Adam Hughes' art is gorgeous, and so is Laura Martin's coloring.

For the story, JMS does a kind of "What If" scenario where Dr. Manhattan sends his consciousness back along the timeline to see the accident that birthed him, but somehow this time Jon Osterman gets out of the bunker with his coat and watch intact long before the door locks and the device goes off. So what's going on? Tune in next time for more.

So apparently JMS has a totally different take on Dr. M's perception of time than Alan Moore did in the original book. Moore's Dr. M saw every moment of his own life simultaneously. The timeline was fixed and immutable, yet somehow Dr. M retained free will despite knowing what choice he was going to make. It was a mysterious and paradoxical contravention of the usual cause-and-effect laws that most people live under, and compelling for its strangeness.

In JMS's story, there are multiple timelines, and Dr. Manhattan can actually alter the probabilities at certain moments so that, for instance, he teams up with Silk Spectre rather than going on patrol with Rorschach. And rather than viewing every moment at once, he sends his consciousness back along the timeline, as I said.

So is JMS making a different interpretation of Dr. M's time perceptions for a reason? Or is he just missing the point, not understanding what Moore wrote? At this point it feels like a misunderstanding. But if the story pays off in the end, maybe I could be convinced otherwise. JMS has certainly set himself a difficult goal, taking on one of the most innovative parts of WATCHMEN and trying to come up with something new. At this point, I expect he will fail.

That seems like a pretty cool angle for a Watchmen side story.

By far this seems to be the most ambitious story idea of the line. I'm really looking forward to seeing where he goes with this.

I'm curious as to whether JMS will explain the differences in Doc Manhattan's powers of perception. Will the character come full circle to Moore's version with the divergence an entertaining and plausible story or is he just going rogue with it? Hope you'll give us a follow up, Peter, if you're so inclined.

A few good panels here and there, but otherwise Hughes' art was not as good as I was expecting. It wasn't even as good as his old Gen13 material, and certainly not on par with his cover work. Paul Pope is the alt cover. I'm guessing this is the one for which he gave the money to charity when he was informed about the controversy with Moore. I wasn't much of a Pope fan before (his work looks like a sloppy Don Simpson to me), but this cover is pretty bad even by his standards.

Even though there were no official "thought balloons," that's exctly what Doc's text boxes were. Straczynski clearly doesn't understand the thing he's trying to ape. Concerning the existence of Manhattan after the twist that Osterman doesn't get locked in the chamber... I'm going to go ahead and guess that we're about to see Straczynski do his riff on Moore's "is-Alec-Holland-Swamp-Thing-or-is-Swamp-Thing-a-sentient-plant-which-thinks-it's-Holland" concept.

Hah! I never thought of Paul Pope's oh so hip style that way, but it does kind of cover it.

Alan Moore created the Golden Age Dr Manhattan who lived on Earth-2 and JMS has now updated him for the Silver Age and lives on Earth-1. I hope I've read this correctly.