REVIEW: Before Watchmen: Comedian/Rorschach

PLOT: Eisner Award-winning writer Brian Azzarello brings his gritty, nuanced storytelling to these two recognizable characters. In RORSCHACH, Azzarello again teams with superstar artist Lee Bermejo to illustrate how one of most dangerous vigilantes the comic world has ever seen became even darker. COMEDIAN, featuring art by J.G. Jones, plants the famed war hero within the context of American history, as we find out how the Vietnam War and the Kennedy assassination revolve around him.

REVIEW: So far, the Before Watchmen series has been hit or miss for me. The volume that stuck out the most to me, was the one that was the most poorly reviewed of all four. I liked this volume too however, and I'm not sure how it stacks up against the Ozymandias volume but it's pretty close. The Comedian and Rorschach are probably the two most likable characters from the Watchmen world, but that doesn't make them the most easily likable. The Comedian is pretty much a character you're supposed to hate, and even in this book they do a pretty good job of doing that. They tie him in to a lot of actual American history and while it provides for a somewhat entertaining read, it wasn't really anything I couldn't have figured out for myself about the character. The ongoing problem with these books is that they're telling back stories to characters that didn't really need back stories, but merely just other stories with them in it. It doesn't really give you anything extra that you absolutely needed in the first place, but does just enough to entertain you to keep reading it. Rorschach's half of the volume was a little more entertaining but comes to no clear end and pits him against a strangely faced enemy. I agree with some other readers that Rorschach is guilty of some lines in this volume that just don't fit his character, but other than that his is pretty entertaining. The art in this book is phenomenal, much like the other volumes in the series and that's probably all that really kept these comics going as shortly as they did. They're beautiful to look at, and it's a trade off in terms of the pretty lackluster and unnecessary stories that the art is told with.

WRITING : ( 6 / 10 )

ARTWORK : ( 10 / 10 )

STORY : ( 4 / 10 )

COVERS : ( 9 / 10 )

AWESOME : ( 7 / 10 )

FINAL RATING : ( 7 / 10 )

REVIEW: Before Watchmen: Ozymandias/Crimson Corsair

PLOT: Discover what happened before WATCHMEN. The team of legendary writer Len Wein and acclaimed artist Jae Lee--in his first DC Comics' work in nearly a decade--delve into the mind of the smartest man in the world: Ozymandias. How does one go from the son of immigrant parents to becoming the world's smartest man? Adrian Veidt begins his journey, both spiritual and physical, that will one day make him one of the most pivotal players in the world-changing events of WATCHMEN.

REVIEW: I for one, was extremely excited for the Before Watchmen comics as Watchmen is one of my favorite books of all-time, and probably the best graphic novel of all-time in my mind. A lot of people complained about these being made however, because why do we need more other than to capitalize on the success of the movie and the resurgence of interest in the original comic. I will admit that without the movie I never would have read the comic, as it is pretty extensive, but it was well worth the amount of time that it took to read. The first volume I got to read was Before Watchmen: Ozymandias/Crimson Corsair. Obviously we all know Ozymandias as the villain of the Watchmen, despite being what you could consider a good man at heart. The story really goes from birth to the events of Watchmen, and explains how he got to be the way he was. However, there wasn't a ton of new information that you couldn't deduce from the original or that actually wasn't in the original. The art was great, and I have to admit I was still intrigued when reading the book, but it just didn't present anything new. This point leads me to think that the critics may have been right, and now I start to wonder if there really is a purpose other than money to this series.

Ozymandias is the bulk of the book, but then there's the stories of Crimson Corsair and Dollar Bill. The Crimson Corsair were short 2 page issues bundled together into a tale of a man who dies at sea, and journeys through the depths of hellish waters to retreive the three items that will reclaim his soul. It's a beautiful work of art, but again the story wasn't something I found entirely necessary and it doesn't really connect in any way to the original. It was a back up story in the issues of Before Watchmen, and I can certainly understand why because it's exactly that. After that there's a story of about the same thing about a character Dollar Bill. This guy, they tie into the story of Watchmen delicately enough to make it plausible even though I'm pretty positive he wasn't present in the book or movie. I really liked this story because it had an old school look to it and it read like an older comic. On top of that, it had a really good storyline and it was ultimately the ending that packed the punch for it. Other than that, I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend reading Before Watchmen: Ozymandias/Crimson Corsair unless you absolutely have to or you're a die-hard Watchmen fan.

WRITING : ( 7 / 10 )

ARTWORK : ( 9 / 10 )

STORY : ( 5 / 10 )

COVERS : ( 9 / 10 )

AWESOME : ( 6 / 10 )

FINAL RATING : ( 6 / 10 )