Doctor Manhattan might have believed he understood the DC Multiverse. After living in the DC Multiverse for so long and conducting major experiments, including stealing ten years from it, he had naturally begun to feel that he knew it well enough.
In the major Doomsday Clock event Chen Tao had read, Doctor Manhattan conducted his most dangerous and insane experiment.
He wanted to see what would happen if he used his absolute power to force Superman to punch him.
Doctor Manhattan could not see the reality that would follow. He believed there were only two possibilities: either the DC Multiverse would be destroyed, or Doctor Manhattan would die.
Power could not appear from nowhere. If a superhero could defeat a villain, especially by using power far beyond his own, then the DC Multiverse must have balanced the strength of good and evil, preserving the balance of yin and yang.
He wanted to know the limit of the DC Multiverse's system of endlessly generating Crisis Force whenever heroes defeated villains. But now, Batman Dragon had helped him test it.
You see, this was the greatest change Batman Dragon had brought Doctor Manhattan—far greater than all the others.
You experimented on yourself because you could find no other test subject. But Batman Dragon had helped you draw Perpetua out.
He had shown you what would happen when someone fought the entire DC Multiverse alone, how the Multiverse would retaliate, and...
What result everything would ultimately produce.
So Doctor Manhattan was waiting for the end of the story. That ending would depend on whether he could continue his next experiment, and in what manner.
But at least for now, Doctor Manhattan still did not understand the DC Multiverse's system of death. Or, to put it another way, unless someone experienced it personally, no