Before Watchmen: Minutemen
Writer/Artist: Darwyn Cooke From day one, Minutemen seemed the title the would work the best in Before Watchmen. In fact for years there were hints that this would be the only ever Watchmen expansion in comics, so really we were all semi-prepared for a Minutemen comic at some stage. Anyway, golden age costumed heroes + Darwyn Cooke = match made in heaven, right? Cooke makes all of his work immediately easy to fall in love with. Those classic looks, the period dialogue and writing, the obvious admiration for the original Watchmen. It all seeps out of the pages of this book and becomes a volume of work that could quite respectfully sit on the your bookshelf next to the original Watchmen (is their higher praise than that?). Basically Cooke has taken all of the Hollis Mason Under the Hood stories featured in Watchmen and expanded on them. Really not a lot happens here that you didn't know about already but when this is all cobbled together as well as this and we begin to see the real story of the Minutemen, this mini series comes into its own. Hollis Mason is a character that shows us the glory of what costumed crime fighting could be and of course he also shows us the effect of events when they darken that dream. Glory becomes half-truths or all out lies. Secrets behind the masks begin to bear down on everyone and the dark side of costumed crime fighting as well as the evil it never really considered having to go up against really becomes the focus. Minutemen really does take a dark path as Holliss career travels forward and having the story skip between modern Hollis remembering the events and back to costumed Nite Owl living them really generate a sense of history and depth to the tail. Minutemen proved to be an all-round delight, even if its one that never quite achieves classic status.