoming the villain of the story.  There's a lot of great story-telling happening in this single issue, but in the end it seems that the real connection between Dr. Manhattan and Carver Coleman is the idea that you can't outrun your past because everything you do will eventually catch up with you.  There's so much to love about this issue and my only real concerns is the idea of the time lines we're shown and the idea that early continuity was supposed to be on Earth-2.  Besides that though, I love this issue and the artwork that depicted it.

Bits and Pieces:

Doomsday Clock has really been firing on all cylinders and as the clock ticks down to the end of the series, the magnitude of the story gets bigger and bigger and I'm having the time of my life reading about it.  The artwork is amazing and the story-telling is second level in making sure that everything feels right and true on a cosmic and meta scale.  I love this series.

9.5/10