Before Watchmen: A little coordination would have helped

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.

Before Watchmen: The show must go on?

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.

Before Watchmen: So much wasted potential

After giving us such a strong cover for the first Moloch issue, I was really disappointed by Eduardo Risso’s work here. The choice of playing cards seems like a lazy play on magician clichés, especially since we never really saw Moloch use cards in his act. And the focus is completely on Ozymandias, which … well, actually is the perfect representation of this issue. Sadly. But it’s still a bland cover!

The variant cover by Olly Moss is a wonderful old timey poster of Moloch, Ozymandias, and Dr. Manhattan. I love the colors and design, and most of all I love the implied story within. Perhaps a scenario where Moloch, under the direction of Ozymandias, manipulated and controlled Dr. Manhattan. But that’s not what really happens in this issue. I think you could make the argument that J. Michael Straczynski was trying to tell a story like that, but I feel he fell far short of that goal.

Straczynski opened the finale of his two-issue miniseries with Adrian Veidt presenting himself as a Christ-like figure offering redemption to Edgar Jacobi for his many sins. Adrian gives Edgar a job with his own private office, secluded from the rest of the building so none of the other employees will ever see him enter or leave. The work Adrian gives Edgar to do is extremely tedious busywork, reviewing page after page of equations that allegedly came from three separate teams, working independently on a top secret project. Adrian claims he was always impressed by Moloch’s ability of concentration, and as such, he trusts Edgar with this work more than any computer.

Edgar gratefully accepts the job and diligently dives into the dull, repetitive task, never realizing that the equations were randomly generated by Adrian with a few mistakes intentionally placed in them to give Edgar a false sense of accomplishment. Nor does Edgar ever suspect that the papers he’s handling are highly radioactive. As the days pass, Adrian continues to heap praise upon Edgar and even doubles his salary. He then gives Edgar a new task: delivering packages to Janey Slater.

For some reason, Janey is incredibly open with Edgar. She reveals that the package contained what appeared to be cigarettes, but were actually medicine — at least, that was what Adrian told her. Janey had stopped smoking, but couldn’t shake her persistent cough, so Adrian promised to give her something that actually made her healthier while playing off her old addictive habit. Of course, neither Janey nor Edgar suspect that these medicinal cigarettes are actually much worse than ordinary cigarettes.

Edgar gets sicker and sicker each day, meeting with the company doctor, who secretly had his license revoked for some horrible reason. This meant that he was willing to go along with Adrian’s plan to keep progressing Edgar’s cancer under the guise of treating it. Adrian generously offers to cover the costs of all of Edgar’s treatments, and Edgar has no choice but to accept. Later, Edgar notices that Janey is also getting sicker each day, but she keeps smoking Adrian’s cigarettes as she doesn’t have any other choice.

After the Comedian visited Edgar in his run-down apartment and drunkenly rambled about the end of the world and a secret list, Edgar promptly tells Adrian everything that happened. It’s tough to tell, but it seems to me that Straczynski was implying that Adrian was genuinely surprised by Edgar’s revelation. After their conversation, Adrian decides to have someone constantly watch Edgar’s home, which comes in handy once Rorschach starts visiting.

Edgar was at home watching the TV on the night of Dr. Manhattan’s disastrous interview. As Edgar tries to come to terms with the knowledge that both he and Janey had been betrayed, Adrian pays him a personal visit. Surprisingly, Adrian reveals his entire plan to Edgar. He explains that Edgar’s death can help serve a higher purpose and save the world. So he gives Edgar a choice: continue to slowly die of cancer or accept to the head to set a trap for Rorschach. Edgar seems to genuinely buy into Adrian’s plan (not that he has much of a choice) and he accepts the bullet, calling it the greatest magic trick in the world.

I hate to admit it, but I actually really liked that final line about Adrian’s magic trick. I did not, however, enjoy the journey it took to get there. The story itself was as underwhelming as the artwork. It was slow, dull, and largely inconsequential. From the first page to the last, poor Edgar was a creature completely devoid of any agency. Of course he agreed to everything Adrian said — he literally had no other options! I guess he did technically volunteer the information about the Comedian, but that wasn’t presented as a choice he wrestled with. It was almost like he just did it out of instinct. Almost like how Straczynski instinctively threw Janey Slater into this story. It didn’t make any sense for Adrian to have Edgar interact with her, but Straczynski had an idea and couldn’t stop himself from putting it on the page.

A lot of the ideas in this comic don’t line up particularly well with Alan Moore’s work. First there’s Edgar’s bleak, run-down apartment. Would he really still be living there after Adrian doubled his salary? And why would Edgar be caught desperately buying illegal sham medicine when he believed that Adrian was providing him with the best medical care available? I also think Edgar would have promptly told Rorschach that he was working with Adrian as a way to prove that he was completely reformed. Almost nothing in this issue makes any sense.

It seems like Straczynski wanted to write about Ozymandias instead of Moloch. And that makes perfect sense. Adrian’s plan is vast and multifaceted, offering ample opportunity for exploration and addition. But I feel like Moloch’s story offered even more opportunity, as there were vast parts of his backstory left completely open by Moore. Give us a good reason for the Comedian feeling like Moloch was his only friend (beyond the lame “we heard about JFK’s death together”). Show some more direct interactions with Dr. Manhattan to lend more credence to the cancer story. And please, please show more of Moloch’s criminal career! He was the biggest traditional supervillain in Watchmen, but we never actually got to see him do anything. This series had so much potential!

Speaking of wasted potential, this issue also included the abrupt conclusion of The Curse of the Crimson Corsair. This modern-day homage to the Black Freighter had been presented in two-page increments at the back of every single Before Watchmen issue … until now. And it wasn’t supposed to end here. DC had planned to keep it going through the end of this whole enterprise, but then suddenly announced that writer Len Wein was leaving Corsair to work on an issue called Before Watchmen: Epilogue.

