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Watchmen is set in an America in which Richard Nixon is serving an unprecedented third term as president after winning Vietnam with the help of Dr Manhattan, the comic book's only true superhero, and the Comedian, a nihilistic, heartless bully and would-be rapist who represents everything wrong with the bad ol' US of A. The pair are the only remaining "costumed adventurers" permitted to operate after the activity was made illegal five years earlier. But the sudden murder of the Comedian starts off a chain of events which will pull many of the surviving former heroes back into the fray, for better or worse.

The background to all this is imminent nuclear apocalypse, with the famed Doomsday Clock fixed at five minutes to midnight. Billions of people wait to see whether Manhattan will intervene to halt the standoff between Nixon and the Soviets. And where might be the cerulean superman? Well, he's in self-imposed exile on Mars.