Did Today’s Titans Reveal That [SPOILER] Knows About Dr. Manhattan?

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Titans #2, on sale today.

In May’s DC Universe: Rebirth #1, the pre-Flashpoint Wally West returned, warning Batman and others that a powerful force had corrupted the timeline and “stolen ten years” from the DCU. As a result, he said, relationships were altered or forgotten, events never took place, and on and on.

That force, fans can deduce based on the evidence provided in that issue, is Dr. Manhattan, the powerful superhuman from Watchmen. In that story, Dr. Manhattan was a man, transformed into a godlike being who opted to be a superhero to help humanity. Eventually losing his faith in humanity, Manhattan became a party to great evil in the hopes of traumatizing mankind into working together against a common foe. He was last seen attempting to create life itself in the final pages of Before Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan — a prequel series, sure, but due to the nature of the character, that matters little. He sees time as a construct and is able to view the future as easily as the past (except in Watchmen‘s main story, when it was temporarily clouded).

Dialogue shared between Dr. Manhattan and Watchmen big bad Ozymandias appeared on the final pages of DC Universe: Rebirth, clinching in the minds of many fans that it’s they who are responsible for the changes made to the DC Universe following the events of Flashpoint. Some have speculated that the world Manhattan was creating at the end of his Before Watchmen miniseries was in fact the world of “The New 52,” although evidence in the actual comics seems to contradict that.

The world, though, was still changed as a result of Flashpoint. Whose fault is it, and to what degree? Well, that’s up in the air until we figure out exactly what Dr. Manhattan was up to, but right now it looks like the blame is a fairly 50/50 split between Barry Allen (The Flash) and Dr. Manhattan.

Which is what makes this little bit of business in today’s Titans #2 particularly interesting. After learning that Wally West has already approached Linda Park, and that he (Wally) is already in love with Linda, here’s that Abrakadabra — the villain who tried to claim responsibility for making the world “forget” Wally West — has to say:

Obviously, he could very well be talking about The Flash. But there’s something about the ambiguity that makes me wonder whether this issue might be one of the early clues as to just what Dr. Manhattan did, and what his plan entailed.

If Kadabra knows that history is “broken,” it stands to reason that his claims about having made the world “forget” Barry might be more than mere bluster. If it was Dr. Manhattan who put him in the Speed Force, could it be Abrakadabra who made the world forget about Wally (and, for that matter, the Titans’ partnership)? We don’t get a lot of time to meditate on this before the next major plot point whisks us away from this moment and onto the next.

What is likely to be particularly discussed among fans is the fact that it appears the “He” referred in Kadabra’s panic is italicized. If it were Barry, that would seem particularly odd. If indeed the “he” is meant to stand out from the rest of the words in the word balloon, it seems likely that Kadabra is talking about a mysterious “he,” as opposed to the “he” already understood to have “broken history,” Barry.

Is that grasping at straws? Probably, but when things are left intentionally vague, sometimes grasping at straws is the closest thing you get to having a clue as to the author’s intent.

If it helps any, it’s worth mentioning that I showed this panel to The Walking Dead letterer Rus Wooton, who confirmed my suspicions: these italic or bold words are generally chosen by the writer for emphasis, Wooton told me — and it seems clear to him that this panel is meant to be telling the audience to pay attention for who “him” is down the line.

Titans #2 is on sale now at your local comic shop, or you can get a copy digitally on ComiXology. Titans #3, which continues the story of Wally West and the Titans’s battle against Kadabra, will be on the stands on September 28.