Wein later admitted that he was also confused by the whole situation. He only knew that artist John Higgins had been upset with the direction of the story. Wein, of course, believed it was his story to tell and Higgins had simply been hired to draw it. He had heard a rumor that Higgins threatened to leave the project if he didn’t get his way, and that’s what seems to have happened. But Higgins didn’t last the whole run of Before Watchmen and apparently was forced to wrap up the story long before he wanted to. The planned Epilogue issue also never came to being, as DC lost all appetite for it. Many artists had begun missing deadlines and I think the public had begun to wise up to the fact that most of the Before Watchmen issues were garbage.

Anyway, The Curse of the Crimson Corsair told the tale of an honest sailor who was a complete victim of circumstance. Much like Moloch in this issue, the sailor completely lacked agency and was dragged from one horrifying event to the next — especially once Higgins took over the writing and seemed to only care about drawing the scariest, most grotesque things imaginable. Then, completely out of nowhere, the story ends with the sailor turning into the Crimson Corsair because he apparently lost his soul while trying to save it. Well, that’s what happened in the Black Freighter. But not the Crimson Corsair. 

Had Wein been able to see the story all the way through, he might have been able to convincingly work up to that ending. I’m sure it would have been a lot better than the aborted mess we got, but I don’t know how much I would have actually enjoyed it. This project did waste its potential, but I have to admit it never had that much potential to begin with. It was always going to be a tough sale, as even the Black Freighter is often one of the most criticized aspects of the original Watchmen. But at least the Freighter story tied in directly to the main plot and had the added bonus of providing some fun world building. The limitations of this format prevented the Corsair from having that kind of significance. It was just a horror pirate story for the sake of being a horror pirate story. And that is why it failed.

Before Watchmen: One step forward, two steps back

Our cover by Adam Hughes is a haunting image of Dr. Manhattan serenely observing a nuclear explosion, while people burn and die all around him. What really makes this a frightening image is that it seems like he’s actually enjoying this carnage. For better or worse, J. Michael Straczynski is really challenging Alan Moore’s portrayal of Dr. Manhattan as an uncaring personification of passivity.

The variant cover is by Neal Adams and it’s just … fine. Nothing terribly interesting going on here. I’m not sure what all the dots on Dr. Manhattan are supposed to be. I guess Adams was attempted a transparent look? I don’t know. And I don’t really care.

The second issue of this series really blew me away — it was everything I could have hoped for in a Dr. Manhattan story. But the first issue left me flat. Unfortunately, so did this third issue. It brought back everything I hated from issue #1 and many elements that I hate from the broader Before Watchmen project. I guess I should have known that amazing issue #2 was just a fluke.

Anyway, this story begins with Dr. Manhattan fretting over the infinite realities he has discovered. For some reason, he has determined that he was the one who created all these realities, and that if he doesn’t get rid of them, then all of existence would be destroyed. And he believes that this all began at that fateful Crimebusters meeting when he changed Captain Metropolis’ paper so he could be paired up with Silk Spectre instead of Rorschach. Dr. Manhattan concludes that by altering reality in this way, he inadvertently created two versions of himself — one that went on patrol with Rorschach, and one that went out with the Silk Spectre. Of course, neither one of those realities happened in the original story, but Straczynski doesn’t care about that.

Straczynski also decided that Jon Osterman really needed a tragic backstory because heaven forbid a boring, ordinary person become the main character. So now, all of a sudden, Osterman is a Holocaust survivor. He fled Germany with his father and mother in 1939, but his mom was killed during their escape. She had a rather depressing motto she repeated during this ordeal: “You cannot make the world what you want because you want it.”

Dr. Manhattan decides to take his mom’s motto to heart and he begins to travel through time to undo all the changes he made to reshape reality into the way it’s “supposed” to be. He makes sure his mom is killed by Nazis and his grieving father becomes an obsessive watchmaker. He prevents his dad from taking a 17-year-old Jon to a baseball game, so he’d be in a bad mood when he learned about the atomic bombs and would subsequently force Jon into a career of science. Dr. Manhattan made sure a research scientist at Gila Flats would die of cancer so that Jon would be able to take his place.

He then carefully guides the pacing of people’s footsteps so that Janey’s watch would be stepped on and that Jon would forget the repaired watch in the particle chamber and that the door would lock him inside before he left. Dr. Manhattan then watches with satisfaction as Jon is gruesomely torn apart atom by atom — an image that transition thematically into the grotesque Crimson Corsair backup.

One of the most disturbing things about the original Watchmen story is how little Dr. Manhattan chooses to interfere in the affairs of men — even allowing the Comedian to kill a pregnant woman right in front of him. I think Moore deliberately made this disturbing. Here was a man who could literally do anything, but chose not to because he didn’t care. But that wasn’t good enough for Straczynski. He needed Dr. Manhattan to covertly be acting altruistically all this time — carefully choosing when and when not to act in order to guide the events of mankind in the best way possible. I hate this. And I also hate that he — and Nite Owl — suddenly have cliché tragic backstories. In my opinion, changes like that really undermine Alan Moore’s original intentions.

Before Watchmen: I wish I could love you

The Rorschach covers have consistently been some of the best of this whole enterprise. This one almost borders on being cheesy, but I think the stellar execution keeps it grounded. Plus, I will always appreciate how Lee Bermejo followed Dave Gibbons’ example of using the cover as the first panel of the comic. This issue begins with a goon kicking in a door and, for a brief moment, the wood and his boot formed a resemblance to Rorschach in his famous trench coat and hat. And I think that’s kind of neat.

The variant cover by Chip Kidd is a fairly interesting photorealistic rendering of Rorschach assaulting someone. I know some people praise this level of violence against bad guys, but looking at the terror in this man’s face shows me that Rorschach isn’t that far off from being a bad guy himself. I really appreciate that.

I also appreciate how Brian Azzarello wasn’t afraid to show Rorschach’s weaknesses here — of which there are many. Yeah, he’s pretty good in a fight, as he’s able to escape Rawhead’s men thanks to a can of tear gas. But he’s not terribly ethical, as he steals a wad of cash from one of the henchmen on his way out. This, of course, is a blatant contradiction to his famous black-and-white absolutist moral code, but Alan Moore made sure to include many contradictions to Rorschach’s code in the original story. So I appreciate that little detail.

