Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins. The series was published by DC Comics in single issues during 1986 and 1987, and has been subsequently reprinted in collected form. Watchmensuperhero characters that the company had acquired from Charlton Comics. As Moore's proposed story would have left many of the characters unusable for future stories, managing editor Dick Giordano convinced the writer to create original characters instead. originated from a story proposal Moore submitted to DC featuring

Moore used the story as a means to reflect contemporary anxieties and to deconstruct the superhero concept. Watchmen takes place in an alternate history United States where the country is edging closer to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, freelance costumed vigilantes have been outlawed and most costumed superheroes are in retirement or working for the government. The story focuses on the personal development and struggles of the protagonists as an investigation into the murder of a government sponsored superhero pulls them out of retirement and eventually leads them to confront a plot by one of their own to stave off nuclear war by killing millions of innocent people.

Creatively, the focus of Watchmen is on its structure. Gibbons used a nine-panel grid layout throughout the series and added recurring symbols such as a blood-stained smiley face. All but the last issue feature supplemental fictional documents that add to the series' backstory, and the narrative is intertwined with that of another story, a fictional pirate comic titled Tales of the Black Freighter, which one of the characters is reading.

Watchmen has received critical acclaim both in the comics and mainstream press, and is regarded as a seminal text of the comic book medium. After a number of attempts to adapt the series into a feature film, director Zack's Watchmen is scheduled for release in March 2009.

Infamous vigilante, anti-hero Frank Castle (Ray Stevenson) is six years into his vengeance driven zeal as the Punisher when he brutally assaults a "beat the rap" party for notorious mob boss Gaitano Cesare. During the course of the massacre, he hideously disfigures overeager gangster Billy Russoti (Dominic West) and murders a mafia lackey who turns out to be an undercover FBI agent.

Agent Paul Budiansky (Colin Salmon), the ex-partner of the undercover Fed, joins the NYPD's "Punisher Task Force" to help bring Castle to justice, once and for all.

A facially mutilated Russoti recovers from his run-in with the Punisher with revenge on his mind and recruits a massive army of psychotic killers, gangbangers, and mobsters under his new alias "Jigsaw."

Distraught that he has now become the very evil he swore to battle, Castle is content to hang up his guns and quit the justice business for good. However, plans quickly change once he learns that Jigsaw has not only kidnapped the surviving wife and child of the dead federal agent but now has also freed his commited psychopathic brother, James (Doug Hutchison)...aka..."Loony Bin Jim."

Forced back into the war, the Punisher now has to face off against Jigsaw's formidable army in order to save the lives of an innocent family his actions put in the firing line "Clock's ticking."