The Simpsons Watchmen Parody Is As Weird As You’d Expect

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal Watchmen has long been said to be un-adaptable, but apparently nobody told the writers of The Simpsons that. The Simpsons Super Spectacular #13 puts a unique, yellow-skinned spin on the iconic book in 2011’s absurd parody Splotchmen.

The story revolves around an unidentified vigilante hellbent on preventing a bake-off between Springfield and Shelbyville for reasons unknown to the reader. This less-than-subtle knock off of Rorschach, Pastry Face warns that the competition will spell doom for both towns and seeks help from Springfield’s heroes, both new and old (in this story basically everyone has a heroic alter-ego, so there’s plenty to choose from). But while the main plot is interesting, the real star of this book is its lampooning of Watchmen and the staggering number of homages and references it contains.

Instead of The Comedian, the book opens with a police investigation in the apartment of Krusty the Clown, who, it’s revealed, formerly fought crime as The Komedian. Doctor Manhattan is replaced by Doctor New Haven, the result of Professor Frink having a terrible accident while researching the “explosive properties of creams and custards” for The Journal of the Springfield Academy of Culinary Chemistry that left the scientist dyed blue. Like Watchmen, the issue is interspersed with texts from fictional in-universe books to break up its chapters, including Krusty’s memoir of his crime fighting days: Don’t Mask, Don’t Tell.

And even all that is barely scratching the surface of the Easter eggs for astute Watchmen fans to find. Instead of the constantly winding down clock that ends each chapter of Watchmen, Splotchmen ends its sections with a pie tin containing one less slice each time it appears. Throughout the issue, Milhouse spends much of his time reading a Radioactive Man comic book, with its panels inter-cut with the main story line, à la Tales of the Black Freighter (Comic Book Guy, standing in for Watchmen‘s newspaper vendor, asks why he’s constantly reading out loud).

There’s Cold War tensions, a local independent newspaper called The New Springfieldsman, and even Dr. Manhattan’s Martian self-exile gets the Simpsons treatment. Except this time it turns out Dr. New Haven just locked himself inside the local planetarium once he’s “lost the will to loiven.”

And while the comic is a goldmine for Watchmen die hards, Simpsons fans will have plenty to enjoy even if they’ve never read the original book. Besides the core characters, readers will encounter Bumblebee Man, Kent Brockman, and Duffman (who has a comic origin story of his own). There’s even a sequence set in Shelbyville featuring the bizarro Speed-E-Mart and a quick cameo from that town’s Milhouse. Also, it turns out Fat Tony used to be Thin Tony in his early days of crime.

The number of callbacks – as well as the writers’ and artists’ attention to detail – is remarkable and telling of just how much the creators appreciate the comic medium. Any fan of Watchmen or The Simpsons (or ideally both) owes it to themselves to give it a read. So who is Pastry Face? Who’s been behind the rash of attacks seemingly meant to further divide the two towns? Fans will have to check out The Simpsons Super Spectacular #13 to find out. They just probably shouldn’t keep their fingers crossed for the Watchmen Babies in V for Vacation adaptation anytime soon.

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