For Mature Readers

The last two weeks saw the release of the third installments of the first two titles to kick-off the Before Watchmen line. Both comics were devised at the keyboard of writer Darwyn Cooke, who handled illustration as well on MINUTEMEN, while tasking Amanda Connor with art duties on SILK SPECTRE.

Three issues into it, these titles still represent the high watermark for the entire relaunch campaign, making it a shame that we are limited to six and four issues, respectively.

In MINUTEMEN #3, the story turns a bit nasty as The Comedian gets another chance to show his true colors–and is seemingly rewarded for it. The Silhouette's romantic life is revealed and the division between the real heroes and the publicity mongers widens. Cooke is once again dead-on in capturing a vintage feel that seems more inspired by the pulps than by the comics. His narrative is multidimensional and sophisticated without being verbose or pretentious. This is honest-to-goodness storytelling at its best.

With SILK SPECTRE #3, the summer of love comes to a violent conclusion with a clever cameo from The Comedian, but not before supplying copious amounts of hippy sex and nudity. If you'd have bet me that a teenaged Silk Spectre in the hands of Cooke & Conner would be the most salacious title in a Before Watchmen line that includes Brian Azzarello penned adventures of Rorschach and The Comedian, an Adam Hughes rendering of Dr. Manhattan, and Jae Lee's vision of Ozymandias, I'd have lost money. Of course if you'd told me that SILK SPECTRE was going to be one of the best books in that line, I'd have never believed that, either.

For some reason, I've not been paying attention to the number of issues granted each series, and it bums me out that we'll be getting only four issues of SILK SPECTRE and RORSCHACH, while being force-fed six issues of OZYMANDIAS. Maybe we'll get lucky and Len Wein will quit the reboots like he quit the original series, and Jae Lee will get a real writer worthy of his extraordinary talents. I'm glad that NITE OWL has been limited to four issues, as there has barely been enough of him in his own title to warrant much more, but judging from the superb DR. MANHATTAN I'll be missing a longer JMS script on that. I'd rather read six issues of RORSCACH than the COMEDIAN, but maybe those extra forty+ pages will give Azzarello and J.G. Jones the space they need to bring Eddie Blake's story back home. What started as cameo-laden mess has gotten more textured and I'm willing to stick it out.

Speaking of which, it seemed like fans of Grant Morrisson's FLEX MENTALLO would be tasked with tracking down the very expensive back issues of that seminal series forever, but sixteen years later and in a svelte $23 hardcover, DC finally reprinted it. My Amazon pre-order took an inexplicable month to arrive (as did my INVISIBLES omnibus), so I missed the rather unfriendly review that The Comics Journal posted back at the start of August. That didn't stop me from replying, however, so if you want to read my opinion of their review, you can click here.

FLEX was Morrison's first collaboration with artist Frank Quitely, and was the first book in the author's hypersigil trilogy that also includes THE INVISIBLES and THE FILTH. The impact of breaking the fourth wall begun with ANIMAL MAN was further twisted with this highly original take on what was in essence a proto-meme: the Charles Atlas ad. False history taken as fact mixed with other chaos magick elements like sigils and recontextualization make the Man of Muscle Mystery an important chapter in the annals of the greater comcidom.
The fact that it's so enjoyable to read, too, is a great bonus.

And if some of the salaciousness of SILK SPECTRE comes under fire, DC can always redirect that attention from their Before Watchmen line to their new National Comics line and this amazing LOOKER cover, penciled by Guillem March. Looker was created by Mike W. Barr and Jim Aparo as a frequent ally of The Outsiders who went vampiric, became a talk show host, and apparently survived a satellite bombing by Talia al Ghul before re-entering DC continuity as a sanctioned agent of Batman Incorporated. This new version of Looker is a psionic vampire supermodel. The interior art by Mike S. Miller reminds me of the Luna Brothers and their work on ULTRA. The story is pure escapism, so as a one-shot, I think it succeeds. At the very least, it should get fanboys acquainted with Guillem's previous work on CATWOMAN or GREEN LANTERN: NEW GUARDIANS. I, for one, am excited for more March.

