Spoilers ahead for Doomsday Clock #4, on sale now.
In the pages of Doomsday Clock #4, the new Rorschach (whose identity was also revealed in the issue) made a passing reference to the death of one of the original Minutemen, Sally Juspeczyk.
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Juspeczyk, the original Silk Spectre and the mother of Laurie Juspeczyk (Silk Spectre II), was one of the Minutemen who had the most to do in Watchmen. She had a fraught relationship with her daughter, and it was something of the exact opposite of the one Dan Dreiberg had with Hollis Mason. While the pair were not technically related, Dreiberg idolized Mason and soaked in every second of their time together. Juspeczyk, who changed her name to Jupiter, had a successor who wanted nothing to do with the superhero game and little to do with her mother.
The pair’s relationship was further complicated within Watchmen by the revelation that Sally had withheld from Laurie the true identity of Laurie’s biological father, Eddie Blake. The vigilante and mercenary known as The Comedian, Laurie spent most of her life hating Blake after learning that he had once beaten and attempted to rape Sally during their time together with the Minutemen. It was not from the rape, but from a later, consensual coupling that Laurie was born — something Laurie could not fathom.
In spite of being constantly berated by the other costumed heroes, a strong argument could be made that Sally was one of the more well-adjusted former Minutemen. Like Mason and Adrian Veidt, she stayed out of trouble and retired to live comfortably, in part because she was willing and able to capitalize on her time as Silk Spectre. She, like Dreiberg, as a target of the original Rorschach’s venom; in his journal, he wrote that “The first Silk Spectre is a bloated, aging whore dying in a California rest resort.”
The exact date of Juspeczyk’s death is not clear, although it seems to have taken place in 1992. A news report on Veidt’s disappearance from public life coincided with both suspicions that he had something to do with the New York Massacre and Sally Jupiter’s memorial, at which Veidt said some unkind things about Jupiter. The events of Doomsday Clock began in November of 1992, by which time Veidt had been outed as the villain behind the New York “alien” attack, and was surreptitiously putting together a team to help him get to the DC Universe, where he would find Doctor Manhattan and hopefully bring him back home.
Doomsday Clock #5 hits the stands in May. In the meantime, Doomsday Clock #4 is on sale today at comic book stores and online.
