Dr. Manhattan

Dr. Manhattan is one of the characters of the Comic S Watchmen of Alan Moore. It is also the name of the second collection of the series in France, containing episodes 3 and 4 of the original edition.

History

Jonathan (known as Jon) Osterman did not choose its life. Any young person, dreaming to be a clock and watch maker like his father, it had to give up his dream because of the choice of this last, on August 7th 1945, after Hiroshima:

“The professor Einstein says that time varies from one place to the autre.
If time is false, what good is the clock and watch makers? (...) My profession belongs to the past. I want a future for my son. ”

Jonathan thus had to yield with the orders of his/her father. He studied with Princeton and in 1958 in Nuclear physics was graduate.
By accident, it is disintegrated in August 1959. During the months of its disappearance, scientists of the research center where he worked see a skeleton crossing a part, or another time a circulatory system. At these moments, Jon " réglait" to have the appearance which it had at the time of its return: “Really, it is not absolutely necessary to readjust in the good order the various elements. ”

Just like a clock, Osterman spends months “to restructure its intrinsic field” before becoming an almost omniscient and omnipotent being: Jon returns in November 1959, transformed, its blue body, being able to metamorphose itself at will - to become a giant for example -, téléporter and téléporter beings or objects, to launch flashes, to move the things without the touch, etc It does not have any more feelings of cold or heat, and as it realizes some with the passing of years, does not age.

Become the supreme weapon of the United States, he sees himself enjoining to take the identity of Doctor Manhattan, in reference to the Projet Manhattan. He chooses like symbol a hydrogen atom, symbol which he is engraved on the face. Its existence is returned public in March 1960. His/her father, who dies in 1969, forever known that his/her son was " revenu" after its disintegration.

It briefly will have an activity of dispenser of justice. When it meets the other masked dispensers of justice, it regards them as " friendly quadragénaires which like déguiser" with which it does not have anything in common. For him, only young person, Ozymandias, seems interesting.

Comments

Doctor Manhattan is the only one of the heroes masked of Watchmen to have super-capacities. Its irruption in 1959, not of divergence with our history, upsets geopolitics and is the starting point of the Uchronie Watchmen : thanks to him, the United States gains the Guerre of Vietnam in 1971, starting point of later changes as the maintenance with the capacity of Richard Nixon in America where the Scandale of Watergate was choked. On several occasions in the intrigue, one notes that he knows the future, at least that which relates to it. But it does not prevent the assassination of Kennedy, even if it had seen it: “I then to prevent the future. For me it occurs already”, tries it to explain to his wife.

If it is detached more and more human and prefers them to contemplate the wonders of the universe - it takes along his partner thus to admire the Mont Olympe on Mars -, Dr. Manhattan is however still accessible to the feelings, and it will be thus handled, in 1985, to allow the plot which is woven to succeed.

It leaves our galaxy at the end of the history and plans to go to create a new humanity elsewhere.

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