Before Watchmen has come to an end (well, maybe, theres talk of a One Shot 'Epilogue' on the way to truly wrap up the series but with the gaps in the release schedule for this DC Comics event, I'm not waiting around for it). When first announced we all let out a gasp, shocked by the news that DC Comics would have the balls to go back to Watchmen, without the series creator Alan Moore on board. Alan Moore commented publicly about his indifference towards the new series and DC Comics' lack of fresh ideas and even Dave Gibbons hinted that whatever is in the pages of Before Watchmen isn't really considered Watchmen lore. Then, slowly the writers and artists of the new series got their say and artwork trickled out for the lazily named Before Watchmen event and bad feeling started to turn into intrigue. Could this actually be good? It would be good to hang out with Rorschach again wouldn't it? See more of the Minutemen? Find out why Silk Spectre is so narky all the time? The intrigue set in and as the first issues rolled in fear of disappointment slowly turned into relief because, yknow what, these Before Watchmen comics were pretty good, some even great. So here we are at the end of the Before Watchmen run. All of the mini series have ended, theres been a few extra One Shots and mini titles thrown in and now, despite huge gaps in the release schedule, were at the finish line. This week Comedian #6 finished the run and now its time to look back and see what worked and what didn't. Behold, Before Watchmen The Mini Series countdown from worst to best and then the all important final verdict. Was DC Comics' biggest gamble to date work out or was it a total failure? Here we rank the series from worst to best;
Before Watchmen: The Comedian
Writer: Brian Azzarello. Artist: J. G. Jones This six issue run charted the story of Edward Blake (The Comedian, as if you didn't know) and his time before, during and after the Vietnam War. There was a rather large spotlight on his relationship with the Kennedys and of course his slow descent from a guy fighting for his country to a guy finding the concept of society a pretty big joke. Comedian ranks at the bottom of the pile for me, largely because it didn't feel like it went anywhere. It had a solid start and the first couple of issues felt like the mini series was going to get inside of Comedians head a little and venture into the dark times for Eddie. Sadly, it just didn't do that, well not all that successfully anyway. I'm not the biggest fan of war based comics anyway, but this Vietnam based mini series really lacked personality when it needed it the most. All of the good stuff involved Eddie away from Vietnam, so the big chunk of the six issue mini series that spent time there was quite a slog. All in all the political drama within the pages of Comedian was solid, the Kennedy interactions even more so but Edward Blake just wasn't really explored enough and was better served in some of the other Before Watchmen titles, in which he was a regular appearance. This mini series played with clichés a little too much for me and other than maybe the first and last issue ended up being the low point of the Before Watchmen run.