With the revelation that the Watchmen and DC universes are the same, as evidenced by the implication that Dr Manhattan may be responsible for engineering the New 52 era memory lapses/reality tweaking, as well as the discovery of The Comedian's bloodied pin in the Bat Cave, I thought I would dust off a copy of Watchmen and take it out for a much needed spin.

The first thing I realised/remembered is how amazing Watchmen is, and that it is indeed a masterpiece of modern literature. I blame Dr Manhattan for making me forget this, by the way.

The second thing I noticed is that during one of the expositional chapters - the fictional excerpts of Hollis Mason's 'tell all' autobiography 'Under the Hood'- Mason claims that part of his motivation, and that of other costumed heroes of the 30s and 40s, came from reading Action Comics number 1 from 1938. Of course this relates to Superman.

He writes (my emphases in bold): "For me, it all started in 1938, the year when they invented the super-hero" and "my fantasies were to remain fantasies until I opened a newspaper in the autumn of that same year and found that the super-heroes had escaped from their four-color world and invaded the plain factual black and white of the headlines."

This clearly implies that Superman is a fictional character in the Watchmen universe, living only in books. This is supported further by Hollis writing: "The first masked adventurer outside comic books had been given his name" in reference to Hooded Justice.

I don't know if enough people are going to notice this for DC to create an explanation, but for me it's a bit problematic. Any thoughts?

Well who says Action Comics or superheroes in the Watchmen universe has Superman in it? Action Comics may have starred Mighty Man or the Crusher or any other number of fictional superheroes.

If it's not explicitly Superman/DC then it doesn't have to be any more of an issue then you make it.

@risingbean: Hollis (in Watchmen) mentions Superman and Clark Kent explicitly. Sorry if this wasn't clear in my post.

@rainshadow777: Does he? Hm. In that case, I suppose you can be annoyed. Although it may be like the plot in the Justice League episode "Legends" where GL's comic book heroes existed as real people in another reality.

I think if there is an answer, it will probably be that Dr Manhattan stepped into the DC universe and somehow merged the two separate universes after the events of Watchmen. Still, if that's the answer it seems quite the coincidence that the Watchmen universe had a fictional comic book character called Superman in it, and DM was able to step into a universe where Superman actually exists in the flesh!

I think this is a big problem of, if not logic, at least reasonability.

@rainshadow777: I understand where you're coming from, but we are talking about stories where an alien is powered by our sun and shoots heat from his eyes meeting a blue man who can blink the world from existence, nothing about it can be justified by being illogical or unreasonable. For all we know, Superman/Kent in fact exists in the Watchmen universe as a real person, and was put into the first comics based on rumors. All heroes could have been very well known by the world, and Dr Manhattan could have, like he did with New 52, memory washed the entire world to forget about the heroes and villains apart from the Watchmen. If that makes sense.

Before Dr. Manhattan the universe the Watchmen lived in was "notmal" and the DC characters were just that, characters. When Manhattan came into being he discorved that his universe is one among many in a multiverse and that in the other universes the DC characters are real.

Not that hard to explain.

@thepreface: So Dr M left his own universe and for reasons unknown visited the universe where the DC characters are real and bothered to create the New 52 memory loss debacle? Why would he do that? It seems so arbitrary. If the multiverse theory is going to be credible here (and DC are trying to move away from that model, aren't they?) then why the DC universe in particular?

I'm not sure it's so simple.

@rainshadow777: Who knows what Dr. M thinks? His reasons don't have make sense. Maybe he saw the Post-Crisis Main Earth and got jealous that his Earth is a shitty dystopia. So in an effort to understand that universe and perhaps replicate it on his he changed things. He tinkers with things, just like a watch maker.

Could definitely be this, although pretty hilarious liking a universe that contains everything from The Joker to Doomsday so much that he wants to potentially recreate it. If anything I think the dystopia is the DC universe. But yeah, I get what you're saying and I guess that could be a logical explanation.

To be fair, the DC Universe has people like Superman, Barry Allen, and Green Arrow.

@laughingbatman: This is also possible I guess, although again very complicated. I'm sure DC would just prefer that the references by Hollis Mason to Superman weren't there.

And they would have got away it too if it wasn't for that pesky Rainshadow777.

Well the whole mutliverse thing as others have said would be the answer. The DC multiverse even has its own Earth 33 which is supposed to be the real world, and earth 33 affects the rest of the DC multiverse. In the Multiversity series other earths were in facts works of fiction for one earth. It was actually a very important factor in that storyline. Because of the way DC set up its multiverse, there's no issues with characters in a realty saying something is fictional for them. That's how it is for most every earth.

Superman comics were a thing in Superboy Prime's universe.

This multiverse thing will plague us for eternity, won't it. It allows for literally anything to happen at any time. On the one hand this means lots of exciting possibilities, but on the other it's kind of a convenient excuse for every eventuality.