Before Watchmen: The Final Verdict
Through all of my individual Before Watchmen reviews I made sure to put a score of where my feelings for Before Watchmen as a whole were each week. This had a ton of ups and downs but remained largely positive and I think this shows that Before Watchmen proved to be worth the shot DC took on it even if it wasn't always consistently convincing us of the fact. I think the biggest issue that Before Watchmen had was that within pretty much every story, we knew all of the details already. Minutemen was great but offered up very little that we didn't read about in Watchmen, same goes for Ozymandias and Comedian. The best of the run still suffered from this problem but overcame the issue by focusing on a specific event or period. Nite Owl, Silk Spectre and Rorschach all just centred in on small period for the most part and delved into the character at the chosen moment in time, which I think wound up being a much better pursuit. Another issue and probably the biggest thing holding back Before Watchmen from being anything really special was we all know what comes next in Watchmen. Every step in most of these mini series titles were on the path towards Watchmen and unfortunately for the writers, Watchmen is such a complete piece of stand alone work that it pretty much covered every beat that would lead to the events within its pages. Trying to write in more stepping stones didn't always work and when they did they only really added some spice to an already perfect soup. Oh and one last negative. The Corsair story at the back of the Watchmen books proved to be pretty pointless. At two pages an issue it was hard to really fall for and while I'm sure their was a point to it all, it didn't really connect. (I know, I know that's what a lot of people say about Black Freighter in the Original Watchmen but those people are also idiots because Watchmen fans know just how important that story within a story really is). The rumoured Epilogue comic coming in seems to be the end of this tail but I can't say I'm all that fussed about seeing how it ends at this stage. But thats the negatives, Before Watchmen also offered up a great deal of positives. For starters the talent involved here totally stood up to the challenge of returning to Watchmen. There's some artwork within these pages that give us a nice modern spin on the imagery of Watchmen. Adam Hughes, Amanda Conner and pretty much every artist that got to have a spin on Watchmen have brought their A-Game and for many that alone would make this project worth the attempt. The same goes for some of the writing. The talent may have had their hands tied in regards to genuine twists and turns but most of them expanded our beloved Watchmen characters to their limits and in Straczynski's case smashed through them and went somewhere else. So in the end was it worth it? I'd say I'm 60/40 as the final page closes on the final mini series. Before Watchmen provided nothing that was all that required to either expand or better the original Watchmen and given just how perfect Watchmen is, we always knew that would probably be the case. At its best highs, Before Watchmen was compelling, vastly enjoyable and at its core a fan service of the highest order, giving us more of the characters would otherwise never get to spend time with again. At it's worst Before Watchmen was repetitive and largely redundant due to the complete nature of the original work on Watchmen. On a personal note I had a whole lot of fun with it for about the entire first half but when the release schedules slipped and the less good titles felt like a grind , the limitations of Before Watchmen began to show more. At the end of it all, none of these titles are an embarrassment to DC comics and even the hardest of fans should find something to appreciate within at least a couple of minis. Additionally for anyone wishing to catch up with Before Watchmen now its all done. I'm sure in their collected forms, they will read much better within their complete runs (though I have to say the double title collections is NOT how I want to own these collections and I'm hoping for an collection of individual mini series collections later down the line). Before Watchmen arrived with a bang and left with a whisper but at the end of the day it's more Watchmen and that's been revealed as a good thing. So the dust has settled, so we ask, what's next DC? AFTER Watchmen?.... watch this space.
Overall Before Watchmen Rating:
It's been a blast Watchmen fans and thanks for everyone that read and commented on the reviews over the past year.