Author: Darwyn Cooke
Publisher: DC Comics
Rating: worthy
Written and illustrated by Darwyn Cooke and Amanda Conner
Colorists Phil Noto and Paul Mounts
Lettering by Jared Fletcher and Carlos Mangual
I came into this series from the movie, which I adore, and I never actually read the comic book for Watchmen, but anyone who has seen the movie or read the book will know that this is a seedy and violent series that shows the dirty underside of life and makes me almost want to empathize with Rorschach!
Because of my fascination with the original story, I was naturally interested in how these people came to be at the point where the story begins in Watchmen, so I jumped at a chance to read these. They were apparently issued as individual comics to begin with, but I got them from the library in the form of hardback books, combined into pairs.
This volume tells the story of how the Minutemen got together, including the endearing behavior of Silhouette, and the rather suspect behavior (and not in the way you might think) of Silk Spectre, the predictable antics of The Comedian, and the suspicious activities of Hooded Justice. It seems like Mothman and Nite Owl are the only two characters in the group who have a shred of integrity!
Before Watchmen: Minutemen was originally issued as six stand-alone comics all written and illustrated by Darwyn Cooke. Hollis Mason, now aging and writing a memoir titled 'Under the Hood', tells this story, and it follows The Silhouette (the alter-ego of Ursula Zandt) who was a part of the Minutemen team. Driven by events tied to herself and her sister escaping the Nazis in World War Two, Silhouette pursues justice, and in particular children who are disappearing.
Silhouette is one of the first to go public with her real identity, but as soon as she's outed as a lesbian, she's kicked out of the Minutemen. Nite Owl (the original Nite Owl, that is) continues to work with her in tracking down the child-abuser. The Comedian, who despises Hooded Justice for his homosexual relationship with another of the Minutemen and for his rescue of Silk Spectre from his attentions, leads Nite Owl to believe the HJ is the child abuser and murderer when in reality it appears to be HJ's father who is the guilty party. Both HJ and his lover die, the former at the hands of Nite Owl, and the latter in a car accident.
Silhouette herself is murdered with her lover. Dollar bill is shot to death when pursuing bank robbers and his cape snags in a revolving door rendering him helpless. Mothman is hauled off to a psychiatric institution as he starts losing his mind from alcoholism brought on by the stress of his job and the pain he's in from having accidents as he tries to glide with his home-made wings, and so the Minutemen fall apart.
The Silk Spectre portion is about SS 2.0, not about the original, although she features in it. About two-thirds to three-quarters the way through her story is when she joins the Watchmen, so why this is called Before Watchmen is really a bit of a mystery, since the other stories follow this same pattern, with even more of their content devoted to after Watchmen rather than before, but we do get some decent back-story, which is what I was looking for, so I was willing to rate this a worthy read.
Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre was originally issued as a series of four comics written by Darwyn Cooke and Amanda Conner, with art by Conner. It relates the story of Laurie Juspeczyk. Her alter-ego is Silk Spectre II, replacing her now aging mother, Sally Juspeczyk, aka Sally Jupiter who was the original Silk Spectre, and part of the Minutemen team.
Sally trains Laurie in an almost brutal fashion, grooming her to be her own replacement, but Laurie rebels against it all, and runs off to join the hippie culture in San Francisco. Eventually she changes her mind and returns to crime fighting, joining the Watchmen and hooking up with Doctor Manhattan, until the Keene act bans masked vigilantes (except, of course, those who work for the government, such as Doctor Manhattan and The Comedian).
The SS portion is particularly enjoyable, and by far the most interesting of these two volumes contained in this pairing. The Minutemen portion was interesting, but by its nature, the story was all over the place, and was very loosely tied. Indeed, it wandered and jumped so much that I wasn't quite sure what was happening for much of the time but I can't really go into more detail without telling the whole story.
SS was well done, and it made good sense to me. The story was engrossing, and the artwork fascinating, particularly the sixties LSD culture portion of it, and SS's commentary on the other Watchmen at their inaugural meeting was hilarious especially her comments on Nite Owl, given what we know from the Watchmen story!
So, in conclusion, I rate this a worthy read for anyone who's interested in the original story.
