List of Watchmen characters

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Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series created by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and John Higgins, published by DC Comics in 1986 and 1987. Watchmen focuses on six main characters: the Comedian, Doctor Manhattan, Nite Owl II, Ozymandias, Rorschach, and the Silk Spectre II. These characters were originally based on the Mighty Crusaders^[1] and then reworked in an unsolicited proposal to fit superhero properties DC had acquired from Charlton Comics in the early 1980s. Moore later based the team’s predecessors, the Minutemen, on the Mighty Crusaders. Since the publisher planned to integrate Charlton's superheroes into the main DC Universe and the script would have made many of them unusable for future stories, series writer Alan Moore eventually agreed to create original characters. Moore wished the main characters to present six "radically opposing ways" to perceive the world, and to give readers of the story the privilege of determining which one was most morally comprehensible.^[2]

The protagonists of Watchmen were reused in the prequel series Before Watchmen, which also gave backstories to several minor characters from the original graphic novel, and introduced new characters.

Later on, several Watchmen characters reappeared in the limited series Doomsday Clock, bringing them into the main DC Universe.

The television series Watchmen is set in the same canon as the limited series, taking place in 2019 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.