An unexpected effect of my deep dive into Watchmen was that Ozymandias has sort of become my favorite character. Yes, he's essentially the "bad guy" of the story, but all the characters are fundamentally flawed and deeply unlikable. So I guess I've grown to sympathize with the one character who was actually devoted to improving the world — despite his horrific methods. And I was quite excited to see that Len Wein would be tackling this complicated character. Wein was the editor of the main Watchmen series, making him (as far as I know) the only person to work on both the original Watchmen and this prequel project.
Unfortunately, my heart sank when I saw Jae Lee was the artist. His incredibly stylized work is not my cup of tea. I hate the way he draws hair and faces — heck, I don't like the way he draws people in general. It's just very ugly work. In my opinion. I will give him credit for creating atmospheric and moody scenes. But on a whole, I'd rather have him as a variant cover artist instead. Speaking of covers, though, I have to admit this one isn't too bad. I like the idea of Ozymandias being able to levitate through meditation, but he can't. At least not what I've been able to see so far.
The variant cover by Phil Jimenez is pretty solid. Ozymandias is resolutely looking ahead to the future with a quiet dignity and just enough of an air of arrogance. The background images, while narratively significant, are a bit of a distraction. The mosaic of Alexander the Great is historically accurate, but that oversized eyeball is poorly placed. And those squid tentacles spreading throughout New York City seems contradictory to the original story. I never got the sense that the monster was quite that big.
Jim Lee's variant is bland as always. Ozymandias looks as bored as Jim Lee probably was while drawing this. And he looks a bit too young? Maybe it's the hair. I also found it interesting that none of these three covers put Ozymandias in his mask. I guess most people just instinctively think of him without it — as he was at the end of Watchmen. But this is supposed to be a prequel comic.
Reportedly, the only time Dave Gibbons pushed back on Alan Moore during the making of Watchmen was about some of Adrian Veidt's overly long monologues. Gibbons said he couldn't cram so many words on a page and Moore complied. This makes me wonder if editor Len Wein was able to see those unabridged monologues. Regardless, he does capture Adrian's voice very well, and even quotes extensively from Moore's finished work.
Oddly, this story takes place on Oct. 11, 1985, just minutes before Adrian will undertake his "great mission." Fearing he might not survive, he decides to record his life's story in the hopes that history will look favorably upon his actions. Adrian begins his tale by commenting on how he has earned "more money than any one man could hope to spend in several lifetimes," which is a rather odd statement coming from a man who was aggressively plotting to profit off his scheme. If he could admit that he was hoarding an obscene amount of wealth, then why was he so focused on accumulating more? Just out of habit?
Anyway, the story actually begins with Adrian's parents fleeing the Nazis and arriving in New York in 1939. Moore said little about the Veidts, other than they were wealthy and both died when Adrian was a teenager. Wein fills in a few more details, but not too many. Apparently the elder Veidt made his fortune in the perfume industry, which helps explain Adrian's successful Nostalgia line. Adrian's father also had dreams of his son becoming president of the United States and gave him the middle name of Alexander, setting up a lifelong obsession with Alexander the Great.
One of the strangest parts about Adrian's backstory (that came directly from Moore) was how he was forced to carefully conceal his brilliance in school. I never understood why Adrian's wealthy parents wouldn't just enroll him in a private school and/or college. Luckily, Wein addressed this. Sort of. At age 6, Adrian scored so highly on an aptitude test that his teacher accused him of cheating. Rather than giving him another test or putting him in a gifted program, Adrian's dad convinced the teacher the test score was just a fluke. At home, in front of a poster of a very familiar-looking alien, Adrian is ordered by his father to maintain a low profile so people wouldn't consider him a freak. This still isn't a satisfying answer for me, as Wein fails to provide any insight behind this reasoning. Luckily, things do get better.
Adrian tried to keep a low profile, as ordered, but turned out to be almost too good at it. His aloof attitude made him a target for school bullies. Adrian's dad wanted to report the bullies to the principal, but Adrian refused, choosing instead to invest his paper route money into kung fu lessons. It took several months, but Adrian finally felt strong enough to fight back one day, brutally shattering his bully's kneecap. But to Adrian's dismay, his father was forced to make a sizable donation to the school to keep him from being expelled.
