Cinema Watchmen tv series coming to HBO

Watchmen Supplemental Materials Reveal Secrets of HBO Series

One of the many brilliant touches in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' original Watchmen was the supplemental material that concludes each chapter of the main story. Through newspaper clippings, magazine articles, book excerpts, and other scholarly documents, Watchmen filled out not just the backstory of its characters, but all the ways great and small that the presence of actual superheroes changed the world. Each "document" was a convincing and thorough read, some explicitly connected to the preceeding chapter, others which had connections that were less immediately obvious. And now HBO and Damon Lindelof's Watchmen has followed suit with "Peteypedia."

One of the keys to HBO's Watchmen TV series is that it can stand completely on its own, even though its a sequel to the book. New viewers who are unfamiliar with the story of Watchmen are roughly in the same place that first time readers were in 1985, getting introduced to new characters in a lived-in world one chapter at a time. And just as the supplements in the book helped flesh out the original world, the "official documents" contained in Peteypedia are helpful both to Watchmen newbies and longtime fans wondering what the hell has been going on since the cataclysmic events of Nov. 2, 1985.

One of the key suspicions about Watchmen early on has been the apparent lack of the internet in 2019. "The Computer and You" memo from FBI Director James Doyan helps to clear that up.

The next, "Trust in the Law," is essentially a primer on real life lawman Bass Reeves (who we wrote some more about here) disguised as a museum handout detailing the historical signficance of the Trust in the Law silent film that the young boy was watching during the harrowing Black Wall Street Massacre scene that opens episode 1 of the series.

"Veidt Declared Dead" is an obituary on the hero formerly known as Ozymandias

But it's the final one, the "Veidt and Rorschach" FBI memo which contains the greatest wealth of information. This not only clears up the connection between Rorschach and the 7th Kavalry (and explains how they were able to get their hands on his journal, which was indeed published in full), but reveals why the truth about Adrian Veidt didn't rattle the new and peaceful world order that came into being after the events of Nov. 2, 1985.