If you want to pick up an original published drawing by this talented Spanish artist, he's just launched a crowd-funded sketchbook project that allows you to dictate the pose of your favorite scantily clad heroine.

For mature readers, indeed!

Minutemen & Metabarons: Now this is more like it!

The marquee title in the Before Watchmen relaunch is MINUTEMEN. Before it was announced that there was going to be an entire imprint dedicated to WATCHMEN prequels, I became aware that Darwyn Cooke was working on a back story for the Pre-Keene Act adventures of the first generation of costumed crime fighters from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' alternate universe. Of any possible or inevitable attempts at cashing in on the success of the recent film, this made the most sense and Cooke's award-winning NEW FRONTIER made him a natural choice.

The first issue had the unenviable task of encapsulating the known history and adding a bit of flavor to characters absent from comicdom for two and a half decades. I argued then and I'll mention now that 22 pages is not enough space to establish a story, but Cooke has certainly made the most of the allotted page count in the second issue. MINUTEMEN #2 is exactly what I hoped it would be and re-established some of the faith lost in the last three weeks of Before Watchmen titles. 


It is worth noting that thus far, the only two titles that have enriched rather than detracted from the original WATCHMEN series (the jury is still out on J. Michael Straczynski's NITE OWL) have been penned by Darwyn Cooke. His framework of using the publishing date for Hollis Mason's autobiography, "Under The Hood" as a springboard to travel back in time to tell the tabloid reality of the entire first generation of heroes works splendidly. The intersecting eras are not only separated by narrative cues, but by songs, poems and attention to pop culture detail.

Darwyn Cooke is a real professional, as good (some might argue) as Alan Moore. And that's the calibre of talent necessary for pulling off a rewrite of the greatest superhero story ever told. As fine as the other Before Watchmen writers are, I don't think any of them are in that same league. They really needed to enlist people like Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman, and Peter Milligan –and while I'm sure they probably approached one or two of them, what benefit to any of them would this project be? The Brits have probably all crossed paths with Northampton's patron curmudgeon and thought better to steer clear of this particular, potential fiasco. Morrison was denied a shot at MARVELMAN when it was still being published in WARRIOR, and Gaiman's final chapter to that hero's story is still yet to be published, so the track record for people looking to follow in Moore's footsteps is there and it's not encouraging. While I'm a bit offput by the first issue of COMEDIAN, I'm still very much looking forward to Brian Azzarello & Lee Bermejo's RORSCHACH, though I hope they lay off the "Hurm." I have to admit that I'm more excited than I had initially anticipated for the J.Michael Straczynski & Adam Hughes take on  DR. MANHATTAN, possibly because there is far less chance of being let down by a character in which I'm least invested. The preview art I've seen thus far is awesome, and I've been hoping that someday, somebody would team Adam with a writer worthy of his talent. I'll have to wait and see...

Definitely NOT a letdown is the Humanoids Publishing omnibus of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Juan Gimenez's THE METABARONS. This slipcased, complete hardcover edition is limited to 999 numbered copies. Regrettably they are not signed, but having been involved with a Jodorowsky project or two, I can attest that getting him to do menial things like signing books could have taken a mythic eternity. And signed or not, readers are treated to one of the most epic sci-fi tales in the history of sequential storytelling, presented on deluxe paper in a tome worthy of the hefty price tag ($129.95).

