Passing the Rorschach Test

Without a doubt, the most highly anticipated title in the Before Watchmen line has been RORSCHACH. The narrator of the original series has long been the most beloved character and this new prequel is undoubtedly the one that fans critical of the relaunch feared most would be mishandled.

Fortunately for Brian Azzarello, Alan Moore invested more time in the backstory for Rorschach than he did in the Comedian. Fans of the original WATCHMEN have a clear picture of what he is all about because his origin from childhood to crime fighter is well documented in the original series. It's effortless to pick up the beat of his prosthelytizing monologues, and his disdain for corruption is unforced and amenable; in other words he's easy to identify with. Rorschach may be crazy, but like his cinematic predecessor Travis Bickle, his intentions are good and he, himself, is a victim of society. With such a well established personality (or lack thereof), and with such a high percentage of the original source material dedicated to him, success should come relatively simply to a writer worth his salt.

If I had my choice of any living comic book team to write and illustrate this comic I would have picked the same duo that DC did: Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo. And you'll all be happy to hear that they didn't disappoint.

The JOKER graphic novel is one of the few examples of post-WATCHMEN sequential literature that can be either recommended or discovered independently and be completely enjoyed regardless. There are books by Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman, and a few others working within the superhero cannon that also succeed at this but none of them star the bad guy, and most of the issues that are dedicated to villains try to humanize them with sympathetic explanations about what made them monsters. Azzarello chose to forego that route completely and served up a day in the life of an utterly unpredictable lunatic. One minute he's funny and the next minute he's deadly and twice as frightening because of it. Bermejo painted a portrait of a true psychopath, and within panels captures a subtle shift in body language and even pupil dilation to support the explosion of violence that commonly bridges the Joker's wavering moods. This is the team you want when telling the tale of the most violent costumed vigilante this side of BADGER (a schizophrenic, indie comics hero whose popularity once outshined Wolverine's).

Bermejo's original art from Rorschach #1

Since Moore already told us how the red-headed Walter Kovacs became Rorschach, the masked scourge of the underworld, Azzarello is spared having to repeat it. He has chosen (thus far) to detail a single case file well into the vigilante's career –from the late 70s if the look of Bermejo's New York City is any indication. Like Moore before him, Azzarello has chosen to pull from Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver to present the nasty and scary 42nd Street of the post-Vietnam era that became synonymous with crime, vice and pornography for a generation of New Yorkers and tourists along the great, white way. In the quarter-century that has passed since the original series first saw print, the level of violence and obscenity allowed in mainstream comic books has increased exponentially, and thus are we presented with a more extreme version of the character.

Even though it carried a recommendation "For Mature Readers," original series artist Dave Gibbons was forced to work within the framework of the accepted norm, obligating a subtlety that helped his work connect with academics and even conservatives who were critical of "comic book violence." Lee Bermejo is not so restrained, and there is nothing comic about his violence. When the aforementioned Kovacs shows up in public after his masked alter-ego receives a savage beating from some street thugs, he's not just worse for wear: he's f**ked up –a credit to Bermejo's detailed pencils.

The heightened violence and stronger language aside, Azzarello has remained faithful to the character comic fans know. Maybe this was motivated by fear, or maybe he's just having fun with a character he never dreamed he'd be allowed to write. Then again, they just might have found the perfect pairing of writer and artist for this particular project. It is possible that WATCHMEN was one of the titles that made Azzarello want to write comic books in the first place. One can draw a series of comparisons between the best and worst of Moore's heroic fiction and the best and worst of Azzarello's, and while they are each their own man, if you are a fan of one you will likely be a fan of the other. Azzarello (like Moore) is at his best telling dark stories about those who rage against the dying of the light; a sort of dystopian poet. And Moore (like Azzarello) experienced his biggest failures when working with other people's material that hadn't been completely mapped via years of pop-culture establishment (SPAWN, WildC.A.T.S., SUPREME).

In the 25 years that have passed since Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons buried Edward Blake, many subsequent writers have injected elements of The Comedian into mainstream heroes like The Punisher, Daredevil, Nick Fury and even Captain America (not to mention pretty much every Image-published title of the 1990s). In an attempt to make the character something special again, Brian may have chosen to write a larger than life character worthy of The Comedian's legend but unmindful of his published history. It's got to be a challenge tackling something that nobody wants to see succeed, and I don't envy the task –especially when he can write (and has written) any number of books that the fans will not only love, but fawn over. All of those involved in the Before Watchmen line have exhibited great courage, but the failures have outnumbered the successes. Azzarello's COMEDIAN had a shaky start, and seems to be recovering, but thus far I'd list it among the failures. With RORSCHACH #1, DC and Azzarello can add one more check to the success column.

