Literature
Watchmen (1986)
Alan Moore
In-fiction date: 8/3/1977
On August 3, 1977, the United States Congress passes the Keene Act, making masked vigilante activity illegal. Most costumed heroes comply and retire. The Comedian, employed by the government, continues operating. Rorschach refuses to stop. Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias — the latter having already unmasked publicly — are unaffected. The superhero age that began in 1938 is effectively over, leaving the world with three active masks and the question of who will watch the watchmen.
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Oct 12, 1985
On October 12, 1985, the body of Edward Blake — The Comedian — is thrown through the window of his high-rise apartment. Only Rorschach suspects a conspiracy against former costumed heroes, and his journal entry that night opens Alan Moore's graphic novel: 'Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists.'
Oct 19, 1985
On October 19, 1985, Dr. Manhattan teleports himself to Mars after a television interview in which former colleagues claim he caused their cancer. His departure strips the Western alliance of its nuclear deterrent at the height of Cold War tension, sending Laurie Jupiter to Mars to plead for humanity's future and accelerating the catastrophe Ozymandias has been engineering in the background.
Nov 2, 1985
On November 2, 1985, Ozymandias's plan to prevent nuclear war reaches its terrible conclusion: a genetically engineered psychic creature is teleported into the center of Manhattan, its death scream killing half the city's population. The catastrophe achieves what it was designed to — uniting the superpowers in shared horror — at the cost of three million lives.