Category Before Watchmen

Aug 23 2012

Before Watchmen – Dr. Manhattan 1

Today, Shelby and Drew are discussing Dr. Manhattan 1, originally released August 22nd, 2012. Dr. Manhattan is part of DC’s Before Watchmen prequel series. Click here for complete Before Watchmen coverage (including release dates).

Shelby: Dr. Manhattan is a tricky character to deal with. He is all powerful; he can control any matter in any way, can see all time, and knows how everything will happen. That’s difficult to even really comprehend as a reader, let alone to understand it enough to write about. Once you get over the hurdle of writing about an infinitely powerful being with seemingly no weaknesses, there’s the fact that you’re writing a prequel story that the readers already know. Dr. Manhattan gets the most detailed origin story in Watchmen, so how do you write more about a story that we already know without completely derailing the character? I will admit, I was doubtful J. Michael Straczynski would pull it off, solely based on my disappointment in Nite Owl so far. I was surprised and immensely pleased to find this title is very, very good.
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Aug 16 2012

Before Watchmen – Rorschach 1

Before WatchmenToday, Drew and Patrick are discussing Rorschach 1, originally released August 15th, 2012. Rorschach is part of DC’s Before Watchmen prequel series. Click here for complete Before Watchmen coverage (including release dates).

Drew: Before Watchmen has a uphill battle to climb as far as justifying its existence. We’ve already gone over our reactions the the idea, but I feel compelled to reiterate my main objection: Watchmen is a singular and self-contained book, and treating it like a universe where cool stories happen or one of a series of adventures this particular group of characters had is missing the point. That said, I do like these characters, and their universe, but it’s incredibly difficult for me to tell if that means I want to spend more time with them, or if I’m simply drawn to them because of their allegorical significance. The successes of Before Watchmen have side-stepped this issue by delivering stories so outside — or even contrary to — our expectations, they really stand on their own (allowing me to ignore any potential desecrations). I was particularly impressed with Brian Azzarello’s work on Comedian 2, where he managed to find enough unclaimed space within the strictures of the character’s history to tell (or at least set-up) a compelling story, which gave me high hopes for his work here. Unfortunately, Rorschach 1 finds less room to breathe, yielding decidedly mixed results. Continue reading →

Aug 13 2012

Before Watchmen – Ozymandias 2

Alternating Currents: Ozymandias 2, Drew and Peter B4WToday, Drew Patrick and Peter are discussing Ozymandias 2, originally released August 8th, 2012. Ozymandias is part of DC’s Before Watchmen prequel series. Click here for complete Before Watchmen coverage (including release dates).

Drew: Patrick: Surprise! It’s actually going to be me taking lead on Ozy today. Drew had both his copy of Ozymandias and his computer stolen today. And that’s enough to make me want to put on an old Halloween costume and take to the streets for some righteous vengeance. And while I don’t plan on that leading to a life of crime fighting, there’s really no saying where life will take me, and which sources I will draw upon for inspiration.  Whatever the case, I just hope it will be consistently rendered in breathtaking beauty (because otherwise, what’s the point?).

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Aug 2 2012

Before Watchmen – Nite Owl 2

Today, Peter and Shelby are discussing Nite Owl 2, originally released August 1st, 2012. Nite Owl is part of DC’s Before Watchmen prequel series. Click here for complete Before Watchmen coverage (including release dates).

Peter: Dan Dreiberg is a likable character. He’s the sympathetic hero, the guy you identify with. There is something about him that makes you go ‘awww’, and something that makes you say ‘that could be me’. Or at least, I say that when I read him. The Before Watchmen version of Dan is anything but that. Combine that with a very uninteresting, or engaging storyline, and issue 2 still fails to meet expectations. There is a glimmer of hope, as things begin to pick up…a little.

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Jul 31 2012

Before Watchmen – Comedian 2

Today, Shelby and Drew are discussing Comedian 2, originally released July 25th, 2012. Comedian is part of DC’s Before Watchmen prequel series. Click here for complete Before Watchmen coverage (including release dates).

Shelby: History has never been my favorite subject. There’s something about it that just flows through my brain like water, I can’t seem to retain any of it. I have tried so many times to read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, with zero success; I know I should read it, but it just reads too much like a history book for me to enjoy it. Comedian 1 was housed in American history, in a way I thought was a clever subversion of both Watchmen history and American history. I’ve had a lot of trouble getting into the second issue, however, and I think Brian Azzarello may have crossed the line into too much history for me to enjoy.

