Back in the Watchmen's heyday of the '80s, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons tossed around the idea of a 12-issue Minutemen limited series. That idea never panned out and DC was unable to create any major adaptations or additions to Watchmen until Zack Snyder's film in 2009. The movie didn't earn much (if any) money, but it did create a massive demand for the source material. Sensing a potential fortune to be made, DC reportedly reached out to Moore in 2010, offering to finally restore to him the rights of Watchmen in exchange for prequel and sequel stories. Moore refused, saying the offer came 10 years too late. Undaunted, DC proceeded with plans for a prequel of their own.
Before Watchmen ended up being a 37-issue project involving more than a dozen different writers and artists. Surprisingly, Gibbons was nowhere to be found — not even drawing variant covers or anything like that. I find that odd, seeing as how he helped out so much with Snyder's film. But by the time this comic series went into development, Gibbons apparently took the attitude that the original 12-issue miniseries was the complete story and neither he, nor Moore, had anything to add. Moore took a much more aggressive stance against Before Watchmen, calling it "shameless" and saying he wished it wouldn't happen. He did make a fair point, I believe, in pointing out DC's hypocrisy with its treatment of Watchmen. It was celebrated because it wasn't like anything else. But with projects like this, which treated Watchmen just like every other DC property, the mystique of the story begins to wear off.
I agree with Moore on this, but only to a point. Watchmen isn't a perfect story. And I don't think it behooves us to treat it as a sacred text like the Bible or Quran. Yeah, it's a shame that DC never returned the rights of the characters to Moore and Gibbons, but at the end of the day, a contract was signed and the company can do what it wants with its property. You could argue that Watchmen never would have become the sensation it is without the involvement of DC's editorial and marketing departments. Still, though, should DC have made this series? Probably not. But they did make them, so I'm going to read them to see if they're any good.
Kicking off this ambitious, controversial project in 2012 was Minutemen, written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke. This was a smart choice for two reasons. One, the Minutemen had by far the most potential for a compelling prequel. And two, Cooke was probably the only creator capable of tackling this job. His New Frontier is still the most beautiful, poignant love letter to DC's Silver Age. And his art style carries a certain amount of folksy charm that lends itself perfectly to stories about the '40s and '50s — especially when combined with the rich, vibrant colors of Phil Noto.
No one's going to mistake this for a work of Moore and Gibbons, which is probably a good thing. The point of this series is to add to the Watchmen story, not retell it. But one of the biggest problems with making a prequel in the same medium several decades later is the change in styles can be a bit jarring. Like going from the puppets of Return of the Jedi to the cgi creatures of the Phantom Menace, Before Watchmen is full of many similar changes. Gone are the nine-panel grids and the supplemental material of mostly pure text. And in comes one of the tropes of the age, variant covers.
The Michael Golden cover is quite underwhelming — all the characters look a bit off model. The Jim Lee cover is ... fine, I guess. It's an intimidating portrait of Hooded Justice, but he only plays a small role in this first issue. The main cover by Cooke is by far the best, focusing on this issue's real main character: the original Nite Owl, Hollis Mason. The beautiful sepia tones perfectly summon up the feelings of nostalgia for the 1940s. I was, admittedly, a bit disappointed to see Cooke's cover was not also the first panel of the story — as Gibbons faithfully accomplished on each of the 12 issues of Watchmen — but I have to remind myself that this is not meant to be a re-creation of the work by Moore and Gibbons. This is just telling new stories with the same characters. But what I'm most interested in is how well Cooke's interpretation follows what I perceive to be Moore's original intention — namely that none of the characters in this story are supposed to be likable.
Before Watchmen: Minutemen #1 opens with some especially saccharine dialogue, before quickly revealing it's Hollis Mason working on his controversial tell-all book, Under the Hood. Luckily, Hollis has the grace to admit that this style of prose is terrible. His book agent calls to schedule a meeting, revealing that he isn't fond of the latest draft, either. The rest of the issue is Hollis recounting the early days of the Minutemen, going through each character, one by one. This is presumably part of Hollis' draft, which doesn't contradict what we read in the original series, and adds a few nice details. What I appreciate most of all is how Hollis begins this nostalgic journey by openly admitting that he is seeing only what he wants to see.
The first hero is the Hooded Justice. Cooke and Noto do a fantastic job of conveying the terror and ferocity of this massive black figure in a flowing red cape. Hooded Justice throws a man through a window and onto a police car several stories below. The officer closest to the victim retired a few days later. But Hollis became inspired by this display of horrifying brutality.
Up next is the first Silk Spectre, Sally Jupiter. Hollis coldly describes her as presenting "unbridled capitalism," as he explains how she and her agent would pay men to pose as criminals, tip off reporters to be in the right place and the right time, and then bribe the police to look the other way. This was truly a stroke of brilliance on Cooke's part.
The third hero is Nite Owl. Hollis recounts a heroic effort of stopping some shooters engaged in a high speed chase on a snowy night near Christmas. Hollis did rescue a couple of innocent bystanders, but he admits he mainly was just chasing thrills.
Hollis describes the young Comedian as more of a thug than a hero, as we see him beat up all the occupants of a bar then rob the cash register on his way out. Hollis details Mothman's addiction to alcohol and drugs in a half-hearted attempt to describe him as a brave man before he "cracked up." And the Dollar Bill was quickly portrayed merely as a living, breathing commercial.
Silhouette gets a surprisingly heroic treatment, shown saving a small boy from traffickers connected to a child pornography ring. Hollis says that of all the Minutemen, she was the "most sincerely committed to doing something meaningful." I see this as Cooke's biggest revision so far. Moore never intended much for Silhouette beyond a demonstration that most of the people who would be attracted to the lifestyle of a costumed vigilante would be sexual deviants of some sort. Silhouette was merely a lesbian, killed after being outed. But this story was not written in the '80s. By 2012, Silhouette's brief story has much more tragic connotations and her death feels much more undeserved. So, by way of compensation it seems, Cooke has retroactively made her the most noble of the original superheroes. I'm not sure if I agree with this, but I'll wait and see what else Cooke has in store for her.
The story ends with Captain Metropolis, the wealthy military consultant who purchased an abandoned riverside factory to use as his base of operations. While taking a luxurious bath, the Captain dictates a letter to Sally's agent, taking the first step to forming the Minutemen.
Well, I don't know if I'd call this story "shameless," per se, but I am a little bit underwhelmed so far. It was nicely done, but not nearly original enough to justify this whole project, in my opinion. Perhaps Cooke was primarily concerned with building readers' trust at the start before trying anything too ambitious, and I respect that.
The backup story, however, is exactly what I'd call a shameless cash grab. It's two pages of a random pirate tale called The Curse of the Crimson Corsair by Len Wein and John Higgins. It looks well-made and promises to be creepy, but it really serves no purpose here other than to remind readers that there was a pirate comic in Watchmen. But that pirate comic was integrated into the story, often used as commentary of the events happening around it, and serving as a broader metaphor for Watchmen as a whole. Plus, Moore was fascinated with the history of comic books within his own fictional world of real-life superheroes. The Black Freighter reflected this and was presented in the same way an old EC comic would have been. The Crimson Corsair doesn't seem to serve any of those purposes so far. All it's doing right now is telling me to read the first issue of the Silk Spectre miniseries next, instead of just sticking with Minutemen.
And that's just what I'll do. I want to read all these comics in the order they came out, so my next entry in this series will be Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre #1.
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