Azzarello also remembered to show that Rorschach really isn’t that great of a detective. After he flees Rawhead’s men, he catches a ride in taxi driven by a big fan of his. The cab driver actually says some really disturbing things, all but confessing to being the serial killer known as the Bard, but Rorschach is too preoccupied and dense to put two and two together.

While the Bard was busy killing another beautiful young woman and carving cryptic messages into her body, Walter Kovacs was awkwardly trying to find a way to thank the diner waitress for taking him to the hospital. He offers to take her on a date, even clumsily brandishing the cash he stole to prove he can buy her a dinner. The waitress takes pity on Walter and agrees to go out with him after her shift ends at 11.

Meanwhile, Rawhead decides to lure Rorschach back into his lair by parading out in the open with his prostitutes. Rorschach is just smart enough to realize it’s a trap, but not smart enough to avoid walking right into it. While he involves himself in a bloody battle (bizarrely involving a tiger), the waitress sadly realizes that Walter has stood her up. But she’s approached by a familiar face, who has a 99% chance of being the Bard. And then The Curse of the Crimson Corsair attempted to outdo itself in its grossness.

I really wish I could love this series more than I do. I was surprised by how much I found myself enjoying this issue. The best thing it has going for it is Bermejo’s stunning artwork — and Azzarello’s script gave that art plenty of room to breathe. But that’s a two-edged sword. Giving too much room for the art leaves not enough room for the story. And this is a very brief, very obvious story. And that’s a shame, too, because artwork this stellar deserves an incredible story. This … just isn’t it.

Before Watchmen: A most welcome surprise

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.

Before Watchmen: Still stalling for time

The great J.G. Jones has delivered another solid cover, presenting an old photograph of the Comedian with two Vietnamese boys who have unfortunately decided to pick Eddie Blake as their role model. The Comedian nicknamed them Hearts and Minds in mockery of the U.S. military’s PR campaign. It’s a good-looking cover, but not terribly interesting. I’d like it a lot more if Brian Azzarello had decided to spend a little more time with these two boys, but he didn’t.

Brian Stelfreeze gave us a psychedelic cover that’s not too bad. He really emphasized Eddie’s connection to the Kennedy family, which — again — I wish Azzarello had decided to devote a little bit more time toward.

So … what did Azzarello devote his time to in this issue? Not much. Eddie gets sick and tired of the war effort, especially when he realizes that his handlers are focused on prolonging the war as long as possible to set themselves up for lucrative opportunities afterward. He also becomes quite distressed when he heard Robert Kennedy was running for president and he wouldn’t take Eddie’s phone call. So Eddie got high, basically slaughtered an entire village, then shoved his commanding officer out of a helicopter when he yelled at Eddie for jeopardizing his long-term plans. And that’s about it.

Azzarello mixed things up by presenting this story out of order, but I found all the flashbacks and bouncing around completely pointless. And unnecessarily confusing. A different color scheme would have helped. The story wouldn’t have been any better, but at least I would have had an easier time telling when everything was supposed to be happening. Mostly, though, I felt the same way about this issue as I did the last issue I reviewed. Perhaps six issues was too long for this miniseries. Giving Azzarello just four issues may have required him to tighten up his story and we would have ended up with a better product. Or it might have been rushed. But after reading two comics where nothing seemed to happen, I think I would have liked to take my chances

Before Watchmen: Going through the motions

This cover is a typical example of Jae Lee’s work. Artistic, clean, posed interestingly, yet also hampered by a strange “scrunchiness” and disconnect with the story. I’ve always been curious about Adrian’s beloved cat, Bubastis, but this issue does not feature her — which makes this cover a bit disappointing to me.

The variant cover by Mike Kaluta is fantastic. Beautiful, yet haunting. Poetic and ominous. I’ll admit I don’t fully understand it, though — probably because it also doesn’t seem to bear any connection to the inside story.

Of course, it’s hard to blame the covers for not being connected to a story like this, where nothing happens at all. It’s really unfortunate coming off the rushed ending of Silk Spectre and the rushed opening of Moloch, only to see a bland placeholder issue from Len Wein. He was given six issues for an Ozymandias story, but apparently he only needed four. This is the comic book equivalent of a high schooler desperately trying to stretch their two-page essay to the required five pages.

Wein rapidly advances through a few years of Adrian’s life, doing absolutely nothing of any particular interest. Adrian admits that he lacked the passion for being a superhero like his counterparts, but he kept going through the motions mostly out of boredom. He was happy to form a close relationship with John F. Kennedy, but was dismayed when he saw the Comedian had an even more intimate relationship with the Kennedy family. Adrian was also surprised when JFK deduced his secret identity, but he was more than happy to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis, advising the president that Dr. Manhattan was far too powerful to ever be used in a political conflict.

Adrian was shocked by Kennedy’s assassination, and dismayed to discover that there was no grand plot beyond Lee Harvey Oswald. His inability to foresee this starts to put his reputation as the “world’s smartest man” into question, but Wein was not interested in reflecting on that. What he was interested in, apparently, was recreating the entire Crimebusters scene word-for-word as Alan Moore originally told it. I saw absolutely no need for this beyond a frantic need to eat up some pages. And the end of the issue was a bland detail that should have been painfully obvious from Moore’s old work. As Captain Metropolis whimpers that someone’s got to save the world, Adrian decided that he should be that someone. Duh! We already knew that!

Before Watchmen created the opportunity for comics creators to explore new avenues and fresh angles of the characters and world created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Sometimes we got lucky and were given a unique, interesting story. But far too often, this project only produced dull, repetitive nonsense that made this whole endeavor feel more like a cheap cash grab than anything else. This issue is one of the prime examples of the very worst Before Watchmen has to offer.

