HBO drops first teaser for its upcoming Watchmen series

The clock is ticking faster and faster as the world escalates toward destruction in the first teaser for Watchmen, HBO’s forthcoming new miniseries based on the hugely popular graphic novel by Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons.

(Some spoilers below for 2009 film and Watchmen and Doomsday Clock comics.)

Watchmen is one of the most critically acclaimed comic book series, widely viewed as a harbinger of the genre reaching full maturity due to its dark vision of flawed superheroes in an alternate timeline who go into hiding when public sentiment turns against them. Set in 1985, the series opens with the murder of a man named Edward Blake, who turns out to be a superhero known as the Comedian. Some former superhero compatriots team up to discover who has begun offing their colleagues, culminating in a confrontation with entrepreneur Adrian Veidt (formerly the superhero known as Ozymandias). Veidt orchestrates a massacre of half of New York City’s population by a giant alien squid in hopes that it will unite warring nations against a common foe.