Our cover by Darwyn Cooke showcases the Silk Spectre. It’s a perfectly competent image, but not terribly exciting. And the timing for it is completely off. Sally left the team last issue and has almost nothing to do in this issue. This is even more misleading than the Mothman cover.
The variant cover by Michael Cho is a very nice, standard image of the entire Minutemen lineup. However, by this point in the story, the team’s ranks have diminished quite a bit through death and dismissal. I just want my comic book covers to do a better job of reflecting the story inside — is that too much to ask?
Thankfully, our story is a big improvement over the last two Before Watchmen issues I reviewed. We begin in 1962, with Hollis asking Sally for her blessing to publish his book. Sally chews him out, calling him stupid and says he needs to pull his out of his behind. She storms away in tears, leaving a 12-year-old Laurie to awkwardly try to comfort the stunned Hollis.
We then head back to 1947, where the death of Dollar Bill has brought the Minutemen’s membership down to four. Captain Metropolis started calling fewer meetings, while Nite Owl and Mothman stalled out on trying to solve Silhouette’s missing children case. The four superheroes fell into a rut of merely going through the motions … until the Minutemen suddenly reassembled for a surprising mission. Two mysterious figures had brought them a dire warning of a possible nuclear-powered terrorist attack. Bizarrely, the figures are dressed as Bluecoat and Scout, who were comic book characters in this universe.
Just like me, Hollis strongly suspected this was another elaborate setup by Captain Metropolis, just like the infamous firework factory. But each of the Minutemen were so desperate for this mission to be real, they went along with it. Much to their surprise, it was real! A group of Japanese terrorists actually had taken over the Statue of Liberty and were about to trigger a nuclear device inside it. Mothman was wounded in the battle, and Bluecoat was killed. But Scout ended up being the hero, disarming the device, but exposing himself to a lethal amount of radiation in the process.
Scout turned out to be a teenaged Japanese boy, and Bluecoat was his father. Scout’s grandfather was the mastermind of the attack, which is how Scout and Bluecoat were able to know so much about the plan. Much to the disgust of the Minutemen, the government was too embarrassed by this incident and refused to acknowledge the heroism of a couple of Japanese men, so they immediately buried all record of the Minutemen’s finest moment. Hollis stayed with the boy as he died painfully in the hospital, choosing to give him a comforting lie in his final moments that the whole world knew of the heroic sacrifice of him and his father.
The government’s cover-up destroyed Captain Metropolis. He saw no point in being a superhero without the glory, so in 1949, he officially disbanded the Minutemen. But in 1952, the four of them were called to testify before Congress as part of the Red Scare hearings. The Hooded Justice refused to come in for questioning and simply disappeared. The other three did their part and even agreed to sign loyalty oaths and reveal their secret identities to a select few officials. Hollis correctly speculated that the Comedian was secretly one of those officials.
By 1955, we see that Hollis still hasn’t progressed in his life. Still single and childless, still a lowly police officer forced to walk a beat, and still unable to keep his promise to Silhouette. Until he finally received a tip that brought him back to the scene where he found that first boy 15 years ago. To Nite Owl’s surprise, Hooded Justice was also headed to that building. Hollis tried to assure himself that Justice was also working to solve the case, because the alternative was too horrible to consider.
While entering the building, Hollis is attacked from behind by the Hooded Justice and knocked out. When he finally awakes the next morning, he’s in a terrifying room full of blood, surgical tools, and a young boy stripped down to his underwear, blindfolded, gagged, and tied down to a table.
Now that’s what I’ve been waiting for! Sadly, that amazing cliffhanger ending was slightly spoiled by the stupid two pages of The Crimson Corsair that followed it. But we can overlook that to bask in Darwyn Cooke’s greatness. This was a man who understood the assignment. And by that, I mean Alan Moore’s original intention to tell a story about deeply flawed, unlikable characters. I almost was worried that Cooke was making the Minutemen too heroic with the Statue of Liberty mission — kind of like how I felt he did with Silhouette’s story. But the Cooke nailed the ending by having the team disband as a form of silent protest for not receiving the public adulation they craved. That selfish behavior lines up perfectly with Moore’s story.
And I have long been annoyed by Hollis’ self-righteous vanity and gossipy nature. But Cooke gave me another reason to despise him: his incompetence. Hollis really was just bad at his job. After 20 years of serving on the police force, he should have received some sort of a promotion by now. And after 15 years of working on Silhouette’s missing children case, he should have been able to come up with some tangible leads. But no, he is just a rather stupid guy. And I love that Cooke put that on full display in this issue and chose Sally Jupiter as the one to tell him because she was too upset to take the time to spell out all the reasons why Hollis should not have published his book. Not that she could have dissuaded him even if she tried. Hollis craved attention almost as much as Nelson Gardner — though he’d never admit it.
I recently got into an (almost) interesting argument on Bluesky about how I believe there are no heroes in Watchmen. The person pushing back on me insisted that the minor characters, the civilians who were vaporized at Ground Zero, were true heroes. I didn’t find that argument compelling, and I don’t need to go into it here. I only bring it up because this particular issue did include two truly heroic minor characters — Bluecoat and Scout, the nameless Japanese father-son duo who selflessly gave their lives to prevent a nuclear disaster. I don’t think these characters quite fit in with Moore’s vision, but I do at least applaud Cooke for using them as a sharp contrast to Nelson and Hollis.
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