Before Watchmen: A villainous diversion

DC’s Before Watchmen was announced in February 2012. In August, they announced an addition to the project, a two-issue miniseries focused on the villain Moloch. Apparently this whole gamble was paying off quite well and the company quickly sought a way to expand it. I was quite eager to read Moloch’s backstory — as opposed to the rest of the main cast, he’s actually a character we know very little about. I think there’s much more potential in a Moloch story than Silk Spectre or Nite Owl. Unfortunately, DC decided to only devote two issues to this tale. And even more unfortunate was their choice to had this story to J. Michael Straczynski. He has surprised me from time to time, but more often than not, he just lets me down.

But what’s not letting me down is this amazing cover by Eduardo Risso. It is ominous and haunting, giving me my first glimpse of what a threatening figure Moloch could have been. It’s definitely one of my five favorite covers from Before Watchmen and definitely ranks fairly high on my list of favorite comic book covers in general. I just wish Risso’s interior art matched this level of detail and intensity. I wouldn’t call it bad art, per se, but maybe rushed?

This variant cover by Matt Wagner and Brennan Wagner is nothing special. In fact, I find it rather cheesy. I prefer mystery over on-the-nose symbolism. However, symbolism does have its place, when done well. Like with the third variant cover.

I am absolutely floored by this Jim Lee and Alex Sinclair cover. I hated all of Lee’s variants for the main Before Watchmen series. He had all the characters blandly posing in a police lineup, muscled up and glamorized to extreme levels that flew in the face of what I believe Alan Moore had intended. But this! This is something unique and captivating! It’s not just a generic pose — it ties in beautifully with the inside story. And I actually do enjoy the Pietà pose here. While Moloch technically doesn’t die in this story, his innocence does. I’m really glad that Lee pushed himself to do some storytelling with this cover.

But how good was Straczynski’s storytelling? Well … a bit of a letdown. This issue details the childhood of Edgar Jacobi, who was born with a deformed face and ears. Because of his grotesque appearance, his parents never truly loved him, only providing him with the bare minimum of support. Craving attention, Edgar trained to be a stage magician. His acts caught the eye of a pretty girl who promised to have sex with him. But then Edgar discovered she already had a boyfriend and was playing a cruel joke on Edgar. So he killed the boyfriend and somehow smuggled his dead body into the girl’s bed without waking her up. This Godfather-esque experience apparently traumatized the girl and forced her to be institutionalized, while Edgar ran away from home and became a traveling magician under the name of Moloch the Mystic.

Edgar told everyone he took the name from the ancient Ammonite god who was known for his supernatural powers. But he really chose the name because Moloch was known for child sacrifice, and he considered his first kill to be a sacrifice for his new life. He turned out to be a fairly poor magician, which forced him into a life of crime. But his meager magician skills made him a very successful criminal, one that attracted the attention of the Minutemen. However, he was always able to escape prison no matter how many times they locked him up.

Moloch’s outlook on life changed when he first encountered Dr. Manhattan. He realized this was a foe he would never be able to defeat. While serving a life sentence in prison, Moloch converted to Christianity and began praying for forgiveness. To his surprise, he was granted parole, only to find Ozymandias waiting for him outside the prison.

I feel like there was a lot of wasted potential with this story. Straczynski gave us a rather by-the-numbers tragic origin tale without taking any time to show us why Moloch was the most prominent “super villain” in the Watchmen universe. But mostly I wanted more interactions with the Comedian. I think it was a big deal that Eddie Blake chose to visit Moloch instead of anyone else after he learned Ozymandias’ plan. Now, I haven’t read the second issue of this series yet, so maybe I’ll get my wish. I don’t have high hopes, though, because one, I know this writer, and two, this miniseries just isn’t long enough to do what I want it to do.

Before Watchmen: Our first miniseries comes to an abrupt end

Since I’ve been reviewing these issues in the order they came out (and I took a long hiatus to pursue my master’s degree), it’s taken me quite a while to finally finish one of the many miniseries under the Before Watchmen umbrella. Amanda Conner and Paul Mounts provided us with the final Silk Spectre cover, and once again I’m not terribly impressed. It’s just a bit too vague and abstract for me. And those villains don’t mean much to me — they’ve really failed to make much of an impact over the past three issues.

The variant cover is by Bruce Timm, who was the creative force behind so many of the DC animated shows of my childhood. It’s kind of fun to see his style applied to the Watchmen universe, but it’s also a bit disconcerting. As a work of art by itself, I think it’s just … adequate.

Our story begins with Laurie sadly reading the farewell letter that the Comedian forced Greg to write. Of course, she has no way of suspecting Eddie Blake’s involvement in this affair, and instead reminisces to the multiple times her mom stood between her and boys. Meanwhile, Hollis Mason has gone into full cop mode by methodically tracking down Laurie in broad daylight. His efforts attract the attention of the Chairman, who actually gets so spooked, he decides to shut down his entire operation by having his two female assassins murder every single person involved in the scheme — even though his drugs were successfully brainwashing people to buy inordinate amounts of things they don’t need. I also think the amount of murders he’s committed would have only attracted more attention from the authorities, but the unnamed Chairman didn’t seem to care about that.

Hollis tracked down Laurie’s roommates just in time to be attacked by the Chairman’s women, but Hollis conveniently defeated them off page. When Laurie returns home, Hollis shows her that he tied up the two women, and she decides to take the fight directly to the Chairman. She gets into a brutal fight with him, finally gaining the upper hand by viciously driving the heel of her boot into his throat. As he staggers around out into the street, trying to remove the boot from his neck, Laurie picks up his gun and prepares to finish him off. It’s not entirely clear whether she actually pulls the trigger. And in the end, it doesn’t really matter, because the Chairman is hit by a bus right at that moment and reduced to a pile of blood and bones.

Laurie lets Hollis drive her home, where she more or less patches things up with her mom. The issue ends with Sally dropping Laurie off at the infamous Crimebusters meeting, where Laurie meets Dr. Manhattan for the first time and begins dreaming of dating him just to make her mom mad.

