Andy Kubert’s final cover for Nite Owl confirms that this really was a Rorschach story all along. Here he is, front and center, taking up most of the cover, leaving Nite Owl a mere afterthought. Yeah, he’s on fire, but is anyone really worried? We all know Rorschach will be perfectly fine by the time the main Watchmen series begins. That’s the problem with prequels. It’s really hard to create tension.
Our lackluster variant cover is by Ethan Van Sciver, who also chose to minimize Nite Owl’s presence on the finale of his own series. I’m not fond of this art, and I’m less fond of this artist. So I’ll just move on to my review.
The Nite Owl series was delayed by the sudden passing of 85-year-old comics legend Joe Kubert. Of course, he was just the inker over his son’s pencils, so this issue was virtually indistinguishable from the previous three. I suspect the delay was mostly to allow Andy time to grieve, which was completely understandable. To fill in the gap in production time, DC hastily cobbled together two Moloch issues … with mixed results. So was this issue worth the prolonged wait?
The first half of the issue details Rorschach nearly being burned alive by the crazed reverend. A little bit of lip service is paid to how Nite Owl tracked down the reverend through his fingerprints, and he arrives just in time to save Rorschach. Rorschach then kills the reverend by stabbing him in the back with his “The End is Nigh” sign (even though its stick wasn’t sharpened or anything).
Dan then confronts Hollis over his deepest, darkest secrets that allegedly proved he wasn’t really a hero. Dan begs Hollis not to print this confessional, saying that he prefers to maintain the idealized version of his father figure alive. Hollis agrees to put the manuscript in his safe, urging Dan to revisit them after he dies.
Nite Owl then confronts Rorschach over his fatal tactics, and the conversation doesn’t really go anywhere. But we do get a flashback showing that a young Walter Kovacs killed one of his mother’s more aggressive clients by placing a tripwire at the top of the stairs. We then find out that Dan lied about the Twilight Lady in the main Watchmen series. He actually was deeply in love with her and dated her for some time before she broke up with him over the phone. And the miniseries closes on a shot of Walter walking down the street with his sign.
I guess I’ll start with the best part: Hollis Mason’s secret. I really like the idea of Hollis holding back the worst things about himself in his tell-all book. I’m a firm believer that Alan Moore intended to tell a story without any heroes, and that certainly includes Hollis. This bit felt in line with that vision and, although it was brief, the moments of Dan wrestling with that legacy were nice. Would this story have benefitted from actually revealing Hollis’ secret? I’m not sure. But I certainly think it should have had a lot more of Hollis in it. After all, this miniseries was called Nite Owl and there were two Nite Owls in Watchmen. I would have preferred to have had J. Michael Straczynski split his story between them and not devote so much of it to Rorschach.
From the cover to the final image, this issue made it clear that Straczynski really wanted to write about Rorschach all along. It’s kind of funny how he kept being given assignments in Before Watchmen that he seemingly didn’t want. He turned Nite Owl’s story into Rorschach’s and Moloch’s into Ozymandias’. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he insisted on revising the history of the main story. Instead of young Walter being a strange and timid child until some schoolyard bullies caused him to snap, Straczynski felt it would be better if he had always been devious, cunning, and overtly violent from the beginning.
And then there’s the bit with the Twilight Lady. Straczynski fell into the same trap Darwyn Cooke did by throwing in a genuinely good hero. Not only do I believe this conflicts with Moore’s intentions, but I really don’t appreciate how Straczynski basically said that Moore was wrong. Moore didn’t just show that none of his characters were good guys — he also went out of his way to make almost all the costumed individuals (heroes and villains alike) sexual deviants of some sort. In Moore’s mind, this life of costumed adventuring would most appeal to homosexuals, prostitutes, or people with strange kinks. Like the guy who got a sexual thrill from being beaten up. Or even Nite Owl, himself, who could only become aroused when wearing his mask. I felt that Moore deliberately placed the Twilight Lady in that same category and never wanted her to become the cliched “prostitute with a heart of gold.”
Even though I never really enjoyed the backup pirate tale, I must confess that this issue felt strangely empty without it. I’d wager that everyone involved in this bloated Before Watchmen project had lost their appetite for it by this point. DC abruptly ended the Crimson Corsair without bothering to wrap up its story in a coherent manner. And they quietly canceled the planned Epilogue issue, choosing to focus on finishing the rest of the miniseries. Nite Owl’s delay was understandable. But for the others? I’d wager that exhaustion and ennui had set in. The show must go on, right? By any means necessary.
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