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A review by walkonpooh
Before Watchmen: Minutemen/Silk Spectre by Amanda Conner, Darwyn Cooke
2.0
So I guess first things, I love Watchmen. Both the graphic novel and the film. I’m excited about the TV series by Damon Lindelof and I’m excited to see what DC does with Watchmen in Doomsday Clock. As much as I love Watchmen, unless there’s something there that I’m not seeing, it’s not a sacred cow to me. It’s a great story. Especially the comic, uses the medium to perfection. But I don’t like how Alan Moore gets on a high horse about the characters he created for Watchmen, when he freely uses characters created by other artists across all kinds of his work.
That said, this is the first of Before Watchmen I’ve read. In spite of my initial excitement for it, up until now I just didn’t have the time to read it. Sadly, unless I hear otherwise, this will probably be the last of Before Watchmen that I read. All respect to the late Darwyn Cooke and Amanda Conner, who do provide some great art here, but there’s just nothing else here. What I know of Before Watchmen, the goal was to take modern comic writers and artists and to add additional insight to the original work. The two volumes collected here, Minutemen and Silk Spectre fail dramatically to do this.
Everything that is revealed about the characters here in Before Watchmen are things that are there in the original work. It’s subtext that gives you great insight into the characters in Watchmen, but here hits you on the head in the most obvious way. There’s not a lot of subtlety going on here. Everything in here is the book screaming at the reader, “Hey! Remember Watchmen?” It’s just not good.
Probably the only other Before Watchmen book I would have any interest in would be the J. Michael Straczynski Collection, cause I consider myself a fan of his. This whole ordeal just seems pointless having read this volume. Hopefully, DC has something better in store with Doomsday Clock, because if they do repeat the same mistakes as Before Watchmen, then I would say that maybe writing Watchmen without Alan Moore isn’t the greatest of ideas after all.
That said, this is the first of Before Watchmen I’ve read. In spite of my initial excitement for it, up until now I just didn’t have the time to read it. Sadly, unless I hear otherwise, this will probably be the last of Before Watchmen that I read. All respect to the late Darwyn Cooke and Amanda Conner, who do provide some great art here, but there’s just nothing else here. What I know of Before Watchmen, the goal was to take modern comic writers and artists and to add additional insight to the original work. The two volumes collected here, Minutemen and Silk Spectre fail dramatically to do this.
Everything that is revealed about the characters here in Before Watchmen are things that are there in the original work. It’s subtext that gives you great insight into the characters in Watchmen, but here hits you on the head in the most obvious way. There’s not a lot of subtlety going on here. Everything in here is the book screaming at the reader, “Hey! Remember Watchmen?” It’s just not good.
Probably the only other Before Watchmen book I would have any interest in would be the J. Michael Straczynski Collection, cause I consider myself a fan of his. This whole ordeal just seems pointless having read this volume. Hopefully, DC has something better in store with Doomsday Clock, because if they do repeat the same mistakes as Before Watchmen, then I would say that maybe writing Watchmen without Alan Moore isn’t the greatest of ideas after all.