Well, I've finally come to the last miniseries about the main Watchmen characters. Dr. Manhattan may be the hardest character to write, but he does offer the most possibilities for some truly bizarre, fascinating stories. Unfortunately, J. Michael Straczynski was chosen to handle this miniseries. Fortunately, he was paired with Adam Hughes, who provided some very nice interior art. His cover is fine, but nothing special.
The Paul Pope variant cover isn't particularly pleasant. I like the concept, but not the execution. Dr. Manhattan just looks too squiggly and off model for me.
Jim Lee decided to take Dr. Manhattan off model in the completely opposite way. He's now a humorously huge body builder, reminding me of how Arnold Schwarzenegger was almost cast as Dr. Manhattan. It astounds me how ridiculously bad Lee's variants were for this project.
The problem with trying to write a prequel about Dr. Manhattan is that Alan Moore had already covered every aspect of his life — quite thoroughly, in fact. And you can feel Straczynski struggling with that fact for 90% of this issue. But he tries to insert his own bits of originality here and there. We'll see how
He opens with a random funeral — perhaps the funeral of Dr. Manhattan's father, but this isn't confirmed yet — then begins flipping around back and forth through Dr. Manhattan's past. The first flashback is in 1938, where a 9-year-old Jon Osterman is still living in Germany (I had always assumed he had been born in America, but whatever). It's Jon's birthday, and his father has gifted him an ornate clock, which just so happens to look exactly like the clock palace Dr. Manhattan would later build on Mars. I personally find it strange that Dr. Manhattan would recreate an enormous version of his father's gift when the original series made it quite clear that Jon deeply hated his father, but what do I know?
After spending a few pages rehashing things we already know, Straczynski takes us to 1949, where college student Jon Osterman is bizarrely choosing to stay inside and work on a clock instead of going down to the lake with a beautiful girl, who is practically shoving her massive breasts in his face. I find it strange that A) Jon is still working on clocks even after his father forced him to give up that hobby in favor of studying physics and B) notoriously horny Jon would be completely unfazed by this gorgeous woman throwing herself at him. But again, what do I know?
In 1959, Jon begins his new job at the Gila Flats test base. As he tours the facility, he feels a strange sense of déjà vu, somehow remembering when he visited it years later when it was abandoned and he was Dr. Manhattan. This disturbs Dr. Manhattan while he's on Mars, as he can't explain how his past, human self could have sensed his future, super-powered self.
He thinks about how his choices may have changed the future, which brings us to the infamous Crimebusters meeting of 1966. Once again, Straczynski plays out the incredibly stupid moment of Captain Metropolis trying to split the heroes into pairs and Dr. Manhattan changing Rorschach's paper to Silk Spectre's. Dr. Manhattan even briefly considers two different possibilities where (assuming the Crimbebusters meeting went well) he gets to fight crime alongside either Rorschach or Silk Spectre. Of course, in the case of Laurie, he spends more time kissing her and less time blowing up criminals.
Straczynski then spends several pages blatantly contradicting the original series. Dr. Manhattan tells Janey Slater he loves her and instead of admitting to himself that was a lie, he now tells himself that statement was true, but "utterly beside the point." Later, we see Jon's father having a breakdown upon learning of his son's death. And even though Moore made it quite clear that Dr. Manhattan hated his father and never made any attempts to let him know he'd survived, Straczynski decided to have Dr. Manhattan visit his dad on his death bed. Jon's dad was too delirious to acknowledge his son, so I guess nothing technically changed, but it still really bugs me.
Anyway, Straczynski finally gets around to doing something interesting. Dr. Manhattan realizes that he can slide up and down his timeline from the moment of his creation to the future, but he's never tried to take himself to any point of time before he became Dr. Manhattan. Until now. He arrives unseen at Gila Flats, just moments before the fateful accident. But this time, Jon safely retrieves his coat and calmly exits the testing chamber long before the door is sealed shut. And an astonished Dr. Manhattan is completely stumped by this development.
Well, it was rough getting there, but I genuinely enjoyed the ending. It's just a shame that everything that preceded it was either a pointless rehash or a direct contradiction of what Moore had done. I get it, writing a prequel about Dr. Manhattan is hard, and probably never should have been attempted in the first place. But if you're going to insist on publishing a miniseries about him, then please find a writer more suited to the job.
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