From that day on, Adrian vowed to stop holding back. He graduated high school at 14 and by the age of 17, he was taking post-graduate courses at Harvard — specializing his studies in Alexander the Great, naturally. This point of the story takes us to my next sticking point with Moore's brief origin. Adrian's parents died when he was 17. We don't know how or why. A part of me suspected that Adrian might have killed them himself, but I'm glad Wein didn't play into that cliché. However, he didn't provide anything original, either. The parents were just killed in a car crash. Plain and simple. The story demanded that they die, and Wein had no interest in exploring beyond that.
Instead, Wein decided to have Adrian absurdly spend several weeks staring at a bust of Alexander the Great in a museum. Eventually, he decided to donate his inheritance to charity and sail to Turkey to retrace Alexander's footsteps. Wein quotes directly from Moore for most of this part, deviating only to explain how Adrian continued his martial arts training. At one point, he became strong enough to support his entire body with just a finger.
In Tibet, Adrian was given a ball of hashish by a man he hesitatingly called an "acquaintance" for his recording, although the art heavily implies the two men had had sexual relations. (I don't have a problem with Adrian being gay or bisexual, but I was really hoping that he wasn't just so the homophobic Rorschach could be wrong.) Adrian consumed the drugs in a desert and hallucinated a horrific vision of the dead pharaohs rising from the ground like zombies. But Adrian embraced this vision, realizing that while Alexander failed to truly unify the world, he had succeeded in resurrecting the immortal wisdom of the Ancient Egyptian kings who had their most trusted servants buried alive to preserve their secrets.
After spending many months abroad, Adrian finally returned to New York. He said he somehow acquired a small "nest egg" during his travels, though he never elaborates on this. Suffice it to say, he had just enough money to start playing the stock market. As the weeks passed, he randomly began dating a girl named Miranda. Within months, Adrian was a wealthy man once again, consistently making the best possible moves with buying and selling his stocks, while never making a mistake. Eighteen months after returning to America, Adrian was a full-blown corporate mogul and had begun construction on a skyscraper for both his business offices and personal penthouse. The financial papers have already dubbed him the world's smartest man, but his relationship with Miranda was deteriorating.
To fill the void in her life, Miranda turned to drugs — drugs supplied by Moloch. Turns out the drugs were dirty and Adrian came home one night to find Miranda dead on their bed. For the first and only time since his parents died, Adrian wept for what might have been. He blamed himself for Miranda's death, but stopped short of calling the police, fearing the bad publicity this would bring his young company. Inspired by Nite Owl and the Comedian, Adrian decided to become a masked vigilante to personally avenge Miranda. Conveniently, he just happened to already have a costume on hand, in preparation of an upcoming Halloween party. Adding a few accessories and weapons, and just like that, Ozymandias was born.
Well, that was a rather disappointing ending. A random and completely unnecessary girlfriend appeared out of nowhere just to be killed and provide motivation for the main character to become a hero. When we talk about "fridging" girls, this is what we're talking about. (If you're not aware, "fridging" refers to a Green Lantern girlfriend in the 90s whose sole purpose was to be killed and dramatically stuffed into a refrigerator.) I'm also slightly worried that Wein and Brian Azzarello weren't communicating. The Comedian #1 strongly implied that Moloch was not actually a drug dealer, but was the victim of an FBI setup looking to score some cheap publicity. But then again, maybe that story happened before this one and Moloch later decided to deal drugs? Even if that's the case, I don't like it that much. I prefer to think of Moloch as more bark than bite — almost a patsy created by a world in desperate need for a super villain to battle their super heroes.
For the most part, I did like how Wein wrote Adrian. His voice and attitude were spot on. But what left me wanting was when Wein got lazy. Adrian's parents need to die? Car crash! Adrian needs to get rich? Umm ... stock market! Now he needs to become a superhero? Easy, dead girlfriend! I will still hold out hope for this series to improve, but I know the art will continue to upset me and my confidence in Wein is on increasingly shaky ground.
On a whole, though, the first round of the Before Watchmen comics have been a pleasant surprise for me. Minutemen played it safe, but was strong. Silk Spectre and the Comedian displayed a level of thoughtfulness I wasn't expecting. Only Nite Owl was a complete disappointment for me. Ozymandias is solidly the second weakest entry so far, though. Unless you count the Crimson Corsair, which I really don't. It's just two pages of bland repetitiveness at the end of each issue.
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