DC only gave Darwyn Cooke four issues to tell this story, but he really needed six. We needed more time to establish the threat of the bad guys — I had a hard time figuring out who was actually in charge, and it turned out to be a guy who didn’t even have a name! It felt really out of the blue for him to suddenly go around killing everyone who worked for him. The absence of Greg and the Comedian were really felt in this issue, and everything with Laurie’s arc felt rushed. But then again, I’m not sure if I needed more time exploring Laurie’s backstory. The main Watchmen series already gave us plenty about her. And even a great like Darwyn Cooke couldn’t add anything interesting or meaningful to her story.

Before Watchmen: The boredom of bleakness

Darwyn Cooke’s work has definitely been a bright spot in this sprawling Before Watchmen series, and I’m always pleased to return to it. With this issue, he devoted the cover to Mothman, with a beautiful color palette but some oddly cartoony stars. Sadly, this issue doesn’t focus on Mothman nearly as much as I’d like, which kinds of makes this cover misleading.

The variant cover by Steve Rude and Glenn Whitmore is a fun, classic collage of the Minutemen. I really enjoy it … except for Captain Metropolis’ hands. Is he covering his ears? Just relaxingly placing his hands behind his head? It doesn’t read right.

Speaking of reading, this issue was not a particularly fun read for me. The tone was so bleak the whole time, it actually made me bored. And doing a recap will be a bit tricky considering how many flashbacks and jumping around through time this story does. I guess I’ll start at the beginning, which was in 1962, when Hollis Mason visiting the former Mothman, Byron Lewis. As usual, Hollis is preoccupied with making sure his former teammates are OK with the bestseller he has already published. But Byron is essentially a vegetable now, unable to do anything more than sit and watch the sun set.

We return to 1946, where the Comedian has returned triumphantly from his duty with the U.S. Army in

World War II. Hollis and Byron have set up a new secret lab for themselves in the sewer, which is where they learn of Silhouette’s brutal murder. The two of them had been secretly working with Silhouette after she had been voted out of the Minutemen for being a lesbian. And at the time of Ursula Zandt’s death, she had begun investigating a mysterious string of children being murdered.

Hollis and Byron buried Ursula next to her girlfriend, Gretchen, in unmarked graves, but Sally Jupiter secretly followed them to see where Ursula was buried. She apologizes to her former rival, feeling guilty for having voted to kick Silhouette out of the Minutemen. In fact, Sally felt so guilty, that she personally tracked down Ursula’s murderer and viciously killed him. She then told off Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis for how they treated Silhouette and announced her retirement as Silk Spectre.

After Sally’s graveside confessional, she’s suddenly approached by Eddie Blake, who tells her a long depressing story about a corrupt general who killed a kindly woman after she saved Eddie’s life. Eddie retaliated by killing the general in his sleep, although he now thanks that man for “opening his mind.” Anyway, Eddie’s main point was that he understands Sally’s guilt and frustration — despite having avenged someone with a murder. And so these two are able to bond over that feeling.

Anyway, Hollis and Byron decide to continue Silhouette’s investigation — although Byron’s alcoholism begins to become a serious impediment. Hollis discovers a tape detailing the horrors Ursula and Gretchen endured under the Nazi regime. And the issue closes with Hooded Justice having a nightmare of his traumatic childhood. If that wasn’t bleak and depressing enough, there’s always the two pages of The Curse of the Crimson Corsair to haunt your dreams!

Maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood for this issue. But I found the amount of tragedy and despair overwhelming. As such, this was the first issue of the Minutemen miniseries that let me down. Hopefully I’ll find more enjoyment when I return to the Silk Spectre.

Before Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan finally gets interesting!

It's been almost a year since I've touched this blog — but I have a good excuse! I decided to go back to school to get my master's degree, and once that all wrapped up, the limited time I had left to blog was dedicated to catching up on Impulse. It's almost like time is broken, as this issue implies. But first, the cover. This is a fun pulp-style comic by Adam Hughes, which is obviously a play on Dr. Manhattan and the Silk Spectre, and is actually a key part of the story inside. I know I've been gone a long time, but right now, I'm really finding this uniqueness quite refreshing.

The variant cover by P. Craig Russell does not bring that same level of refreshing uniqueness. It just leaves me feeling empty and bland inside. Much like the original interpretation of Dr. Manhattan by Alan Moore. The world's most powerful being was often the most dull character — never using his vast abilities to do anything interesting or explore new possibilities. A character like that works in an ensemble piece, like Watchmen, but it would be fatal for a solo series. Luckily, J. Michael Straczynski used this issue as an opportunity to do something interesting.

Dr. Manhattan has returned to the Gila Flats testing center at 1:15 p.m. on August 20, 1959, to witness the moment he should have been transformed from Jon Osterman to Dr. Manhattan. But this time — much to his astonishment — Jon avoids the accident and safely retrieves Janey Slater's watch. While Dr. Manhattan struggles to comprehend this paradox, Jon is intrigued by a minor mystery of his own: Janey's repaired watch is frozen at 1:15.

Later, Jon takes Janey back to the carnival where her watch was originally smashed. This time, Jon decides to play one of the games, while Janey oddly reminisces about a man named Hank Meadows. Despite being young and healthy, and having avoided smoking, drinking, and even working with the heavy radiation equipment, he suddenly died of cancer. Janey speculates that must have been God's will, because if Hank didn't die, then Jon wouldn't have been hired to replace him, and she would have never met Jon.

Just as she finishes that thought, Jon wins his carnival game and reveals an engagement ring hidden in his prize stuffed bear. Janey accepts Jon's proposal, and as the two of them walk away, the game operator says it's his job to provide the illusion of free will. All the while, Dr. Manhattan keeps watching in silent bewilderment, unseen by anyone else.

We skip ahead to the day of the wedding, where Jon's father is surprisingly there, helping his son get ready. The elder Osterman reveals that he had a dream a year ago where he was told Jon had died. The dream was so real that it took him days to get it out of his head. Jon assures his father that dream will never come true now that he's decided to move to Washington, D.C., to teach physics at Georgetown.