By the time Jodo and Moebius brought their masterpiece L'INCAL to print in 1981, the director's dream project, DUNE, had been taken away from him after spending close to a decade in development. Jodorowsky's DUNE would have featured Salvador Dali as the emperor and introduced Swiss Surrealist H.R. Giger to film production design. So long was the project on hold that elements of what was to become Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon were originally planned to be the film's score. Pregnant with ideas for a film that was no longer under his creative control, Alejandro wrote the first parts of a grand space opera in the tradition of Frank Herbert that would introduce sci-fi fans to private investigator John DiFool and bounty hunter The Metabaron. Hugely successful in Europe, these tales were originally serialized in English in Marvel's EPIC Magazine. They've since been acquired by DC's Humanoids imprint, and from 1992 to 2003, Jodo & Gimenez's prequel, the SAGA OF THE METABARONS, was released via a series of graphic novels, bound together here for the first time in THE ULTIMATE COLLECTION.

The plot revolves around a tribal, nanotech, warrior civilization and covers heavy metaphysical themes using symbols of Tarot and The Zohar and to address progressive ideas about governance and sexuality. It's deep sci-fi from one of the greatest plotters in the history of either cinema or comics, and this omnibus offers a great, jumping-off point for would-be Jodorowsky fans. Cinephiles who lament the director's brief output of transgressive films would do right by delving into his first love, comic books. Previous to Alejandro's career in film, he wrote and drew a comic strip, ANIBAL 5, which predates all of his feature films, and is eclipsed only by his mime and theater work. Always plagued by budget restrictions, in comics he is allowed to dream big on paper. His concepts are often freely adapted by American and British writers, and some of Grant Morrison's chaos magick influenced comics like THE FILTH or THE INVISIBLES are less groundbreaking to those familiar with Alejandro Jodorowsky's bandes dessinées.

It's unfortunate that many of the greatly talented European comic artists go unnoticed by American audiences for their refusal to work in the superhero medium. They are so well-treated and well-paid in Europe that there is really no need to schlep on American strips, or cave into editorial pressures against nudity, violence or unpopular political thought. In the past two years since I've completed the first Pop Sequentialism exhibition and overseen publication of the first show catalog, my appreciation for French comic books has reached a near fever pitch, and this week I'll be nailing down the specifics for the first Pop Sequentialism exhibition in France. I tip my hat to the folks at Humanoids who have been single-handedly carrying the torch for European comics here in the states. The editions are beautiful, their title selection impeccable, and courage exemplary. I'm looking forward to the omnibus edition of TECHNOPRIESTS, which tells another aspect of the Jodoverse L'INCAL. I'll probably have to wait a few years, but if this volume is any indication, it'll be well worth the wait.

WATCHMEN Fans: Meet the MINUTEMEN!

This past Wednesday the first new WATCHMEN story since October 1987 hit comic store shelves. Visibly absent from the front cover are the names of original creators Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons. This has supplied no end of flame fodder for fan boys who feel that this is an unnecessary and unconscionable violation of possibly the greatest stand-alone comic book series ever published.

I love the WATCHMEN. I used the Origin of Rorschach page as the cover to my POP-SEQUENTIALISM book. I have read and re-read the original series at least a dozen times, and it has lost none of its impact. When I saw the film, I was critical of some of the artistic choices the director made –mostly with regard to the 1960s music cues, a bit of the casting, and in being too literal with some of the comic book panels (which I felt translated badly cinematically). I felt that the film got a lot of the difficult things right and completely blew it on what should have been easy things. So how do I feel about the new MINUTEMEN series written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke?

It's too soon to tell.

In Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons' first issue of the WATCHMEN, there was no need to explain anything that had come before, because nothing had come before. They got to start fresh with characters based on other existing characters with histories that could be taken for granted because there was no threat of a lawsuit; the publisher of their comic was also the license holder for the Charlton characters Moore had based this pantheon upon. Clues about the alternate reality of the Watchmen world were delivered subtly across the twelve issues and benefited greatly from the text-only backup stories that filled in the missing tone and setting. Indeed, to read the comics without reading the fake book excerpts, artificial police files, science journal entries and comics-within-a-comic would be to completely miss the details of the world, characters and plot devices that made that comic what it was (and is). Cooke likewise has no lawsuit to fear, but he's got two-and-a-half decades of expectations to overcome and the challenge of rebooting characters that many feel need no reboot.

