For almost as long as there have been superheroes, there have been superheroes who were intended to be patriotic figures representing American values by offering up inspirational speeches, standing up for the little guy and socking Hitler in the jaw whenever possible. Considering the popularity of the medium during the Second World War, it's easy to see why Real American Heroes became so prevalent, even if they've failed to find so easy a purpose ever since (Although trying to do so has produced such great stories - and such sly commentary as Captain America's 1970s villains, the Committee to Regain America's Principles... or CRAP, for short). But this isn't a day to think about troubled times... so let's salute the brave, bold and... others... of America's Fictional Finest.

The Classics
Captain America
Still the best of all of America's superheroes - or, at least, the only one who's really weathered the years and stayed in print the longest. Sure, there was that whole period he disappeared after the War, but that's because he was frozen in a block of ice. Who would've wanted to have read that month after month?

Uncle Sam
Who could be more patriotic than Captain America? Well, how about Uncle Sam himself? Oh, alright; this character, created by The Spirit's Will Eisner, wasn't the Uncle Sam, but instead the resurrected spirit of a Revolutionary War-era soldier who mystically returns in America's various hours of need, but still. Look at that beard and wonder just who could argue?

The Shield
Created more than a year before Captain America, Archie Comics' super soldier patriot may not have the name recognition of Marvel's counterpart, but DC Comics is doubtlessly hoping that J. Michael Straczynski's upcoming revival of the superpowered military man will change all of that.

The Fighting Yank
A character so wonderfully named, he's been revived not once but twice in recent years, and by no less than Alan Moore (in a 2001 issue of his America's Best Comics series Tom Strong) and Alex Ross (in his ongoing Project Superpowers series). But who could resist the lure of a man haunted by the ghost of his War of Independence-era ancestor who fights for his country's honor?

Liberty Belle
What are the odds that a woman could have a spiritual connection with the Liberty Bell so strong that it gives her superpowers and the ability to fight Nazis? if you're a comic book character from the 1940s, apparently they'd be good enough for that character's daughter to take on the same costumed identity and fight crime with the Justice Society today.

The Forgotten Heroes
Mr. America/Americommando
Reason #1 to love this 1941 superhero: His secret identity is a Texan oilman out for revenge against the Nazis. Reason #2: His sidekick's name was "Fatman." Reason #3: His Nazi-fighting technique? Dying his hair black and whipping his enemies until they surrender. Why is this character not getting multiple movies and fan worship as we speak?

Miss America
Sadly unrelated to the above, Miss America gained her powers from a dream where the Statue of Liberty came to life and gave them to her, and thankfully kept up that level of weirdness all the way through her career, whether it was faking her own aging process in order to live a quiet life or making a new body for herself from space debris and renaming herself Miss Cosmos. There's something admirable about that kind of ingenuity, wouldn't you agree?

USAgent
A much more recent patriotic hero than most, John Walker hails from the 1980s and an unsuccessful stint as a replacement for Captain America that accidentally led to his parents' death. His success as a character is perhaps best defined by the fact that he - an American-themed hero with a very American name - was transplanted to Canada by Marvel in a desperate attempt to make him a success. It failed.

American Eagle
Marvel Comics' 1981 attempt at inclusiveness resulted in this Native American hero, Jason Strongbow, whose generic origin story (Gained powers in accident caused by supervillain, seeking revenge for a dead brother) and lazy stereotypical costume didn't hint at the potential that's slowly being unlocked by more recent creators in series like Thunderbolts and War Machine.

Star-Spangled Kid
DC Comics keep trying with this name, even if the characters keep getting popular enough to outgrow it; the first SSK became Infinity Inc.'s Skyman in the 1980s, and the second became the Justice Society of America's Stargirl. Luckily, we now apparently have a third in the Teen Titans franchise, even if she does happen to be martian. Does an alien really count as star-spangled?

The Crazy Ones
The Comedian
Sure, there may be nothing particularly American about his name - or even his outfit, most of the time - but there's no doubting that Alan Moore's Watchmen character served his country - or more accurately, his country's government - better than most superheroes. Not enough to stop himself getting thrown out a window, sure, but them's the breaks.

Nuke
Frank Miller's intentionally-failed attempt to repeat the Captain America experiment may have seemed slightly out of place in the classic "Born Again" Daredevil storyline, but there's no denying that his drug-fueled, crazed Vietnam-flashback rantings made him a memorable indictment of mindless patriotism in Reagan's America.

Superpatriot
An old-school superhero captured, made into a cyborg and going insane and murderous in the process? Erik Larsen's quasi-parody may have a history that's as ridiculous as it is eventful - and that's before you've gotten to the kids he didn't remember having and his half-martian grandchild - but we're choosing to look at him as a man who's just made a few mistakes, is all.

Major Victory
Leader of conservative supergroup the Force of July - Get it? - this DC Comics character was everything some would want in a true American hero: Charismatic, attractive, arrogant and racist as all get out. Never given to complex characterization, the character's descent into political parody continued when he joined a new corporate superteam called the Captains of Industry - Get it? - before, thankfully, dying.