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.

Before Watchmen Week 5: Blizzard of Oz

I finally caught up with the latest release in DC Comics' Before Watchmen line which pairs important writers and artists for new stories concerning the main characters of Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons' WATCHMEN series from 25 years ago.

Of all the new titles, OZYMANDIAS is perhaps the one I looked forward to the least. While Oz is the man behind the curtain of the original WATCHMEN series, he wasn't as badass as Rorschach or The Comedian, and he wasn't as conflicted as Nite Owl or Silk Spectre. Dr. Manhattan is possibly even less interesting than the Oz man (as we already got his complete back story), but I've been very jazzed to see what J. Michael Straczynski can bring to the table via superstar penciler Adam Hughes. Jae Lee is also a tremendous talent whose artwork graces comic books far too infrequently, but Len Wein isn't a name that one expects to see on a list next to Darwyn Cooke, Brian Azzarello and JMS, so my expectations were fairly low for this.

Visually, Jae Lee has delivered the most beautiful interior pages since J. H. Williams III's Batwoman feature in DETECTIVE COMICS a few years back. If Williams channelled Mucha, Lee has resurrected Leyendecker for a fancy art nouveau composition that is really quite breathtaking. Unfortunately, the writing doesn't match.

The narration is straight out of the Bronze age: preachy, obvious and somewhat juvenile. While it's no secret that Adrian Veidt aka Ozymandias has a very high opinion of himself, he would never expose that vanity to anyone –not even himself, so the journal motif exposes a failure by writer Len Wein to capture the nature of the main character. By relying heavily on narration to tell the story, he forces his hero to be the sole revealer of his own tale, and anyone whose seen the various versions of BLADERUNNER with and without narration can attest to the weakness of the narration as a storytelling mechanic. It has been a staple of comic book plotting for decades, but this line of comics was pitched as a collection of cutting edge creators presenting original ideas that would enrich the fictional histories of some of comicdom's most beloved and best protected characters. Instead, OZYMANDIAS #1 is a stale concept wrapped in decades of cliche.

Moore's Ozymandias was not pompous. He was shrewd. He was not the type of guy that tips his hand until the game is over –in fact the character even addresses his own nature at the climax of the original series. At one point in Wein's script, Veidt refers to his own hair fetishistically, which is exactly the kind of comic book villain trait that Moore's presentation steered clear of. I don't mean to be unkind, but Wein is not of the same calibre of Moore and does not have the narrative gift for expressing the hero's vanity without hitting readers over the head with it. Veidt is the most subtle of any of the WATCHMEN cast and here we are given a very heavy handed story with unnecessarily flowery diction, and the whole affair comes off like a Roy Thomas AVENGERS story from 1968 that's been tarted up a bit for second decade, post-millennial circulation. If this had been a PETER CANNON, THUNDERBOLT comic from that era it would've been ground breaking, but in 2012 it's merely old hat. Perhaps worse than being written in the wrong voice in an archaic fashion, it messes with information that we know from Moore's original story. Just as Azzarello exonerated The Comedian from JFK's death, Wein removes Veidt from implication in the deaths of his parents. The one thing that these new titles absolutely should not do is counter-factualize the official cannon, and in five comics there are already two that have done just that.

It would have been far more interesting if Veidt's recollection of his life was staged as a monologue in complete antithesis with the images that accompany the script (like the red carpet speech in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN). That's the angle that someone like Moore might have taken, or Peter Milligan for that matter, who would have been a far better choice for this assignment. It might also have been a little less precious if the entire framework had been an excerpt from Veidt's autobiography instead of this Fantasyland confession which apparently takes place immediately before the climactic events of the original maxi-series. This time signature as a plot mechanic seems forced and doesn't ring true at all.

As an editor, Wein's record is solid (CAMELOT 3000, WATCHMEN, TEEN TITANS, etc.), and as a fan of both SWAMP THING and the X-MEN, I recognize and appreciate his contributions in helping create some of my favorite characters, but outside of his Clayface revival in DETECTIVE COMICS as part of Marshall Rogers' run on the title I can't say that I've ever been as impressed with his writing as I have been with his front office skills.

Alex Ross is helping to relaunch the Peter Cannon character over at Dynamite with writer Steve Darnall and artist Johnathan Lau (and Jae Lee has even provided a cover) so it'll be interesting to see if a reboot of the hero that Moore repurposed as a villain winds up being better than the relaunch of the character it inspired.