Jon heads down the hall toward his bride-to-be, encountering a small boy reading the comic book that was the cover for this issue. The boy says he wants to be a scientist like Jon so he can go to Mars and see the "blue people." According to his comic book, all the blue people had died off except for one remaining blue man. Jon doubts this is true, but he says the boy may one day get to go to Mars.

And then things get interesting. There are two doors at the end of the hall and Jon calls out to Janey, asking which one she's behind. She tells him to guess, and we see that Jon's seemingly innocuous choice creates vast differences in this world. When he opens the left door, John F. Kennedy taps the Comedian to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis. But the Comedian's impatient, violent tendencies lead to the U.S. preemptively attacking Russia and launching a nuclear holocaust. But when Jon chooses the right door, Kennedy sent Ozymandias to negotiate with the Russians, and his diplomacy skills preserved the peace. The one constant in both of those realities was that Jon did get married to Janey, but was still unable to fix her watch.

We cut back to Jon opening the door to find Janey putting on the finishing touches to her wedding dress. She coyly suggests that she may have been in both rooms at the same time, but Jon doesn't entertain this notion and leads her down the hall, not noticing that the boy's comic book has now changed to show a mushroom cloud rising behind the U.S. Capitol Building. Janey asks Jon if he would prefer to have the first dance or the last dance of the wedding, and we're treated to more possibilities.

When Jon picks the first dance, President Kennedy is assassinated, Richard Nixon resigns during his second term, and Ronald Reagan advocates for the Berlin Wall to be torn down. But when Jon chooses the last dance, Kennedy survives his assassination attempt and Richard Nixon wins a third term, staying in office long enough to oversee a full-blown nuclear war against Russia. We then get a fun two-page spread showing how reality can be altered by so many insignificant choices made by Jon, such as accidentally pressing the wrong button on the elevator and choosing red wine instead of white at dinner.

We skip ahead to Jon and Janey having dinner with Wally Weaver and Professor Glass. They're discussing the idea of Schrodinger's cat, which involves placing a cat in a box rigged with a device that has a 50% chance of killing the cat. According to quantum physics, this doesn't mean that the cat is either alive or dead while in the box — it means the cat is both alive and dead until it is observed. This mindset is important for studying particles that are only particles while being observed but are waves when you look away. Jon then wonders what happens if you don't open the box. His professor says that the longer the box remains closed, the greater the chance that unanticipated factors could alter the results, creating more random possibilities and pocket universes, each equally real until the moment when the box is finally opened and they all collapse into one reality as perceived by the quantum observer.

Later, Jon is trying once again to fix Janey's watch. He can't understand why it won't work when all the parts seem to be just fine. Janey suggests that maybe the watch isn't broken, but time is. Jon brushes that comment off as a joke and decides to abandon the watch for the time being. But Dr. Manhattan remains behind, considering the possibility that time is broken. As nuclear missiles begin raining down all over the planet, Dr. Manhattan begins to question what he has become and what he has done. And the final panel ends on the infamous Robert Oppenheimer quote: "For I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds."

I normally don't go into that much detail on these Before Watchmen reviews, but I absolutely loved this issue. I haven't read too many Straczynski comics, but they've never impressed me as much as this one has. Maybe I'm just a sucker for alternate worlds and different possibilities, but I think it was presented in a fascinating way, especially with the scientific discussion anchoring everything. This is exactly the kind of story I wanted for Dr. Manhattan.

The Crimson Corsair backup story by John Higgins continues in this issue. It is beautifully illustrated, but still dreadfully boring. For me, anyway. Hopefully the rest of this Before Watchmen series will be good when I get read them. I guess right now, those issues are both simultaneously the most interesting and most dull stories until I open them up.

Before Watchmen: Style over substance

Lee Bermejo has once again delivered a stunning cover that fits in nicely with the Watchmen universe. We have a stray splatter of blood in the scrambled eggs reminiscent of the blood on the Comedian's smiley face. And I'm really impressed with Walter's face being reflected in a skull-like pool of blood that also forms a perfect Rorschach ink blot test. Finally — and this is a small thing, but I appreciate it — this cover image serves as the opening panel of the issue, just as Dave Gibbons did on every issue of Watchmen.

The variant cover by Jock is not my cup of tea. But that's OK. Because I am a firm believer in using variant covers to experiment and push the boundaries of how characters can be represented. This is a little too intense and abstract for me, but I appreciate the effort.

The issue opens by revealing that the beautiful plate of breakfast Walter bleed all over was a gift from the diner's waitress, who took pity on him. But Walter refuses to eat and walks out into the street, conveniently spotting a couple of underlings in the drug gang he's trying to take down. Last issue only referred to their boss as "Crime," but in this issue, Rorschach somehow knows his name is Rawhead.

Anyway, Walter conveniently spots a delivery truck that left its doors open and the keys still in the ignition. Even though it's the middle of the day and the street is crowded with witnesses, Walter manages to surreptitiously rig the truck to crash into one of the gangsters and pin him against a wall. The other gangster finds Rorschach's ink blot calling card on the driver's seat, but is unable to free his friend before Walter tosses a Molotov cocktail at the truck without being noticed, causing the entire vehicle to explode.

The surviving gangster reports this to Rawhead, and he criticizes his boss for not only refusing to kill Rorschach when he had the chance, but also failing to at least remove his mask so they could have recognized their nemesis on the street. Rawhead responds by killing this man and feeding him to his pet tiger.

Walter, meanwhile, returned to the diner, but passed out before he could order any food. The kind waitress took him to the hospital, where he apparently spent three days in a coma. Rorschach's amazing luck pays off once again, as this particular hospital was so busy and disorganized that not a single person noticed him waking up, stealing medical supplies and leaving. Remember: He was there for THREE days!