Captain America
Yeah, I know; Steve Rogers isn't crazy, right? But his retconned 1950s replacement most definitely was. After all, how else would you describe a man whose take on American values was deemed acceptable by Nazi supervillain the Red Skull on more than one occasion? Yes, he may think he was a patriot - and, thanks to cosmetic surgery, he even looks exactly identical to the original Cap - but this guy is not the kind of hero you want in your corner.

WTF?
Yank & Doodle
Yes, it's a crime-fighting duo called Yank and Doodle. Even during their heyday of the 1940s, there's no way that kids didn't find these two America-loving teenagers more than a little dumb. Surprisingly, they've just been revived in Dynamite's Project Superpowers series... Here's hoping that new names are forthcoming.

Yankee Poodle
Well, what else would you call the world's most patriotic crime-fighting dog? Part of DC Comics' Zoo Crew, Poodle isn't even the most America-centric of the team... That'd be American Eagle. Who, you guessed it, is an actual Eagle. Stunningly, thanks to Final Crisis, these characters are officially part of DC's main continuity these days.

American Maid
Armed with a boomerang tiara and her quick wits, The Tick's occasional partner in crimefighting stands out as being probably the most capable of all the characters in the comic/show - Dressed like Lady Liberty and working for the US government more often than not, evil will never get away with it as long as she's around.

The First American and US Angel
Alan Moore's turn of the millennium take on the idea of patriotic comic characters was this unusual duo - An overweight, incompetent superhero (The latest in a long line of First Americans) and the former stripper who dreams of taking his place. Social satire, or serious commentary on the impotence of American masculinity in the face of an increasingly revelatory society obsessed with surface glamor above all? You be the judge. But it's not the latter.

US 1
If a trucker who can pick up CB transmissions thanks to the metal plate in his head, and then gets kidnapped by aliens before opening an intergalactic diner in space doesn't sound like the very personification of the American Dream to you, then there's only one explanation: You're not an American in the first place. But even that doesn't stop us from wishing you a happy Independence Day... even if it was independence from you that's being celebrated in the first place.

[Destiny Interrupted] Via.

We don't want to spoil the movie for those of you who haven't read the book, but there may be somethings that you need - or want - to know before you head to the theaters on Friday (or Thursday night, if you're very excited). So here are nine questions that you just might want some answers to, just in case. Click through to learn more.

What Is Watchmen?
Who Are The Watchmen?
Why Is Watchmen So Important?
Why Was Watchmen Supposed To Be Unfilmable?
Where Does It Take Place?
Who's The Giant Blue Guy?
What's With Characters With "II" After Their Names, Like Nite Owl II And Silk Spectre II?
What Is Tales of The Black Freighter, Anyway?
What's This About A Squid? (Spoilers, No, Seriously.)

The one question we're not answering yet? Whether we think you should go and see the movie... You'll have to wait for our review, coming early next week, for that one.

Still here? Okay.

As anyone who's paid attention to our coverage of Watchmen undoubtedly knows by now, the end of the Watchmen movie does not include the giant alien squid destroying Manhattan that the book climaxes with. Admittedly, when you put it like that - "the giant alien squid destroying Manhattan" - it sounds ridiculous, like a bad monster movie or something, but that's kind of the point, both inside and outside of the story.

It's the ridiculous, surreality of an alien squid that is required to shock the various superpowers out of their Cold War mindset in Ozymandias' plan; something so literally beyond the realms of possibility that its very appearance makes everything else seem equally absurd and forces political powers to reassess their priorities and put aside prejudices to deal with this new perceived threat. The squid doesn't just provide the climax to the story, it also provides the start; it was the Comedian seeing experiments that led to the squid's creation that led to his murder.

From a meta context, the squid provides a reference to the monster comics that pre-dated the Silver Age where superhero comics became the dominant force in the marketplace (What better to provide an end to superheroics in the Watchmen world? The narrative almost reads as a backwards comment on the maturation of the medium, opening with a brutal, realistic murder and then ending with a cartoonish monster apocalypse) while also exploding both the world that Moore and Gibbons had created and the rules that they had imposed on it with something so unrealistic - and, yes, unfilmable - that it could only work in comics, where imagination and conviction are all that's needed to make an idea work. By bringing in the idea of an alien giant squid - Interestingly enough, just like Starro The Conqueror, the first villain fought by the Justice League of America, DC Comics' premiere superhero team and the direct inspiration behind the creation of the Fantastic Four, which in turn led to the creation of Marvel Comics as we know it today - to a story that, Dr. Manhattan aside, had remained mostly grounded, the possibility and idea-driven nature of comics is restated, as is (in a strange way) the need for superheroes to battle such outlandish threats. The story comes full-circle, and the critique of superheroes closes with a return to imagination and the impossible, albeit one done in a downbeat tone consistent with the rest of the book.

Meredith is right; the loss of the squid, and the destruction that it brought with it, is a loss to the movie. Perhaps what replaces it fills a plot hole, but it's unlikely that it will hold as much meaning as what was removed.

