Comic Books

> > 1-of-6
BEFORE WATCHMEN: COMEDIAN #1 (OF 6)

“I’m a funny guy…”

Plus: Don’t miss the CRIMSON CORSAIR backup story by writer LEN WEIN and artist JOHN HIGGINS!

Written by Brian Azzarello
Backup Written by Len Wein
Art by J.G. Jones
Backup Art by John Higgins
Cover by J.G. Jones
Variant Cover by Eduardo Risso & Jim Lee

Price: $3.99
iFanboy Community Pick of the Week Percentage: 0.2%

Reviews

UserAddedSpoilers
Neb06/20/12NoRead Review
792
Pulls
Avg Rating: 3.7
 
Users who pulled this comic:
 

Comments

  1. Avatar photo Firemass13 says:
    June 18, 2012 at 2:25 pm

    Sigh.

    This is the BW book I was looking forward to the most, but my retailer is on quasi-vacation this week and is closing early…meaning I’ll have to wait until Saturday.

    • bigben2012 says:
      June 19, 2012 at 1:35 am

      Wait really? That sounds stupid, does the store not have a manager to run things while he’s gone?

    • Avatar photo Firemass13 says:
      June 19, 2012 at 9:45 am

      It’s mostly just 1 guy…he has 1 other guy who helps out but works 2 jobs so can’t always cover. He’s open from 11-2 all week, which I can’t make because of work…so Satuday it is!

    • Kmanifesto says:
      June 20, 2012 at 4:56 pm

      @Firemass – I picture the owner standing at a corner with a closed trench coat and whispering to each passerby, “hey, you wanna by some comics?” and then opens his coat to reveal the new issues for that week.

      Got any other shops near you?

    • Avatar photo Firemass13 says:
      June 21, 2012 at 9:47 am

      @Kmanifest- hehe…nice visual. I do, in fact, have other shops nearby. 3 to be exact, but my sub list is with this guy…he’s pretty cool for the most part…

  2. Avatar photo TomO says:
    June 18, 2012 at 2:53 pm

    I wish this was one of the 4-part mini’s. I’m not looking forward to the inevitable fill-in artists for the last half of issue 4, and most of 5 and 6.

    • Avatar photo mgriffith says:
      June 18, 2012 at 9:44 pm

      Too true … 🙁

    • Avatar photo rwpos says:
      June 21, 2012 at 12:30 am

      As it turns out, the art looks a lot less polished than typical of Jones, so perhaps he’s more focused on the deadlines than the details. And I for one would rather have him focus on the finished quality and be late. I didn’t like a lot of the art in this issue.

  3. Avatar photo sitara119 says:
    June 18, 2012 at 8:55 pm

    both azzarello books are my most anticipated books among the BW.

    • Avatar photo ExistentialCrisis says:
      June 19, 2012 at 5:10 pm

      This is a game-time decision for me.
      On the plus side:
      1. Brian Azarello.
      On the minus side:
      1. The Comedian seems like the character from Watchmen that’s easiest to get tonally wrong if you’re not Alan Moore. He has a very idiosyncratic world-view (Comedian, not Alan Moore. Well OK, Moore as well) and I already think that Darwyn Cooke got him badly wrong as a sixteen year-old in Minutemen (Sorry Darwyn).
      2. I am skint.

  4. Avatar photo mgriffith says:
    June 18, 2012 at 9:45 pm

    Creepy-ass cover …

  5. nikbackm says:
    June 20, 2012 at 7:08 am

    Sad to see so many helping DC rape creators’ rights.

    Well, the cover fits at least.

    • Avatar photo Zhurrie says:
      June 20, 2012 at 9:21 am

      I see it a little different, I don’t blame the public like many are doing, but I do blame the creative professionals choosing to do this. A lot of them are ranked very highly by me too as far as their work goes and my views of them have been effected negatively. I have a bigger issue with that side of all of this. Instead people give Darwyn, Brian, etc. a pass in it all. It isn’t worth debating ad nauseam, I’m not really interested in the books themselves, I don’t like the whole deal surrounding it all, I’m not real happy with the creative folks signing on to this, and I’m not buying it. I was and am interested in the Corsair tale though and hope to read it in it’s entirety at some point.

    • Avatar photo Wade Christian">Wade Christian (@capbloggington) says:
      June 20, 2012 at 9:50 am

      I’m not saying this to be an argumentative douche. I’m genuinely interested in hearing your response. Anyway, I see that your pull list consists almost entirely of X-Men and Avengers comics. What is it that makes this situation so morally reprehensible that you refuse to buy it and call it a “rape” of the original creators, while you feel it’s okay to buy things that were co-created by Jack Kirby after the way Marvel treated him?

