At last, we come to the end of Darwyn Cooke’s amazing Minutemen series, which has by far been the most consistent and engaging product of the cash-grab bonanza from DC. Cooke concludes his miniseries with a haunting image of the Hooded Justice, who was by far the most mysterious and enigmatic character in Alan Moore’s Watchmen. The Hooded Justice presented the most world-building, story-writing opportunities, as he’s essentially a blank slate. But Cooke resisted that temptation so strongly, he even refused to give us a clear look at him on his cover. Of course, as the story will soon reveal, this may not even be the real Hooded Justice …
The variant cover by Becky Cloonan is underwhelmingly mediocre. It’s your basic collage of the Minutemen, with Hooded Justice looming large over everyone. But there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for the staging of these characters or the expressions on their faces. Some are happy, some are stern, and I have no idea why.
Last issue ended with the cliffhanger of Nite Owl being knocked out by the Hooded Justice while trying to rescue a young boy. This issue jumped ahead so abruptly, I thought I had missed something. Nite Owl is being given a key to the city at an event attended by Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, and many of the people who had been rescued by Nite Owl, including the boy who had been kidnapped by Hooded Justice. However, even though Nite Owl had saved the boy, he had failed to catch Hooded Justice.
After the ceremony, Nite Owl teamed up with Mothman one last time to try to find Hooded Justice. First they visit Nelson Gardner, who admits he hasn’t seen Hooded Justice in years. But as the three talk, they simultaneously realize that Hooded Justice’s most likely hiding place is their old headquarters. So Nite Owl and Mothman storm the tower and, sure enough, Hooded Justice is there waiting for them. He greets his visitors by throwing a large box at them, which severely injures Mothman. Hooded Justice then threatens to kill both of them if they don’t leave. Instead, Nite Owl attacks, brutally murdering his former teammate. Hollis Mason later wrote that he wishes he could say it was an accident, or that his rage had blinded him, but he knew full well what he was doing the whole time.
Nelson arrived shortly after Hooded Justice’s death and he screeched at Hollis to not touch or unmask Hooded Justice. But Hollis didn’t care about that. He helped the injured Byron Lewis limp away, while Nelson burned down the entire tower to bury his former lover. Believing he had avenged the deaths of countless innocent boys over the past few decades, Hollis slept like a baby that night.
The years passed, and Hollis gradually realized it was time for him to retire. In one of his last moments of lucidity, Byron purchased him the car shop he would end up operating for the rest of his life. As Hollis got closer to publishing his book, he was suddenly visited by the Comedian. Eddie Blake warns Hollis not to print the book, but Hollis stubbornly insists it only contains the truth. So Eddie decides to reveal the real story about the Hooded Justice.
When Hooded Justice refused to testify before Congress, J. Edgar Hoover ordered the Comedian to track him down. So Eddie decided to start by following Hollis, which led him to the Silhouette’s apartment. Eddie combed through all the material Ursula Zandt had collected on the case of the disappearing boys. Ursula had identified a circus strongman and former Nazi as the key suspect, who Eddie naturally supposed to also be the Hooded Justice. With some help from the FBI, Eddie found the strongman and killed him. Although he immediately realized that this man was too old to be Hooded Justice. However, he did give him an idea of how to attract the attention of Nite Owl.
Eddie disguised himself as Hooded Justice when he abducted the boy. Eddie bound and gagged the child, but otherwise didn’t harm him, simply using him as bait for Nite Owl. Eddie made sure that Hollis got a good glimpse of his Hooded Justice costume before he knocked him out and ran away. Eddie’s plan worked, as this encounter provided Hollis with the motivation to finally track down the Hooded Justice. Although Eddie admits he never expected Hollis to kill the man.
Eddie then left the stunned Hollis with another threat to not publish his book. Hollis ultimately decided to print it anyway, with major exception. He cut out the part about him killing the wrong man and all the controversial bits that J. Edgar Hoover wouldn’t have approved of — I’m assuming the attack on the Statue of Liberty, the firework warehouse, much of the stuff with Silhouette and Silk Spectre, etc. (basically all the new stuff that Cooke added). Hollis did, however, choose to keep the part of Eddie’s attempted rape, sort of like one final middle finger to the man. The rest of the pages were burned, with Hollis choosing to burden himself with the truth of Hooded Justice to his grave.
That was a pretty neat twist at the end. But what, exactly, was the point? Beyond, of course, making Hollis Mason more of a hypocrite with deeper dark secrets (which I fully support). I’m mostly asking about Hooded Justice. Because Cooke didn’t dare to delve into any specifics of Hooded Justice’s identity and backstory, all of his actions came across as irrational and rather random. I mean, I can understand refusing to testify before the House of Un-American Activities Committee. But why did he keep wearing his costume in complete solitude at the abandoned Minutemen headquarters? And why did he want to kill Nite Owl and Mothman? I suppose there comes a point where you can keep a character so shrouded in mystery that they can’t even be considered a character at all.
All in all, I loved Cooke’s Minutemen series. I believe DC should have given him 12 issues to fully encapsulate all their Before Watchmen ideas. That way, we would have had a punchier story with clean, exceptional art. And we would have had more consistency. Reading this issue immediately after Nite Owl #4 really makes me wonder what was the difference between the papers locked in Hollis’ safe and the papers that he burned. I suppose they could tell the same story, but it doesn’t make much sense for Hollis to dramatically burn the pages and then retype them all up and show them to his protege. I think a little bit of coordination between these two titles would have gone a long way. Same thing with the Ozymandias series, which also briefly explored the disappearance of Hooded Justice (before the book got bored). In hindsight, it seems kind of obvious that everyone should have begun their search at the Minutemen tower — and that includes the Comedian, the FBI, Nelson, Nite Owl, and the world’s smartest man, Ozymandias. Do you really expect me to believe that not a single one of those people thought to investigate literally the only place in the world that the Hooded Justice was known to stay at?
Oh well. This was still a good six-issue run from one of the greatest comic book creators of his time. He did his best with the source material, but I still kind of think that he shouldn’t have done it in the first place. According to legend, DC had asked Alan Moore to write a 12-issue prequel to Watchmen and he had actually agreed to do it … only if DC gave him the rights to Watchmen. I don’t know how much of that is true, but I do know that DC ended up creating a bloated, mostly unsatisfying prequel project that I still haven’t finished.
