Before Watchmen: What were we doing, again?

The Crimson Corsair backup may have ended, but the Comedian series picked up the slack in the grotesquely violent department. I also wonder if the creators of this miniseries were becoming annoyed by the hell they had locked themselves into and let their frustrations leak through onto the pages and covers. This haunting image by J.G. Jones certainly conveys the feelings of disgust and despair.

The variant cover by Gary Frank is frightfully bland. Ironically, Frank left a lot of empty space at the top, which would have been helpful had this issue’s title been stretched across the top — just like every other comic book. But the Before Watchmen project consistently put the titles down the side, which is something that Frank should have known by this point.

And this was a pretty rough point in the Before Watchmen timeline. Planned issues were being canceled, random fillers were being quickly thrown together, and the few remaining miniseries were dragging their feet. One of the most notorious miniseries was Comedian, which went from having the regular one month between issues, to two, then to three. I wonder how many readers back in 2012-13 had a hard time remembering what was going on in this story.

I also kind of feel like Brian Azzarello forgot what he was trying to say with this story. Because this issue really didn’t tell us anything we hadn’t heard already. Eddie Blake and his military handler both survived their fall from the helicopter, and Blake explains that his ultra-violent outburst was in response to the Viet Cong’s underhanded tactics. Once again, this issue is difficult to follow, as J.G. Jones refused to show any indication of what was a flashback and what was happening in present time.

Anyway, after many pages of disgustingly grotesque art, Eddie’s handler is killed right before the two of them were to be rescued. The most important part of this story is at the very end when Richard Nixon learns that Eddie had basically slaughtered an entire village and he decides to pass that information on to Eddie’s old friend, Robert Kennedy.

Even though it took J.G. Jones three months to complete this issue, the artwork still felt rushed and sloppy. I don’t know if he struggled with the excessively gory scenes or if Azzarello made a bunch of late changes to the script. Or maybe both of these creators were just worn out by this point. The tide had turned on the whole Before Watchmen enterprise and I doubt anyone involved was having fun anymore.