Aintitcool has a brand new picture from The Watchmen. You can click the small version below to see it in close up (Warning: There be burly men in nut-huggers). If you're wondering why everyone looks so old-fashioned and Adam West-y, it's because the characters in this shot are actually The Minutemen, who are the precursors to The Watchmen some 40 years before. If you compare the photo with the panel from the original comic book beneath it, you can clearly see how close Zack Snyder's filmic vision is to the source material. Their costumes look homemade because they're the first wave of crimefighters and made all their get-ups themselves.
In the new picture the characters are, from left to right:
Silhouette: Other than the fact that her real name Ursula Zandt and she's a Jew who fled Nazi Germany, there's little known about her. The public revelation of her homosexuality lead to her departure from the group.
Mothman: Real name Byron Lewis, he barely figures in the comic but was popular with the group.
Dollar Bill: He was employed by a bank to be their in-house super-hero, stopping robberies and such. A cape snagging incident, which lead to his demise, seems to be clear inspiration for a brilliant joke sequence in The Incredibles.
Nite Owl I: Hollis Mason was inspired to super-heroism by the example of Hooded Justice (see later entry) and his exploits went on to inspire one Dan Dreiberg, who is the Nite Owl that we meet in the main story of the film, played by Patrick Wilson.
Captain Metropolis: AKA Nelson Gardner, the man who brought the Minutemen together and established the concept of crime-fighting teams. The causes he chose to defend were generally highly conservative and sometimes bigoted, which is somewhat ironic given that he was having an affair – and we doubt this will figure much in the film, so isn't much of a spoiler – with a male member of the team.
Comedian: A fairly nasty piece of work, this surly devil who makes his superheroing decisions based mainly on how they help him is the person who triggers the story that unfolds in Watchmen.
Silk Spectre I: Sally Juspeczyk made the unusual career move from stripper to superhero. She's one of the main public faces of the group. Her daughter Laurie (the one in all the stretchy yellow business in the promotional photos) took over her mother's mantle, albeit reluctantly.
Hooded Justice: Nobody knows for sure who this man really was, due to the mask he wore at all times. He was the first superhero, in the comic book's timeline, and one of the founders of The Minutemen.