Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre
Writers: Darwyn Cooke. Artist: Amanda Conner From early in the Before Watchmen marketing campaign, the prospect of Darwyn Cooke and Amanda Conner combined for a Silk Spectre mini series was too good to be true. In fact, Conners promotional art was probably the first thing that warmed me to the idea of going back to Watchmen. The pair show us a Miss Jupiter back story thats full of charm, sixties nostalgia and gives us a Laurie Jupiter that goes through the highs and lows of love, sex, drugs and thigh high boot crime fighting. Theres some cute famous face nods in here, a great cameo from Comedian and a nice bit of expansion on Sally Jupiters strict monitoring of her daughter. Amanda Conner has become one of my favourite comic book artists of late and her work with Laurie was fantastic. The swinging sixties really comes to life and within this back story she really fleshes out Lauries changing personality with her artwork. Equally Cookes story manages to make Lauries mini series feel like something different in the Before Watchmen run. Sure it ties in with the characters we know and love but Silk Spectre would work as a standalone ongoing comic way more than all of the other titles in Before Watchmen line up (and I'd buy it too!). I'd happily see the continuing adventures of Laurie Jupiter with this talented duo behind it and this mini series totally offered up a different flavour to the largely dark events the rest of Before Watchmen served up.