After we get the briefest of glimpses of the detectives searching for the serial killer known as The Bard, a fully healed Rorschach captures a pimp who happens to be one of Rawhead's men. As he begins the interrogation, several other gangsters begin climbing the stairs to rescue their friend. And that's where this issue abruptly ends, because I guess Brian Azzarello thought that was a cliffhanger ending?

This is a masterfully illustrated book. I love Bermejo's art. I'm just sad that it's accompanied with this dull story where nothing meaningful actually happens. And what does happen is bizarrely far-fetched. How many implausible coincidences can keep benefiting Rorschach? Azzarello was given four issues to tell a Rorschach story, but halfway through, he seems to be wasting this character's potential.

Before Watchmen: Time for a big, epic figh—SQUIRREL!

The main Watchmen series begins with Ozymandias killing the Comedian. And through the story, we learn that Adrian Veidt was partially motivated by a previous fight he had and lost against Eddie Blake. So it's incredibly exciting to see a demonic Comedian pointing his gun down (presumably at Ozymandias) against a dark red sky. This is a very good, captivating cover by Jae Lee.

The variant cover by Massimo Carnevale isn't quite as engaging, though. It's just a bit too murky and vague for me to enjoy. It also seems to imply that Adrian possesses some strange energy-based powers, which never had been manifest in any Watchmen story I've encountered.

This issue picks right up where Ozymandias #2 ended, with the Comedian attacking Ozymandias as he investigated the disappearance of Hooded Justice. During the fight, Adrian silently concedes that they are evenly matched. In the narration, which is still Adrian's autobiography written years later, he complains that Eddie won the fight by cheating. All Eddie did was randomly shout, "No! Don't—!" And this made Adrian hesitate long enough for Eddie to knock him down. By that point in the fight, Adrian had disabled both of Eddie's guns, so he decided to just walk away, telling Ozymandias that this is a game for grown-ups. In his autobiography, Adrian maintains that he allowed Eddie to win so that he could collect data on his strength and fighting style. But I find that a strange thing to say after accusing the other side of cheating.

Anyway, as strange as it as was for Eddie to walk away from the fight without actually conducting his investigation, it was even stranger for Adrian to do the same. You'd think that with Eddie gone, he would have been free to gather some evidence about Hooded Justice. But instead, he just went home, admitting he lost interest in it. Several months later, the emergence of Dr. Manhattan provides Adrian with a new obsession. He immediately began investing in fallout shelters and gathering resources to build his secret base in Antarctica.

Five months later, he's invited a charity gala with other superheroes. Adrian initially declined, until he learned that Dr. Manhattan would attend. He was even willing to perform on stage next to the Comedian just for the chance to meet America's new "superman." But first, Adrian's approached by Captain Metropolis, who stuns him by asking how to pronounce Ozymandias. Realizing that he's surrounded by primitives, Adrian quickly shook hands with Dr. Manhattan before slinking away to eavesdrop on his conversation with Nite Owl. After a few minutes, Janey Slater asks Jon if they can go home. Dr. Manhattan says goodbye to Nite Owl, then, quite shockingly, says goodbye to Ozymandias, as well, revealing that he knew Adrian was hiding the whole time.

We then skip ahead a few more months to the completion of Adrian's Antarctic hideaway. The three architects who designed the fortress had all died in a tragic plane crash, which we all know was caused by Adrian. Just like the pharaohs of old, Ozymandias didn't want anyone who knew his secrets to live to tell them. The issue then ends with Adrian turning on his wall of televisions, which is oddly voice-controlled (something that was most definitely not the case in the original Watchmen story).

A running gag in the classic Pixar film Up is how the dogs would frequently become distracted by the mere thought of a squirrel. That's what Len Wein feels like to me. He spent all this time setting up an investigation into Hooded Justice but then immediately abandoned it to rush into the famously alluded Comedian fight. But that fight was started for no reason and ended without any real consequence before Wein quickly zipped over to the Dr. Manhattan storyline. Granted, I did like how Adrian's first thoughts when seeing Dr. Manhattan was to prepare for nuclear armageddon. I just didn't like how that short-changed the stuff with Hooded Justice and the Comedian. I mean, Adrian didn't need to investigate Hooded Justice. If Wein was unable or unwilling to provide any answers on that front, then he should have just avoided the topic altogether. But the Comedian fight was something that he did need to do. And it was a real opportunity to be creative and provide some fascinating depth to this character. But Wein missed the moment. Such a shame.

Before Watchmen: Over-inflating insignificant details

Sex played an interesting role in Alan Moore's Watchmen. It seemed to me that one of his arguments was that the role of a superhero would be most appealing for sexual deviants — homosexuals or people with some sort of fetish. Nite Owl fell into the latter category, being able to only be truly aroused when he was wearing his mask. Since that was a pretty big part of his character, it only makes sense that J. Michael Straczynski and Andy Kubert would explore this more. Unfortunately, I feel like putting contextless soft porn on a cover attracts the wrong kind of audience. I'm reminded of director Zack Snyder, who openly and frequently gushed about how much he loved Watchmen because it had sex in it. But when he actually made a movie about it, he demonstrated a significant lack of understanding the source material.

Unfortunately, I'm not much of a fan of Chris Samnee's variant cover, either. He is one of my favorite artists out there, but this was not his best work. Besides not doing a good job of conveying what this story is about, the characters just look off. I think Samnee's style lends itself more toward Darwyn Cooke's bright and bold Minutemen series. This Nite Owl series all about trauma and sex is not the ideal avenue for Samnee.

This issue opens with Nite Owl deepening his relationship with the Twilight Lady, while Rorschach (as church custodian Walter Kovacs) grows closer to Reverend Dean. The Twilight Lady leads Nite Owl to a man named Carlos, who recruits immigrant women into a life of prostitution. More troubling is how many of these women suddenly go missing, presumed dead. Nite Owl takes down Carlos' men and interrogates him by hanging him upside down above a toilet. The only information he's able to get from Carlos are a few phone numbers, but before he can investigate them, he needs to have sex with the Twilight Lady. Not only do we get an inordinate amount of time discussing Dan's past trauma of his abusive father, but we also find out that this was Dan's first time having sex! 

