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The currently available tag for DC's Watchmen has the description:

The Watchmen are the fictional superhero team published by DC Comics and later made into a live action film.

The Watchmen are a group of costumed crime fighters first published in 1986 by DC Comics and later made into a 2009 live action film. Dark and gritty, the storyline takes place in an alternative history where the Watchmen dramatically affect their worlds events.

Does this tag still hold and can be used for HBO's TV adaptation of Watchmen as well?

Asking this as I recently posted a Watchmen question for the TV series (here) and I have no idea if the previous tag of the movie and comics should be used with it. Or a new tag should be added for this.

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  • Since an edit to the tag description came up in the queue yesterday, I made some (largely unrelated) corrections. To wit, "Watchmen" is not the name of a superhero team. So the current description begins instead: "Watchmen is a superhero comic miniseries/graphic novel, published by DC Comics, which was later made into a live-action film, as well as inspiring other spinoff media."
    – Buzz
    Nov 23, 2019 at 22:04

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The makers of the show have stated that the TV show is canon to the original comic books (on which the 2009 live action film was loosely based). Given that they're all part of the same fictional universe, using as a franchise tag makes sense.

Yes. Look, [the new series] certainly fits into the ‘sequel’ box, and definitely doesn’t fit into the ‘reboot’ box. We treat the original 12 issues as canon. They all happened. We haven’t done any revisionist history, but we can maneuver in between the cracks and crevices and find new stories there. But for all the reasons you just articulated, we wanted to make sure our first episode felt like the beginning of a new story rather than a continuation of an old story. That’s what I think a sequel is — the continuation of an old story.

Damon Lindelof Clarifies Watchmen's TV Show's Canon And Relation To The Movie

I would suggest you simply update the tag to reflect that;

first published in 1986 by DC Comics, continued in Before Watchmen (2012) and adapted into a 2009 live action film and 2019 TV series

You can always add a media tag to show what bit of the franchise (, , ) you're interested in, or leave them out entirely if you're after an answer from the entire franchise.

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    This seems sensible, and precisely what the media tags are for (well, that and ID questions). By the way, you meant media not genre :-)
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Nov 16, 2019 at 21:40
  • @Randal'Thor why then do we have many many titles with a year appendage to the tag name? I think this is not in line with the way we have been tagging things like this.
    – Skooba
    Nov 18, 2019 at 16:54
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A new tag should be made for the new series.

What we have done in the past to separate series that share an incidental name that run across multiple medias or been rebooted/remade/whatever is to add the year of the release.

i.e. this new Watchmen series would and should be tagged .

Other examples are , and , , and many others.

Regardless of whether it is canon to original comic books or first film or not, we will give new series a new tag. One area where this is particularly important is spoilers. A user can not avoid spoilers for a new release if it is not tagged properly.

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  • But it's not just an "incidental name", according to Valorum's answer. It's part of the same world, like harry-potter books and harry-potter movie, or lord-of-the-rings books and lord-of-the-rings movie, etc. etc.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Nov 18, 2019 at 17:20
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    @Randal'Thor yes and all those franchises have new tags when new parts of the series are released.
    – Skooba
    Nov 18, 2019 at 17:22
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    Every other work gets its own tag. This deserves it too.
    – user40790
    Nov 18, 2019 at 18:37
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    @CarpeCM Except that's very far from being true. If a single story has adaptations in multiple different media, we usually use one tag for it and add media tags if required.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Nov 19, 2019 at 9:24
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    @Randal'Thor Except that's not the case here at all. It's a sequel not an adaption. And sequels always get new tags.
    – user40790
    Nov 19, 2019 at 15:01
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This seems to have been already settled, but I think that adding specific tags for the original comic book, for the movie and for the new series would help to better categorize the questions, in addition to a broader umbrella tag like the existent generic ; I would also add something like , and ; or maybe just to be consistent with the already present .

This seems to me the same situation as in example , where one can chose to ask a question that refer to the whole franchise or to limit its scope to, i.e. , and so on.

The new Watchmen series could be a direct continuation of the comic books, adding to its canon and being considered a single narrative universe, but the same thing is also true for the in example.

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