I'll let you know in September...

Little to Smile about in COMEDIAN #1

It's probably fair to say that among the seven prequel mini-series in the Before Watchmen line, COMEDIAN is one of the two most anxiously awaited (in back of RORSCHACH). It's probably also a fair assessment that among the myriad of talented writers working in comics today, aside from original series creator Alan Moore, Brian Azzarello is the writer from whom most fans want to read a new Comedian tale. His JOKER graphic novel released to tie-in with the Dark Knight film is one of the best one-shots written in the past two decades and his treatment of the titular character is among the best if not actually the best.

So why am I a little let down by COMEDIAN #1?
In a word, expectation.

J.G. Jones' penchant for S&M costumes was part of WANTED's charm, and he would seem to be a natural choice for Edward Blake's alter-ego. But that's not what we get in this first issue. Jones' pencils here are more reminiscent of his D.C. LEGACIES interiors than his superlative MARVEL BOY or FINAL CRISIS work. The colors are very muted, and shadow wins over detail on every page. These are likely stylistic choices utilized to evoke a grey 60s vibe along the lines of John Frankenheimer's films from that era; I don't really endorse this decision and would have been much happier with bright, vibrant ultraviolence. With such a provocative cover, we're led to believe that the restrain Moore showed back in 1987 (ie. not much) is about to be let loose and our hero allowed to go completely medieval. Instead we are treated to a kinder, gentler Comedian with likeable movie star status who is close personal friends with JFK and the whole Kennedy clan. He is, ironically, not very comedic, but urbane and dignified; basically the exact opposite of what we know about him from the source material. Missing is the grim cynicism and signature black humor  –the only hint of which is a quip (an allusion really), about the sexual preferences of J. Edgar Hoover's G-men. Perhaps this is the set-up and we'll get to witness the events that create the bitter nihilist we see in Vietnam with Dr. Manhattan, but since these events take place years after Blake's rape of Silk Spectre I, Sally Jupiter, this revisionist take of Blake as a likeable man's man seems disingenuous. The context of the Kennedy assassination also seems to be at odds with the official Moore & Gibbons cannon, which borders on unforgivable.

I can also see a lot of people taking umbrage with Azzarello's portrayal of Jackie Kennedy, which infers a cattiness and deviousness at odds with just about all existing biographical and historical evidence of her character. The Kennedys of Camelot are by no means sacred cows, but invocation of that legacy really just cheapens the narrative in the same way that comparing any run of the mill politician or dictator to Hitler pretty much guarantees the loss of a sane argument. What Gibbons and Moore might have conveyed in a couple of brief panels is given several pages and it does little more than slow the story down. Rather than evoking an Outer Limits sense of counter-factual history, it comes off more like a Forrest Gump cameo run too long.

And if reviving one of America's darkest hours for cheap drama is merely bad taste, the ham-fisted working-into-the-plot of Moloch the Magician comes off as truly pedestrian. It was completely unnecessary and makes the drunken confession in the original series less dramatic. In short, this new number one is what most WATCHMEN fans were afraid of: it cheapens the original by playing loose with the facts as we know them. It's even more disappointing (no pun intended) because of the talent involved. What could have been a worthy updating of Garth Ennis' UNKNOWN SOLDIER instead has the hollow commerce-driven banality of a badly researched SECRET ORIGINS. I'll continue to read this to see if Azzarello can dig out of the ditch he's made for himself in this first issue, and I'm still excited to see what he and Lee Bermejo have cooked up for RORSCACH, but as it stands, the Before Watchmen line has its first dead on arrival failure with COMEDIAN #1.

Ghost with More Substance than God: SILK SPECTRE

Yesterday the second Before Watchmen title hit comic shop racks. SILK SPECTRE #1 is (like MINUTEMEN #1) written by Darwyn Cooke, but this series is drawn by Amanda Connor. No doubt line editor, Dan DiDio, was looking for her to bring the same woman's touch she brought to her fan favorite runs on VAMPIRELLA and POWER GIRL. I think she aced it.

This title is different from MINUTEMEN in several respects. Firstly, it starts out as a high school drama, and secondly, it is set in the late 1950s. The Steranko-esque cover aside, there are no attempts to capture the era in retro-style pencils or panel design. Otherwise the trappings of the time frame are spot on. Amanda has a real gift for capturing emotions without necessitating the dialogue point it all out, and she seems to have eschewed the stylized, slight-anime look that characterized her interiors on POWERGIRL for the more realistic, yet playful detail of her highly sought cover work. This is the best of both worlds for Connor fans who get to see her work with yet another great writer on a resume that already includes Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis. 

