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: Nite Owl/Dr. Manhattan

PLOT: Discover what happened before WATCHMEN as writer J. Michael Straczynski is joined by Andy Kubert and the legendary Joe Kubert to take flight with the gadget-savvy vigilante known as Nite Owl! And then in BEFORE WATCHMEN: DR. MANHATTAN, JMS teams with fan-favorite artist Adam Hughes on the all-powerful super-man Dr. Manhattan. For Dr. Manhattan, past, present, and future are one and the same. But as he observes the events of his life, do they remain the same? Or are they changed? The very fact of his existence may have altered the nature of what will or will not be...

REVIEW: Now that I've read two volumes of the Before Watchmen series, I've been able to get a pretty good glimpse of what they were trying to do. When I read Before Watchmen: Ozymandias/Crimson Corsair first, I thought that it seemed kind of fruitless to rehash the beginnings of a character that didn't get too much more depth that he didn't get from the original Watchmen or the movie adaptation. Now I see that they are pretty much taking the time leading up to the events of Watchmen to plot all of our favorite characters, and tying it all together between the volumes. After finishing Before Watchmen: Nite Owl/Dr. Manhattan, I'd really like to see a giant Watchmen sized compendium that puts all the volumes together as one big story to read together. I think it would benefit from being in a compilation like that.

Now this volume was a lot better than the first I'd read, mainly because Dr. Manhattan intrigues me a lot and his story crossing into the path of Ozymandias still puzzles me to this day. There's so much that can be discussed with the quantum intelligence of Dr. Manhattan, and it serves to show the complexities of the Watchmen storyline. The Nite Owl part was pretty good too, and as I saw him as one of the more underused characters in the book and movie, he gets fleshed out here to a more recognizable but extremely weak character when it comes to women, and shows where that came from. It really helps to explain him as a character in the events following Before Watchmen. The story of Moloch was also really great and I enjoyed the two issue line in with Ozymandias and it's tie in to the original. I would definitely recommend this to fans of Watchmen and readers of more intricately plotted stories. I can't imagine you'd have to have read Watchmen prior to this to enjoy it, but it probably adds that extra layer of plot that makes it so intriguing to me. Also I have to add that the alternate cover for Before Watchmen: Dr. Manhattan #4 is absolutely amazing and I want a large poster print of it, like right now. Early Christmas present anyone?

WRITING : ( 8 / 10 )

ARTWORK : ( 7 / 10 )

STORY : ( 7 / 10 )

COVERS : ( 10 / 10 )

AWESOME : ( 8 / 10 )

FINAL RATING : ( 8 / 10 )