In Darwyn Cooke, DC comics have found possibly the perfect person to revive the MINUTEMEN. Cooke's THE NEW FRONTIER is the most celebrated revival series of the current millennium, an award-winning retelling of the Justice League origin, that bridged the gap between the Golden and Silver Age. His retro art style is perfect for the World War II era in which MINUTEMEN is set, with his Kirbyesque squareness and his nouveau-deco aesthetic. In fact, Cooke's pencils might even be more suitable than Gibbons' for telling this particular story, which has the mood of Matt Wagner's SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATER and the feel of James Robinson's THE GOLDEN AGE. I'm glad that someone at DC realized it would be wrong to emulate a 1980s look for a story that takes place in the 30s and 60s. Unfortunately, because this is the first attempt at tackling these characters in a quarter century, this first issue is pure setup. Another drawback of releasing a comic book with impossibly high expectations is that the format itself has changed. In 1987, Moore had 32 ad-free pages to open his story. In 2012, Cooke has 24 pages. There is also a two-page, pirate backup story penciled by original WATCHMEN colorist John Higgins, that will continue into the next BEFORE WATCHMEN release, SILK SPECTRE #1, which streets this coming Wednesday. It's nice to have one of the original creators involved, but I find his 80s GORE SHRIEK reminiscent artwork to be completely wrong to support a title that takes place (at the latest) in the 60s and I'd have been much happier with a reverent EC imitation (like Joe Orlando's Tales of the Black Freighter in the original series), but since this is set to run as a back up in all seven of the prequel miniseries (most of which take place in the 80s), this will probably bother me less with each issue. Two pages at a time, it's nearly impossible to judge the quality of a comic book, anyhow. 

It's worth pointing out that nobody expects this or any of the series in the BEFORE WATCHMEN line to equal or best the original series, but I am impressed with the names connected with this re-boot, and from what I've read thus far, I'm hooked. I will definitely be buying all of the titles, and I will report on this blog what I think of each of them. I look forward especially to Brian Azarello and Lee Bermejo's RORSCHACH, which is likely to become a fan favorite in spite of the blowback the rest of the line is receiving in advance. If J. Michael Straczynski can deliver the kind of goods he gave us with THOR, then DR. MANHATTAN will be Adam Hughes' first work on a well written series, which is cause for rejoice under any circumstance. I'm hoping that JMS isn't overtaxed by writing two series (he's also overseeing NITE OWL, as drawn by Andy & Joe Kubert), but Cooke and Azarello are also tackling two titles each, as is (in a way) Len Wein, who is writing the pirate backup tale Curse of the Crimson Corsair and OZYMANDIAS, which Jae Lee is illustrating. Cooke's SILK SPECTRE is illustrated by Amanda Conner, who may be as perfectly suited for that title as Cooke is for MINUTEMEN. In addition to RORSCHACH, Azarello gets the honor of writing THE COMEDIAN with J.G. Jones penciling.

These are some heavy hitters, and while fanboys cry fraud at the suggestion of a revival that does not involve Moore or Gibbons, to be honest, I've been much happier with the work of Brian Azarello in the past decade than I have been with Alan Moore. Some of these comics will be good, and some of them might suck, but some of them might be great. None of that will change how I feel about the original series, and to be honest, it shouldn't affect how anyone else feels about it, either. While those original twelve issues are the entirety of the tale that Moore and Gibbons chose to tell, there is plenty of room in the unpublished record of these characters for more back story and further exploits. Moore thought so, himself, back in 1985 when he offered to write a twelve issue prequel before the first issue of WATCHMEN was released. Some years ago, fans may recall, Moore didn't want anyone to follow his run on MARVELMAN, and he actively prevented a young Grant Morrison from working on the character as published in WARRIOR Magazine when he abandoned it. Years later when Neil Gaiman finished the tale, fans were thrilled. It's quite possible that they've got reason to rejoice again. Only time will tell...