Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt is a Total Ripoff of Watchmen -- and That's Cool!

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Submitted by RJ Carter on Tue, 01/22/2019 - 19:26

Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, was one of the set of Charlton characters used as the basis for DC Comics' WATCHMEN series. Doctor Manhattan was supposed to be Captain Atom. Nite Owl was supposed to be Blue Beetle. Rorschach was supposed to be The Question. Comedian was supposed to be Peacemaker. Silk Spectre, Nightshade. And Ozymandias, the smartest man in the world, was supposed to be Peter Cannon.

So going into the comic book, PETER CANNON: THUNDERBOLT #1, from Dynamite Comics (and Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard), there's a natural bias to thinking, "This character reminds me of Ozymandias."

In fact, there are three phases the reader will go through when reading this comic:

1. Gee, this is kind of derivative of WATCHMEN.

2. Oh for crying out loud, they're just ripping off WATCHMEN.

3. HOLY SHIT! CALL THE POLICE, THEY JUST TOTALLY ROBBED WATCHMEN AND IT WAS GLORIOUS!

What do we mean by that? Watch and see...