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Jul 19 2012

Before Watchmen – Silk Spectre 2

Alternating Currents: Silk Spectre 2, Drew and Shelby-B4WToday, Drew and Shelby are discussing Silk Spectre 2, originally released July 18th, 2012. Silk Spectre is part of DC’s Before Watchmen prequel series. Click here for complete Before Watchmen coverage (including release dates).

Drew: This Before Watchmen thing must have been a hard sell to creators. Sure, they’d have the opportunity to work with some of comicdom’s most interesting characters, but they’d also be competing with some incredibly beloved source material, written by one of the greatest comic writers of all time. Hoping to improve on Watchmen would be beyond unreasonable, so the best anyone could really hope for is a competent expansion of that universe. That’s not exactly the world’s most rewarding job. Writer Darwyn Cooke and artist Amanda Conner have the additionally arduous task of being saddled with everybody’s least favorite character from Watchmen, which they handled dazzlingly in last month’s debut, managing to take Silk Spectre in a totally unexpected direction. This month’s issue subverts our expectations yet again, taking a step that can’t so much be described as forward or backwards, but sideways. Continue reading →

Jul 16 2012

Before Watchmen – Minutemen 2

Today, Patrick and Shelby are discussing Minutemen 2, originally released July 11th, 2012. Minutemen is part of DC’s Before Watchmen prequel series. Click here for complete Before Watchmen coverage (including release dates).

Patrick: Darwyn Cooke is going to make the absolute most out of his Minutemen mini-series. The first issue served as an effective mission statement, nodding politely to the series’ legendary origins but striking out boldly with its own voice. But now with all that business out of the way, Minutemen 2 is able to start telling stories. STORIES! Can you believe it?

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Jul 13 2012

Before Watchmen – Curse of the Crimson Corsair 1-6

Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing Curse of the Crimson Corsair 1-6, originally released June 6th (in Minutemen 1), June 13 (in Silk Spectre 1), June 20th (in Comedian 1), June 27th (in Nite Owl 1), July 4th (in Ozymandias 1) and July 11th 2012 (in Minutemen 2). It is also available for free on DC’s Source Blog. Curse of the Crimson Corsair is part of DC’s Before Watchmen prequel series. Click here for complete Before Watchmen coverage (including release dates).

Patrick: If there’s one part of the original Watchmen I never quite got behind, it was the whole “Marooned” story. I’ll concede its many virtues: 1) that Moore envisioned what the comic book industry would look like in a world where actual superheroes were common place; 2) that the darkness of the story provided chilling barometer for the global psychology under the threat of nuclear war; 3) that the artist for the books was conscripted to help design Ozy’s squid monster, thus unifying horrors expressed both within the story and the story-within-the-story; and 4) that the protagonist’s decision to sacrifice the bodies of crew to achieve his goals parallels Adrian Veidt’s decision to murder half of New York City to spare the world from nuclear annihilation (with a similar loss of humanity as a result). I CONCEDE ALL THOSE POINTS. Still, I find those portions of Watchmen remarkably dull. Turns out “Pirate Comic Loosely Related to Watchmen: The Next Generation” inverts that formula. The results aren’t great.

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Jul 5 2012

Before Watchmen – Ozymandias 1

Today, Shelby and Patrick are discussing Ozymandias 1, originally released July 4th, 2012. Ozymandias is part of DC’s Before Watchmen prequel series. Click here for complete Before Watchmen coverage (including release dates).

Shelby: So far, Before Watchmen has been largely a success. Minute Men 1 didn’t really offer anything new, it merely fleshed out character traits we were already familiar with, and that was just fine. Silk Spectre 1 took character traits we knew and crafted a narrative to show us their origin; it was a new story based on old facts, and it was very good. Comedian 1 took that a step further by taking what we thought we knew and twisting it around, without losing sight of Moore’s original intent; I thought it was exceptionally good. Nite Owl 1 was a huge step backwards; it invented a narrative which didn’t match the character traits it was meant to originate. The whole thing felt forced and unnecessary. Ozymandias 1, happily, is a step back towards Minute Men; we don’t learn anything new about Adrian Veidt, and that’s completely ok.

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Jun 29 2012

Before Watchmen – Nite Owl 1

Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing Nite Owl 1, originally released June 13th, 2012. Nite Owl is part of DC’s Before Watchmen prequel series. Click here for complete Before Watchmen coverage (including release dates).

Patrick: Honeymoon’s over guys. All this time we’ve had a laundry list of crummy things that Before Watchmen could end up being: pointless retreading, canonized fan fiction, aping Gibbon’s style without adding to it and origins-orgins-origins. The creative team of J. Michael Straczynski and Andy Kubert seem to checking items off this list as they achieve them in all in this wholly unessential Nite Owl tale.

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