When Dan finally gets back to the investigation, he finds one of Carlos' phone numbers connects to a pay phone. So he takes the receiver back to Hollis Mason's garage to try to extract some fingerprints from it. Despite the early time of day, Hollis is already heavily drinking. He sadly calls himself a hypocrite and apologizes for lecturing Dan about the Nite Owl's reputation. Hollis doesn't go into any details, but he leaves Dan with a copy of his manuscript and says he can read it if he wants. Dan is nervous to explore his hero's dark secrets, but his curiosity gets the better of him and he sadly begins to learn the truths of Under the Hood.

The story ends with Rorschach making a shocking discovery: Reverend Dean's basement is full of dozens of dead bodies. At least one woman is still alive when Rorschach stumbled upon this grisly scene. But before he can rescue her, he's shot in the shoulder by the Reverend.

In the original Watchmen, the Twilight Lady was nothing more than a sexual fantasy for Dan. Presumably someone only pretending to be a super villain so she could sleep with the famous Nite Owl. Nothing more. Straczynski decided to flesh out this little throwaway detail to comical extremes. Not only is the Twilight Lady now a noble hero playfully defying the conventions of her appearance and profession, but she was Dan's first true love! I guess we can also assume that she was the one who resolved Dan's childhood trauma, which is why he never mentioned it in Moore's story!

It annoys me so much to see sequels and prequels turn minor details into major events. It reeks of a lack of originality. Of course, there is some original work in this issue. And it's actually rather interesting. The only problem is it's all about Rorschach. Yes, I'm sure next issue will reveal that Reverend Dean has been killing Carlos' girls, which is a nice way to connect the two stories. But this just adds more fuel to my theory that Straczynski really, really wanted to write a Rorschach story instead.

Before Watchmen: Riot time!

Three issues into this Comedian series, and I'm still trying to figure out what Brian Azzarello and J.G. Jones are trying to say. Jones delivers a competent cover once again, but a rather dull one — an unfortunate followup to his rather innovative artwork for issue #2. I feel like it's a bit of a cheat to use a newspaper to tell the readers what's happening at the moment. At first I was a little sad to see the Comedian's left Vietnam for Los Angeles, but then I remembered how lackluster Azzarello's generic Vietnam story was. So I'm not exactly sure how I feel. It certainly isn't excitement.

I was, however, excited by the variant cover. It was drawn by one of my favorite artists of all time, John Paul Leon, who tragically passed away in 2021 at the age of 49 after a lengthy battle with cancer. Leon's brutally realistic style is perfect for the Watchmen universe, especially the Comedian. It was a real missed opportunity for DC that they didn't involve Leon more on this project. One detail I absolutely love on this cover — but can't fully explain why — is the solid yellow dot representing the Comedian's smiley face button. It's the only bit on the cover that isn't a shade of red and it looks so much more haunting with the smiley face removed.

This issue tells the story of Eddie Blake returning to America after spending more than a year in Vietnam. He's genuinely surprised to see a crowd of protesters at the airport. One of the protesters looks remarkably like Eddie's daughter, Laurie, and he makes an honest effort to explain his actions to her. But he's interrupted when someone throws a tomato at the girl, hitting her in the back of the head. A group of pro-war protesters has shown up to beat back the anti-war protesters and make room for the Comedian, whom they decree a "super patriot." Seeing the mistreatment of that innocent girl filled Eddie with more rage than he'd felt in his life up to that point. But instead of giving in to his violent instincts, Eddie walked away and took some time to reflect.

Eddie realized he had let the Army lead him from being who he really was. When he heard about rioting in Los Angeles, he felt like the city was crying out for his nihilistic messaging. The Comedian showed up at the riots, wearing his usual costume, but now with his face painted like his bright yellow smiley face. He boldly walks past the police and converses with a few of the Black activists leading the protests. Eddie tells them they should be laughing, since it is a riot, after all. And to demonstrate that the world will see what it wants to see, he opens fire on several stores. The activist leaders cry out in vain to prevent the ensuing looting, but too many of their fellow rioters couldn't resist the temptation of free electronics and jewelry.

When the police chief scolds the Comedian for making the situation worse, Eddie responds by throwing dog poop in his face. Later, Eddie's old friend, Robert Kennedy, tells him he needs to apologize to the chief. Eddie refuses, pointing out how nobody seems concerned with the 34 people who were killed in the riot. They were more concerned with the symbol of authority being disrespected.

I'm glad that Azzarello didn't rehash the police strike riots from the main Watchmen series. I'm sure the temptation was high, but this generic riot served the story better. It doesn't matter how the riot started or what its goals were. Its purpose was to provide the Comedian a vehicle to demonstrate how human nature can undermine any cause. I'm sure many of the rioters initially joined the fray for righteous, noble reasons. But the second Eddie opened up the stores to them, the need for instant gratification overrode any lofty ideals such as racial equality, which wasn't ever going to be solved through the riot anyway. 

It was also rather interesting seeing Eddie become disgusted by the very people who praised him as a hero. Those pro-war protesters weren't necessarily advocating for more violence in Vietnam, they were more concerned with upholding the symbol of authority. The Comedian represents the government of the United States of America, and in these people's eyes, this automatically means all his actions are just and righteous. It's interesting to think if Eddie would have been inclined to agree with them, had he not seen a vision of his daughter in the anti-war crowd. I think he would have eventually arrived at the same conclusion — he never was one to deify authority, but merely exploit it to pursue his own violent passions. But it was nice to have the contrast between the two groups help set up the finale of this issue.

While working for the people in power, Eddie is free to destroy as many businesses as he pleases and anybody he kills gets chalked up to "self defense." But throwing a piece of poop at the chief of police is crossing a line. It's all a joke, as Eddie tells Robert Kennedy. But that won't stop him from enjoying his Hawaiian vacation.

I started this by saying I didn't know what Azzarello was trying to say with this series. I now think I do.