If Amanda is the star of this issue, Darwyn is only slightly less so.

Cooke uses a collection of interrupted song titles and television soundbites as an issue-wide storytelling device that quite frankly does not work. It detracts from the linear ease of the story which is otherwise fine without it. In fact, I prefer this first issue to the last Before Watchmen #1 because the nature of the smaller cast allows more space to become invested in the titular hero. The rocky relationship between Laurie Jupiter and her mom (original Silk Spectre, Sally Jupiter) is established, as is her outsider status at school as a result of being the daughter of a tabloid heroine. Her training regimen is revealed as is her inner dialogue via brief fantasy panels that rely more on symbolism and facial/body language than forced explanation. Possibly because of the lead character's age, I found myself reminiscing about the first issues of INVINCIBLE, but (due in no small part to Amanda Connor's artwork) I have to say that I prefer SILK SPECTRE thus far.

If it seems I'm being critical of Darwyn Cooke this issue, it's only because his collaborator out-shined him this time around. I enjoyed this comic immensely, and I eagerly await the next issue. This is by no means the type of comic that Alan Moore would have written, and I think we're all better off for it. If Cooke had contrived to imitate Moore on this title, it would have resulted in a pale imitation that would have failed miserably. Instead, Cooke is treating readers to a story that I doubt Moore could deliver: a believable tale of teen angst that sheds light on an origin barely hinted at. If comparison is necessary, this might be Cooke doing his best Joss Whedon. And that makes me wish this was more than four issues...

Not exactly comic book related, but definitely in the cannon of pop culture and art is Ridley Scott's PROMETHEUS, which opened this past weekend. Scott seems to have revived the original H.R. GIGER designs, which are breathtakingly beautiful on screen. The digital compositing/CGI is the best I've seen up to this point, and I can now understand the comparisons to Terrence Malick's TREE OF LIFE. Unfortunately, there are casting problems and B-Movie plot holes that really ruin the film. It's almost heartbreaking that the filmmakers got so much of the really difficult stuff right, only to fail at the easy stuff. The cinematography is incredible, the set design impeccable, and the special effects are deliriously compelling. It's too bad that they put all that effort behind a predictable and convoluted script –and it is both predictable AND convoluted. It's a shame that the writers, whose combined credits include the abysmal COWBOYS & ALIENS and an upcoming MUMMY reboot, didn't take more direction from James Cameron's screenplay for the first ALIEN sequel, which had an emotional center; something completely lacking in this prequel. Instead, they seem to have started with an interesting premise but then rehashed every ALIENS ripoff, from THE RELIC and VIRUS to the AVP films. With the exceptions of Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Idris Elba and Patrick Wilson (via flashback), the cast is a parade of stereotypes and clichés. Seriously, Hollywood: perfect the scripts before you greenlight one hundred, fifty million dollar movies!

And another thing: was it really necessary to make us wear those battery powered 3D glasses? There is hardly any 3D in the film. You'd think that a film with vicious, slimy, acid-for-blood aliens in it would have some great "Boo!" moments, but the horror in this was more excrutiating than surprising, and I know of at least a handful of audience members who had to exchange their pairs halfway through the film because the batteries shorted out. Battery powered glasses can't be healthy, can they? 

H.R. Giger
Motor Landscape (1972)
Silkscreen, A/P from a signed edition of 210
27" x 34.5" in 31.5" x 39.25" frame
$5,250.00

In spite of all that, I think that PROMETHEUS is still worth seeing for the flawless set design and special effects. I actually do recommend seeing it on the big screen, which amplifies the scale of the spacecraft and landscape. But if you can, save your money and catch a matinee or wait until it goes to the cheap theaters. If you're bringing a date, make sure he or she is up to speed on the first film, because otherwise they'll be completely confused. Come to think of it, even if you are a well-versed fan, the opening sequence might still leave you somewhat befuddled.

The mere mention of ALIEN gives me a great excuse to post this original signed & numbered, hand-pulled, silkscreen print from 1972 by H.R. Giger, which was published in Carnivora, The Dark Art of Automobiles (Scapegoat Publishing, 2009). Shoot me an email if you are interested in purchasing it. It's in a gorgeous frame and just happens to be an artist's proof. It should probably be priced $15K, but the collector who consigned it to me wants it go to someone who will prominently display it, rather than have it languish in his storage facility. He's got some original Giger paintings already, so letting go of an original print –even one as rare as this one, is no hardship. And yes, I said "paintings," as in plural.

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...