Manhattan - formerly Jon Osterman - is the only member of the Watchmen cast with superpowers; all of the others are, in their ways, mostly regular people in ridiculous outfits who fight crime with the help of technology and training... Batman, to all intents and purposes. Nite Owl is the most direct Batman-analog (complete with Batmobile-analog, the Owlship... although you can blame that one on Nite Owl's more direct inspiration the Blue Beetle), but both Rorschach and Ozymandias split well-known Batman traits between them (Rorschach gets the detective skills and obsessiveness, while Ozymandias is given the intelligence and faultless strategic-planning, as well as an element of the Bruce Wayne lifestyle); in comparison, Silk Spectre and the Comedian are more generic character types (Spectre in particular; Watchmen is a curiously male story) that owe less to superhero history and more to general popular culture archetypes.

That Manhattan becomes more than human is an important part of Watchmen; in plot terms, it alters the balance of power politically, allowing for America to become the particular dystopia that it is by the time the story takes place, but it also allowed Moore and Gibbons to step outside of the story to an extent and explore less immediate themes and more inventive storytelling techniques through the character's eyes. Manhattan's inhuman perspective also acts as an important counterpoint to the all-too-human failings of the other characters which drive the story. In many ways (and, perhaps ironically considering the emotional detachment of the character), Manhattan is the heart of Watchmen.

We talked to Morgan about his work on Watchmen, and here's what he had to say.

How did you like The Comedian's costume?

It was hard to move in, it was hard to get into, [and] it was hard to get out of. But that being said, when I got in it and stuck a cigar in my mouth... yeah... I wanted to kill people right away.

Did you have previous experience with weapons?

I got to go to the firing range quite a few times. It was a blast. I loved that part of it... There was a flame thrower range in the warehouse, that was a trip... The day that I did the scene where I have to keep the flame on this guy for ten seconds, do a ten count in your head, which is an exceedingly long time to pointing a flame thrower at some guy who has a little gel on him. You're just nailing him with these flames, and I kept pulling up early. I thought I'm going to really hurt this guy and I can't deal with that. And Zack's like, "Do it again man, and you're enjoying this too."

I kept having to redo it because I was pulled up. And I'm smiling and having my little moment but, so finally the last time I did it, I held it on this guy, but in the mean time I'd done it so many times that the rice paddy had been covered with gasoline from shooting this thing. So I'm burning this guy up and I do it and I'm like, "yeah you fucking bastard," and I look down and there's flames coming at me, and it comes right up my leg and there's no one near me. I'm in the middle of a rice paddy. And I look up and I see Zack and his eyes are this big [makes big circles over his eyes] and all I can think is "I can't ruin the costume."

The guys did so much work on the costume and I thought I'm just going to have to put it out myself. It was a nightmare [laughs]. They're imperfect heroes. I kept the cigar lit the whole time, I just sucking on that.

Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach) interrupts:
Rorschach would have been like "27, 28..." [Laughs]

Was it difficult for you taking on the role of this character? Did you go method with it a little?

I'm not a method actor. I always take kind of pride in the fact that when it's time to turn it on, you turn it on, and when it's time to go home at night, you know walk your dog and enjoy your life. But there are a couple of things that I do - that The Comedian does - that certainly wasn't easy to walk away from. They certainly stuck with me. There were a couple sleepless nights. Filming this was a lot harder than I ever anticipated when I first got the role.

It was a lot harder, and Jack [Earle Haley] said something earlier about being isolated. I did the same. We both sort of isolated ourselves from everybody while we were shooting this. It seemed to make more sense in the process. It was a long shoot. It was a great shoot and I loved it, and I loved playing this guy, but the day I got to go home and be rid of him, was not bad. I was tired.

Watchmen will be in theaters on March 6.

Talking to MTV, Jeffrey Dean Morgan - who plays the Comedian in Zack Snyder's movie adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' classic comic - said that the scene where his character is discovered raping Carla Gugino's Silk Spectre wasn't an easy one to shoot:

It was a three-day process shooting that particular scene, and it was hard... It was three of the hardest days of filming I have ever had to do. It was really very violent.

Violent, you may be thinking? Wasn't it kind of... understated in the original comic? Well, yes, but certain liberties have to be taken in adapting things into movies, Morgan explained:

When you’re looking at the comic book you only get a couple panels so there is a lot of stuff there that needs to be filled in, so we fill in the blanks there between three and four panels, and it turns out to be one hell of a violent scene. And it’s all intact, [Hooded Justice] comes in and interrupts the attempted rape — it’s all there. We stayed very loyal to it, and I haven’t actually seen the scene yet, but I did see a piece of playback when we were filming it and it’s a lot... It’s rated ‘R’ for a reason.

Call it a suspicious nature, but the glibness of "it's rated 'R' for a reason" (or, for that matter, Gugino calling the scene "pretty crazy" last year) concerns me for some reason. Am I really the only one who's worried that "filling in" things between panels is going to equal a glossy, sensationalistic gratuitous scene in this case..?

‘Watchmen’ Actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan On Film’s Rape Scene: ‘It’s Rated ‘R’ For A Reason’ [MTV Splash Page]