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Batman live in HBO’sWatchmenuniverse - but their version of the Dark Knight is smutty . Damon Lindelof ’s " remixed " continuation serial study Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons ' classic graphic novel from the lens of racial unfairness in America ; the action has been transplanted to 2019Tulsa , Oklahoma , and the principal persona is the African - American Detective Angela Abar AKA Sister Night ( Regina King ) , who has read her grandad Will Reeves ( Louis Gossett , Jr. ) wasHooded Justice- meaning the original superhero inWatchmen ’s world was a black man .
Watchmenstill acknowledges its origins as a DC Comics publication and has wander in the influence of DC ’s two great heroes , Batman and Superman . The Man of Steel existed ( at least for a time ) as a comic book macrocosm ; in 1938 , NYPD Officer Will Reeves readAction Comics#1 , the first coming into court ofSuperman . Further , the conception of " Superman " has been usurp by Doctor Manhattan , the only superpowered being inWatchmen , who ’s often referred to as a Superman . Batman is a slight cunning ; the Caped Crusader was actually reference in the opening course credit ofZack Snyder’sWatchmenmovie where the original Nite Owl saved the Waynes from being mug whileBatman#1 anachronistically appears on the wall behind them . But Snyder ’s film is set in a differentWatchmenuniverse and Batman has n’t been explicitly mentioned in HBO ’s series .
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However , Batman has in the end been advert inWatchmen ’s association - in websitePeteypedia . In his late memo examining the origin of Sister Night , Agent Dale Petey ( Dustin Ingram ) explore Angela Abar ’s childhood brainchild for her mask part : the 1977Sister Nightblacksploitation movie Angela first discovered on her 10th birthday in Saigon , Vietnam . Petey did some digging into the entire " Black Mask " movie subgenre ( which is itself a nod to the Batman villain Black Mask);Sister Night is a blacksploitation spoof on Silhouette of theMinutemen . Other Black Mask parodies includeBlack Superman(about Doctor Manhattan),Tarantula(spoofing Mothman ) , andBatman , which is a blacksploitation spin on Nite Owl . This is an unexpected but still strangely meet way for Batman to subsist in HBO’sWatchmen .
InWatchmen ’s Earth , because costumed superheroes were a substantial thing culminating in a true superpowered being , Doctor Manhattan , the phenomenon of comic account book superheroes never took hold . Meanwhile , Nite Owl- especially the second version of the aviary avenger , Dan Dreiberg - has always been learn by rooter asWatchmen ’s stand - in for Batman ; he dressed like a winged beast and used a fantastic array of Owl - themed artillery and vehicles to fight criminal offence . It ’s a clever inversion that inWatchmen , Batman was " barrack " by Nite Owl - but with the add turn of social commentary wherein , a black Batman spoof the white Nite Owl .
This neatly gibe intoWatchmen ’s inversion of the superhero image being a white male powerfulness fantasy overall , as seen when AgentLaurie Blake(Jean Smart ) and the FBI ’s Anti - Vigilante Task Force busted a"rich white a**shole"dressed as a black - crest superhero inWatchmenepisode 3 , " She Was kill By Space Junk " . Meanwhile , the the true all along is Hooded Justice , the first dissemble avenger who has ties to Batman ’s pulpy and violent vigilante inception , was secretly a blackened military man .
InWatchmen ’s world , Bob Kane ostensibly never created the Bruce Wayne / Batman fictitious character in 1939 . But the idea of a caped crusader dressed like a bat eventually manifested decades afterward in the form of black culture critiquing Nite Owl and , to a greater extent , the fact as far as anyone knew , all of the superheroes in the world were white ( with the exception of Doctor Manhattan ) . Ultimately , Batman is simply too good of an idea not to wax eventually but , inWatchmen , it was the blackened polish that ' create ' the Dark Knight to bemock Nite Owl .
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