Before Watchmen

[jedidarrick]

DC Comics has released some new covers for each of the first issues of the Before Watchmen series, as well as Alan Moore's thoughts on the whole thing:
http://www.tgdaily.com/entertainment/61177-beyond-watchmen-covers-released-moore-comments
While I respect DC Comics's decision not to make a sequel

Spoiler! :

to keep the ending of the original ambiguous

and I think it's cool that they're doing another pirate comic within the comic similar to the Tales of the Black Freighter, I don't know if any of these will live up to the awesome original. The artwork on these covers isn't as good as Dave Gibbons's art for the original, in my opinion.
Your thoughts?

[JetstreamGW]

I like the self-referential Rorschach cover

[ElementalHero]

People say that this comic is a slap to the face of Moore, which is understandable. But, I have a friend who's a big Literature considers Moore's ending to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 2 is a slap to the face of Herbert George Wells' War Of The Worlds ending so to him turnaround is fair play.

[Rulk]

Moore is a whiny bitch about everything.

[J. McBain]

But whose worse, him or Frank Miller?

[GoofyHairOzzie]

I read the first issues of Minutemen and Silk Spectre and in terms of art and storytelling, it's okay. However, I also read the first issue of The Comedian and... I'm not that grateful about it and I should explain why...

Spoiler! :

Now when I saw the movie, I do remember the opening montage and one of the things I remembered most is JFK being assassinated secretly by The Comedian and despite it's written in the film and not by Alan Moore (or featured in the original mini-seires), I can also think that also happened in the comic book continuity.

However, Brian Azzarello decide to ruin that when the first issue involves The Comedian and Moloch The Mystic crying near the television screen and heard about JFK being assassinated meaning The Comedian wasn't there at that point. Again, it's not written by Alan Moore but this is the first time I'm giving a "fuck you" to Brian Azzarello because for a guy who was a great writer, he decide to throw this out of his ass. Besides the assassination, the story is okay but bland. So again to Azzarello if he ever reads stuffs from forums like this, Fuck You.

Now I may not pick other issues of The Comedian but what about the other stuff? Well, I did say it's okay but seeing as it's a prequel, The Minutemen did give info we already know and Silk Spectre did give something new but the Crimson Consair is very filler and forgettable.

[AfroKid]

I read the first issues of Minutemen and Silk Spectre and in terms of art and storytelling, it's okay. However, I also read the first issue of The Comedian and... I'm not that grateful about it and I should explain why...

Spoiler! :

Now when I saw the movie, I do remember the opening montage and one of the things I remembered most is JFK being assassinated secretly by The Comedian and despite it's written in the film and not by Alan Moore (or featured in the original mini-seires), I can also think that also happened in the comic book continuity.

However, Brian Azzarello decide to ruin that when the first issue involves The Comedian and Moloch The Mystic crying near the television screen and heard about JFK being assassinated meaning The Comedian wasn't there at that point. Again, it's not written by Alan Moore but this is the first time I'm giving a "fuck you" to Brian Azzarello because for a guy who was a great writer, he decide to throw this out of his ass. Besides the assassination, the story is okay but bland. So again to Azzarello if he ever reads stuffs from forums like this, Fuck You.

Now I may not pick other issues of The Comedian but what about the other stuff? Well, I did say it's okay but seeing as it's a prequel, The Minutemen did give info we already know and Silk Spectre did give something new but the Crimson Consair is very filler and forgettable.

Well, it wasn't explicitly written in the original, but I'm fairly sure it was implied.

I'm not really interested either way. The only one that slightly piques my interest is Minutemen due to lovely Darwyn Cooke artwork.

[JdRavnos]

I may give more detailed thoughts in a video at some point, but my impressions thus far:

Minutemen - This one was the one I was most excited for and it was good, but it spent the whole first issue basically going over stuff that was covered in Watchmen. Most of it was stuff in the prose sections like "Under The Hood" but it's largely stuff I knew. It's possible they were aiming towards fans who skip the prose parts, so that's why they're going over it again, but it's like seein a new album by a band you like and discovering it's a greatest hits. Still Darwyn Cooke's art is fantastic, and now that they got the intro out of the way, I'm curious to see where they take us.

Silk Spectre - Against all odds my favorite thus far. Mainly because while it honors the characters created by Moore & Gibbons, but it's unafraid to do it's own thing. It's unafraid to be a bit silly at times, and tell a story about a young girl trying to discover herself under the thumb of a mother who wants to relive her glory days. That's stuff touched on by Moore, but not really explored as well as many of the other characters. So kudos to Cooke & Conner fo finding their own voice here.

Comedian - I don't mind the continuity hiccups as much as others do. As pointed out, Blake's involvement in Dallas was only implied in the original comic. It was made explicit in the film, but there's wiggle room here and it's possible Azarello is trying to mess with our expectations. It's not great, I think the end part was trying a bit too hard to get us to feel emotional and not really succeeding, but it's passable.

Nite Owl - Meh. This is the exact type of prequel that I don't enjoy. It seems more concerned with connecting the dots of the story we already know that it has no real story to tell. It tells us the history of Nite Owl but not really telling his story. JMS is the one writer I was least looking forward to on Before Watchmen, he can be good (like his run on Thor) but he's far more miss than hit with me.

[guyverman1990]

I hope we learn what sort of childhood the Comedian must've had.