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Watchmen
From Lostpedia
Watchmen is a comic book series and graphic novel written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons published by DC Comics. It tells the story of an alternative 1985, where the world is at the brink of a nuclear war at the height of the cold war. Five superheroes, all but one ordinary human beings, and all of them harboring complex emotional ties and relationships with each other and the world around them, are brought back together after the death of a sixth reveals a disturbing conspiracy which has implications for the whole world. The comic jumps from page to page between flashbacks from 1930s to the 1980s, and also to a meta-comic (comic within a comic), Tales of the Black Freighter, that parallels and mirrors the stories narrative and several characters from the Watchmen world. It is the only graphic novel to appear on Time Magazine's All Time 100 Novels list. The graphic novel is credited as being one of the main influences of today's comic book world, pushing writers into more realistic and grittier writing.
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Confirmed influence on Lost
Damon Lindelof called Watchmen "the greatest piece of popular fiction ever produced". Source: Entertainment Weekly Also, writer Brian K. Vaughan, who is best known for his works in the field of comics, cited Watchmen as "definitely" the inspiration for his start as a writer.[1]
Shared themes
Deadly scheme to save Humanity
- In Watchmen, a character named Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias forms a theory that war and environmental damage will lead to humanity’s destruction in the mid-1990s. Veidt concocts a way to save humanity. The plan involves the deaths of millions of innocent people, but he justifies this to himself that the cost of life to millions will save billions. This scheme is reflected in the storyline of the alternate reality game The Lost Experience. The TLE's Sri Lanka Video describes Enzo Valenzetti's predicted demise of humanity, and Alvar Hanso's plan to avert that disaster. It also describes Thomas Mittelwerk's extension of the plan which involves the killing of large numbers of people, justified by the end result of saving all of humanity. Writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach revealed that the DHARMA logo at the start of the video is of a hydrogen atom, and a direct reference to Watchmen. [2]. The character "Dr. Manhattan/Dr. Jon Osterman" wears a hydrogen atom symbol on his forehead.
Flashbacks
In both, Lost and Watchmen, the story is told in two ways. One is the principal plot (the present) and the other is the past of the characters as flashbacks.
Secret Island
In Watchmen, Adrien Veidt sends a group of scientists to his secret island. This is very similar to the operations of Alvar Hanso and the DHARMA Initiative on the Island.
The same name
Blake
Both Watchmen and The Lost Experience have major characters named Blake. In Watchmen, Edward Blake/The Comedian was murdered for discovering the secrets of Adrian Veidt's/Ozymandias' island, where evil plans were being hatched by scientists; in the Lost Experience, Rachel Blake's life is at stake because she is uncovering the Hanso Foundation's secret plans for the Island in the Sri Lanka video.
Bernard and Rose
- In Watchmen there is a character named Bernard, who opened a newsstand to meet people after his wife, Rose, died.
- In Lost, Rose and Bernard are two survivors of Flight 815. Bernard's wife Rose, should be dying from cancer, that the island seems to have cured.
Family Relationships
Kate/Silk Spectre
- In Watchmen Laurie Juspeczyk/Silk Spectre II's mother, the first Silk Spectre, was raped by Edward Blake/The Comedian. Laurie hated him for the way he treated her mother. During this time, Laurie finds out that The Comedian not only abused her mother but was her biological father, and despite the rape and abuse suffered, her mother still loved him, and mourned his death.
- This mirrors Kate's relationship with her mother, which is also strained. Kate also finds out after his death that the man she believed to be her mother's abusive new husband was in fact her biological father. Despite this abuse, Kate's mother also still loved him, and mourned his death.
Statues
Adrien Veidt’s name as a masked adventurer was Ozymandias, the Greek name for Ramses II. The following is a poem about Ozymandias, which may be analogous to the statue seen in "Live Together, Die Alone":
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In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone, - Horace Smith. | ” |
- Furthermore, Shelley's version of this poem is the one that actually appears in Watchmen. It deals more directly with the impermanence of political power and civilizations, and therefore is thematically relevant to the fall of the DHARMA Initiative during the Purge, or the fall of human civilization as predicted by the Valenzetti Equation :
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I met a Traveler from an antique land, - Percy Bysshe Shelley. | ” |
Nonlinear time
Desmond and Dr. Manhattan
After the episode "Flashes Before Your Eyes", Desmond seems to be experiencing time in a non-linear fashion, much like the Watchmen character Dr. Manhattan, whose abilities, like Desmond's, were derived from being trapped in an accident in a high-energy physics device. Other similarities between the two characters include Desmond's and Dr. Manhattan's post-accident nudity, as well as Desmond's photograph with Penny, which is similar to the photo Dr. Manhattan took with him to Mars of himself with his old girlfriend.
Smiley Face
The smiley face design on The Balloon closely resembles a recurring symbol in Watchmen.[[3]]
Thrown From A Building
John Locke is a attacked and thrown from an apartment window in a near identical way to how Blake/The Comedian is at the start of the novel.
Massive corporation
The Veidt Corporation owns numerous shell companies and engages in both a public front (Shoes, Perfume) and secret scientific research in the same way that the Hanso Foundation does. The public fronted companies in both Watchmen and Lost disguise the true intentions of their groups.
Saving the world from a frozen jungle
Adrian Veidt's jungle atrium in the middle of a frozen wasteland (Antarctica) is where he launches a massive alien into New York City and attempts to stop the Cold War. Benjamin Linus's frozen room in the middle of the jungle is where he moves the island and attempts to stop the war with the freighter.
The Freighter
Watchmen features a comic within the comic called "Tales of the Black Freighter," which chronicles a shipwrecked man's attempts to warn his family about the impending doom that will occur when a large black pirate freighter arrives at the town. In Lost, Desmond (and later, others) attempts to warn the islanders about the impending doom that will occur when the freighter arrives at the island.
See also
- Apocalypse - Article on apocalyptic references in Lost
- Comic book
- Comic conventions
External links
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| Alias • Blue Danube • Boston Red Sox • Celtic FC • Green Lantern and Flash: Faster Friends • Myst • Mystery Tales No. 40 • Pi • Star Trek (Redshirts) • Star Wars • Voltron • Watchmen • Wizard of Oz | ||||||
![[3]](http://www.timemachinego.com/linkmachinego/images/watchmen_smiley.jpg){kind=link}