      Also, wouldn’t DC’s treatment of Superman’s creators be a bigger “rape of creators’ rights,” given that they had no contract like Moore did (it was considered “work for hire”) and were paid a tiny, one-time payment as opposed to the agreed upon royalties which Moore chooses to not accept and redistribute to Gibbons (and possibly others involved with the creation of Watchmen, I’m not sure on the particulars of who gets what from him)? Yet there isn’t a large community of people who go to pages talking about Superman and talk about how people buying the issues are helping screw people over.

      Again, I’m not trying to instigate an argument, just a discussion.

    • Avatar photo sitara119 says:
      June 20, 2012 at 11:17 am

      let’s not forget about ditko’s contributions to spider-man and how he feels about stan lee and marvel “raping”(ok, lets not equate this to rape, it’s offensive and stupid) his creators’ rights.
      jerry robinson created the joker, but don’t tell bob kane that.
      if you’re going to take moral high ground, then you might as well boycott the big 2 altogether. hell, all corporations while your’re at it. they’ve been ripping people off for decades and they aren’t doing the environment any favors, either.

    • Avatar photo Wade Christian">Wade Christian (@capbloggington) says:
      June 20, 2012 at 4:10 pm

      Don’t tell Bob Kane that ANYONE but him created ANYTHING Batman related or worked with him on issues in the first decade or so. He did it all by himself, right?

    • Avatar photo BCDX97 says:
      June 20, 2012 at 6:12 pm

      Go read your Marvel comics.

    • Kmanifesto says:
      June 20, 2012 at 6:43 pm

      nikbackm stated, “Sad to see so many helping DC rape creators’ rights.”

      Don’t put your hang-ups on me (or others). You choose NOT to read Before Watchmen because of your beliefs, I choose to read it IN SPITE of your beliefs.

      This whole ‘creators’ rights’ topic has become nothing more than a hollow slogan pushed in order to market products Sure it sucks what happened in the past, but if you are a creator, learn from the past and move forward, but don’t expect a major publisher to play the same game.

      For those of us who choose to exercise our ‘consumers rights by buying Before Watchmen, we brush off those who try to guilt and admonish us for that freedom.

      Alan Moore didn’t ask me if he should sign the DC contract so he loses the right to ask me NOT to buy something he doesn’t like.

    • Avatar photo sitara119 says:
      June 20, 2012 at 11:11 pm

      @kman
      your last sentence is gold.

    • Avatar photo rwpos says:
      June 21, 2012 at 12:37 am

      The original comment is pretty ridiculous. If you’re ever unfortunate enough to have someone you care about be the victim of an actual rape I can only hope that you’ll understand why that snarky comment is so out of bounds.

    • Avatar photo Jr. Wormwood says:
      June 21, 2012 at 1:31 am

      I wonder what his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen contract looked like. “Sign here if we can make the world’s shittiest movie based on this book”. If Watchmen wouldn’t have been a huge success, Moore would have barely said a word about this. Funny how hindsight lubes the hand holding the “victim” card.

    • Avatar photo USPUNX says:
      June 21, 2012 at 8:35 am

      Using a phrase like “rape creator rights” is stuip and intentionally inflammatory. You were clearly trying to start an argument which everyone here was too smart to be baited into. @rwpos is absolutely correct, if you ever have the misfortune to have someone you know in that terrible situation you would never use a phrase like that. I would also love to see you answer even one of the points raised by @wade christian.

      I’d also like to hear the ifanboys explain why this comment wasn’t moderated. It offers nothing of value and is here to insite people purely with how it is written. I’ve seen comments amended or even entirely deleted for a lot less.

    • tommytsunami says:
      July 1, 2012 at 7:44 pm

      money talks, i don’t feel bad for anyone involved the only victims will be the consumers who don’t enjoy the story lines. they could have a saturday morning cartoon for the watchmen if enough money changed hands. as far as creators having their ideas expanded on it happens all the time. you think spiderman or batman are written by the creator. comics change writers all the time, some expand on the character, some dissolve the character. if you don’t want your creation touched then don’t sell your idea.

  6. Avatar photo kamicowzi says:
    June 20, 2012 at 9:11 pm

    For some reason, while reading this, I couldn’t stop thinking to myself “When did Sully from Uncharted get his own comic?”

