Doctor Janey Slater was a research scientist employed by the United States government and Jon Osterman's ex-girlfriend, whom she met at the Gila Flats research facility in Arizona.
Later in life, Janey became one of the countless victims of Adrian Veidt's plan to "save" the world by giving her lung cancer as a way to smear Doctor Manhattan into leaving Earth and stop him from interfering with the 11/2 Psychic Shockwave event.
Biography[]
Physicist at Gila Flats[]
Janey meeting Jon for the first time
Coming from New Jersey, Janey Slater worked at Gila Flats as a nuclear physicist under professor Milton Glass. When Jon Osterman first arrived at the base, he met her at the Bestiary bar, and she bought him a cold beer; the first time a woman did such gesture to him.[3]
Trip to New Jersey[]
Young lovers at Palisades
When Osterman decided to travel to New Jersey that summer to visit some university friends at Princeton in July 1959, Slater went with him to visit her mother. She called home from the train station but since she didn't answer the phone, they decide to kill some time at Palisades Amusement Park. A photographer, mistaking the two for lovers, takes a snapshot picture of them. Slater's watch then falls off her wrist and breaks and a fat man step on it. Osterman, being the son of a watchmaker, promises to repair it. As her mother still doesn't answer the phone, she follows Osterman to his hotel room, and after they examine the watch's damage, they make love for the first time.[3]
Intrinsic Field Experiment[]
A month later, on August 20, 1959, Slater witnesses the incident in which Jon Osterman, who intended to pick up her watch that he'd left in his lab coat, was accidentally locked in the Intrinsic Field Test Chamber before an experiment. While Osterman begs for Slater to stay with him, she is unable to watch and leaves. Osterman is disintegrated and a token funeral service is held. Slater places the photograph of her and Osterman at the amusement park behind glass at the Bestiary.[3]
Dating Doctor Manhattan[]
When Jon Osterman returned as Doctor Manhattan, he and Slater resume their relationship. They spend that Christmas together, and she buys him a golden ring. Hearing that he only admires its atomic structure, not the object itself, she admits that she is scared of him and all the things that has changed about him. He assures her that he will always want her, knowing full well of their relationship's doomed fate.[3]
Janey in awe
In 1963, soon after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, they begin arguing about why Osterman did nothing to prevent the President from being shot in Dallas (even though he knew it would happen far in advance) and how detached Osterman is from humanity and herself.[4] Nonetheless, he predicts that they will make love, because Wally Weaver delivered a pair of earrings from him to Slater just a moments later.[3]
In 1966, Slater accompanies Doctor Manhattan to the first (and apparently only) Crimebusters meeting, where he first meets Laurie Juspeczyk. She is annoyed, noticing the obvious attraction between them, and asks to leave.[3][5] Outside Gardner’s mansion, Janey accuses Jon of “chasing jailbait” and angrily asks him if it’s because she’s getting old.
Slater leaves him when she discovers that a relationship had been building between Osterman and Juspeczyk, throwing away the earrings he had given her. His disinterest in Slater was simply due to her beginning to grow too old for him, as he had permanently remained a physically 30-year-old man and had ceased aging years ago. Crying, she packed her things carelessly and left him.[3][4]
Slater giving her interview with a Nova Express journalist.
Dimensional Developments and Cancer[]
After breaking up with Jon Osterman, Slater started smoking three packages a day and caught recurring bronchitis; however, her insurance wouldn't cover it as a pre-existing condition.[6]
Due to her past association with Osterman, Adrian Veidt employed her at Dimensional Developments[7] to work as a physicist. Veidt pretended to offer help out with Slater's ailing health by providing her with holistic treatments outside the United States. He provided her with "medicinal" cigarettes, which however cause her lung cancer, as part of Veidt’s campaign to cause enough psychological distress to Doctor Manhattan that will he leave Earth entirely and, in turn, prevent him from interfering with Veidt’s conspiracy to “save” the world from nuclear annihilation.[6]
Events of Watchmen[]
After learning that she has cancer and only six months to live, Janey contacted the magazine Nova Express on October 19th, 1985, and bitterly shares her fraught experiences with Osterman and the general unhappiness present in her life to a journalist at the Nova Express office (most likely Doug Roth). Soon after the interview was conducted, the magazine publishes a damning expose in their latest issue, detailing an alleged link between Doctor Manhattan and several past associates who have seemingly all been stricken with cancer, including Slater, retired supervillain Edgar. W. Jacobi (Moloch the Mystic), and the late Wally Weaver.[4]
Assuming Janey Slater was not present in New York City around the time of the 11/2 event, she most likely died in the early spring of 1986.
Personality[]
"Just like that? Like I’m a puppet? Jon, you know how everything in this world fits except for people. Your predictions are way off, mister."
—Janey Slater to Jon Osterman on his ability to see the future
Before the Gila Flats incident that gave birth to Doctor Manhattan, Janey was once a kind, energetic, and charismatic young woman with a hopeful future as a nuclear physicist. When she meets Jon Osterman at the Bestiary bar, she fell for him instantly and both of them were a typical, happy, young couple deeply in love.
After witnessing Jon’s horrific “death” and his later resurrection as a god-like being, however, Janey started to become highly disturbed by her boyfriend’s otherworldly powers and was secretly scared of him, as she and everyone around Gila Flats had utterly no idea of what exactly he was now. Janey is particularly unnerved by Jon's uncanny ability to experience all of time simultaneously, which left Janey feeling as though she was just a puppet with no control over her own life. As much as they tried to keep their love for each other going, Slater and Osterman grew further apart as the years went, with Jon becoming more and more distant and apathic to the world around him, as well as being completely unable to relate to Janey anymore.
Janey leaving Jon
The final straw in their romance came when Janey discovered he was having an affair with Laurie Juspeczyk soon after the Crimebusters meeting (an act she finds especially egregious when considering the jarring age gap between them). Having enough of his disregard for her, Janey was enraged and heartbroken by Jon, calling him a "pig", and saying that he should tell Laurie what it will be like once she's outgrown her youthful appearance, yet he remains looking the same. As Janey gives her sob-filled rant against Jon and prepares to leave him, he stands in indifferent silence all the while. Janey also seems to somewhat resent Laurie years later because of Osterman's infidelity, as she described her in the Nova Express interview as "some sixteen-year-old who ran around in her underwear".
By the time Janey decided to share her experiences with Osterman in 1985, she has become a broken, lonely old woman with nothing in her life anymore but pain and despair from being abandoned and betrayed by the man who lied that he would always love her. She is describing upon learning of her diagnosis feeling "bitter as hell" and thinking no who will grieve or miss her once she's died, Jon especially.
Trivia[]
- Given her black hair and romantic history with Doctor Manhattan (who is described at one point in the series by a newscaster as a "superman"), she could be seen as an analogue for Lois Lane, in a similar vain to Wally Weaver being a surrogate for Jimmy Olsen.