James Gunn's The Suicide Squad is ramping up its marketing campaign and showing itself to be one of the most interesting superhero films in recent years. Between its large cast of colorful characters, including newcomer Peacemaker, and the R-Rated action in the trailer, the film is definitely a pretty hard turn away from the traditional Marvel-style comic book films and has a very different energy from the rest of the DC Extended Universe, and people are excited about it.
As some fans begin to pick through the Suicide Squad trailers, doing the usual rounds of Easter egg hunting and speculation about the eventual final product, some have made some interesting comparisons between the character of Peacemaker, played by John Cena, and the Comedian from Watchmen. While The Suicide Squad and Watchmen couldn't be more different in tone, attitude, and intent, there's actually a very interesting reason why the comparison isn't as crazy as one might expect.
In one of the many images posted from The Suicide Squad, Cena's Peacemaker can be seen from the chest up, revealing a large, yellow emblem on his chest. As the director talked about the film on Twitter, one fan spoke up to say that the emblem reminded them of The Comedian's yellow smiley face button from Watchmen. As it turns out, Gunn had an explanation for that.
As Gunn explained on Twitter, while the Watchmen comic book featured original characters, disconnected from the DC Universe, Alan Moore had originally intended for the book to feature existing DC names in a dark deconstruction of traditional comic book heroes. Unfortunately for those plans, legal complications and discussions with DC eventually meant that Moore had to take all those existing characters and create new, original names to slot into their places.
While that news may surprise some fans of Watchmen, the inspirations for each character are pretty easy to see when you know what to look for. Captain Atom became Dr. Manhattan, The Question became Rorschach, Blue Beetle was changed to Nite Owl, and as Gunn mentions, Peacemaker became The Comedian. Each character was similar to their inspiration in many ways but had their designs, backstories, and universe tweaked to fit the original story that would become Watchmen.
There is, of course, a long history of legal complications between Moore and the Watchmen comics, but even the surface-level details are interesting for fans to chew on. While Moore's characters and the story would go on to be one of the most lasting and iconic narratives in comic book history, it's still fun to wonder what Watchmen might have looked like if legal complications hadn't gotten in his way.
The Suicide Squad releases August 6th, 2021.
Source: James Gunn/Twitter