    • bigben2012 says:
      June 20, 2012 at 11:45 pm

      OH MY GOD I THOUGHT THE SAME THING!!!

      Also…………did this just retcon something that happened in the actual book…….

    • Avatar photo kamicowzi says:
      June 21, 2012 at 12:12 am

      The likeness between Blake and Sully seemed uncanny to me….I’ll have to pull out my copy of Watchmen and check on that second part because I can’t remember at all…I pretty sure it wasn’t shown in the book..just hinted at.

  7. Avatar photo TomiH says:
    June 20, 2012 at 11:50 pm

    SPOILERS!!!!

    As soon as I saw Blake playing football with the Kennedys I was hooked.
    Between that, Jackie O’s revenge on Marilyn Monroe and the JFK assassination, I just love where this story it going.
    The Comedian trying to unravel the JFK conspiracy is not at all what I thought this book was going to be about but I can get behind that.

    • Avatar photo rwpos says:
      June 21, 2012 at 1:23 am

      My reaction was completely the opposite. When I saw him playing football with the President I was left wondering who the character was and why he was pretending to be the Comedian. I doubt that I’ll stick with this series.

  8. Avatar photo rwpos says:
    June 21, 2012 at 12:59 am

    I didn’t see the point in rentconning Blake’s presence in Dallas when JFK was assassinated.Veidt is clear that Blake was in Dallas with Richard Nixon at the time of the shooting, and insinuates that Blake was the shooter (Watchmen 11).

  9. Avatar photo Neeks says:
    June 21, 2012 at 7:52 am

    For whatever reason I really didn’t like this The ending seemed really corny and these aren’t scenarios I was hoping to see in a comic about the comedian

  10. Avatar photo GaviinNansoong says:
    June 23, 2012 at 9:20 am

    Defiantly not the book I was expecting, which was a pleasant surprise. Still hate that cover though. Too creepy for me.

  11. Avatar photo BCDX97 says:
    June 23, 2012 at 2:32 pm

    The first book was 26 pages + 2 backup. Last week 23 + 2. This week 20 + 2. Not a good trend. Not cool, DC. Not for $3.99.

    The book may be really good but this stuff bums me out.

  12. Avatar photo rwpos says:
    June 24, 2012 at 10:57 am

    I’ve been wondering why I had such an immediately negative reaction to this comic, and I think that I finally figured it out. I’m okay with the idea of doing new stories covering the pasts of these characters, but in the end I think that I was hoping that these stories would stand on their own and not try to rewrite a much better comic series, The Watchmen, as presented by Moore and Gibbons. This comic breaks that comfort zone by focusing on either ignoring a scene in the original Watchmen (pointless, stupid and lazy if true), or it’s building toward a “retcon” of the original work in an effort to fundamentally change the characterization and motivations of Blake from what Moore intended. In either case, that’s why I hated this issue so much. I actually think that this may have soured my willingness to stick with the rest of these comics in general…

  13. glcfarmboy says:
    June 24, 2012 at 11:32 am

    For me, this has been the best of the Before Watchmen books so far. Tonally, I felt it really fit in to the world of Watchmen in a way that Silk Spectre and Minutemen didn’t, and story-wise, there seemed to be a lot more going on. Will definitely be sticking with this one.

  14. Avatar photo sitara119 says:
    June 24, 2012 at 9:13 pm

    i enjoyed this. all the banter with the kennedys and jackie o putting blake up to murder marilyn was very cool. not to mention him stealing the joe dimaggio baseball.
    the only thing that was off-putting for me was the twist that blake himself doesn’t pull the trigger in dallas. i know moore tells us that blake was in dallas “minding nixon” the day of the shooting, which allows us to draw our own conclusions and the movie clearly portrays blake as the sniper.
    i’m not sure what azz is up to, but i suspect he’s being misleading somehow. this is just the kinda thing that pisses the fanboys off, that is to say he’s changing how some have perceived the source material. azz is certainly dancing on the line here. i’ll finish out the mini before judging it as a whole.
    regardless, moore’s watchmen masterpiece will always stand on it’s own. nothing can change that unless we ourselves allow it.
    4/5

  15. Avatar photo Franktiger says:
    July 29, 2012 at 4:14 am

    I recall in the opening credits of the Watchmen movie, Comedian was at the scene of Kennedy’s assassination, and seemed to be the shooter on top of that, did they forget about that? That really turns me off if they ignored that part of the movie in this story.

Leave a Comment