As DC Comics has transmogrified over the last 20 years, Geoff Johns has been at the very centre of — or, at least, extremely close to — the engines of change. His title is different nowadays, but he’s still going to be working on deepening interpretations of the company’s iconic characters.

One universe saw New York ravaged by a giant tentacled psychic horror, the other has beacons of hope like Superman and Wonder Woman. That might make you think the question that Adrian Veidt, Watchmen's Ozymandias, has on his mind in this week's issue of Doomsday Clock has an easy answer, but as with so many things with this DC Comics/Watchmen mashup series, not everything is quite so simple.

Doomsday Clock is the slowest of slow burns. Its biggest mysteries - such as just where Dr Manhattan is in the DC Universe, or how the hell a mime can mime himself a lethal weapon - still remain barely explored, let alone solved. But it's finally started to lift the lid on one of its most intriguing additions: The new person underneath Rorschach's mask.

You might have thought the greatest mystery of DC Comics' Doomsday Clock had something to do with Doctor Manhattan's whereabouts or the new Rorschach's secret identity. It doesn't. The wildest thing happening in the DC/Watchmen crossover is all about the supervillains Marionette and the Mime.

Yesterday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that for the first time since 1953, the Doomsday Clock - its representation of how close the world is to a catastrophic, civilisation-ending disaster - would be moved to two minutes to midnight. DC Comics decided that was a grand way to promote its current event series, named Doomsday Clock, until it went a bit awry.

The first issue of Doomsday Clock is here, and with it a chance to explore the world Watchmen left behind - and how it will eventually tie into the wider DC Comics cosmos. While in some ways it's unsurprising that this world is even grimmer than we left it, there have still been some major changes since we last saw these characters in the original series

Traditionally, comics become available at midnight in the US, be it digitally or, in the case of big events, through special launch parties. DC's upcoming Watchmen-infused event Doomsday Clock will arrive slightly earlier than usual... although for a bit of a grim reason.

Alan Moore's distaste for DC's ownership of his and Dave Gibbons' work on Watchmen is widely known at this point -- and considering the fact that neither Moore or Gibbons were contacted for the characters' use in Rebirth, that distaste is still very real today. This new comic cover is unlikely to help smooth things over for Moore at least, either.