BEFORE WATCHMEN: COMEDIAN #1 (OF 6)
What did the
iFanboy
community think?
Pulls
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
Size: 32 pages
Price: 3.99
Azzarello has been on a roll with me lately. From his fantastic Wonder Woman to his intriguing Spaceman, I’ve been digging the heck out of his work. This issue is no different. There’s a ton to like here as the storytelling is tight and well paced. What I find interesting is that The Comedian is portrayed as a more sympathetic character in this issue, which is certainly much different than we’ve seen him before. I think a lot of people like to simply think of him as “the asshole character,” but like Moore, Azzarello chooses to add a bit of depth and nuance to the story. I’m interested to see where this story takes us, and I can see how this may begin the formation of the character that we later meet in Alan Moore’s opus. The art by J.G. Jones is fantastic, as you would expect. My only hope is that he doesn’t fall behind, as he’s done with other projects in the past. For me, this may be just a touch stronger than last week’s Silk Spectre, but then again, they are very different tonally. Either way, I wholeheartedly recommend this to folks interested in the “event” as I found it to be an outstanding read.
**I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this story certainly goes against a specific plot device in the Watchmen movie. I consider the movie to be its own separate thing, so it didn’t bother me in the least.**
Art: 5 - Excellent
Find us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Some rights reserved.
I’d love to hear if they meant to provide this alibi for him for the event in the movie as a way of tweaking the nose of the movie a bit or if this is headed someplace altogether different. I agree that this has been the best of the books so far though. (Although he does get credited with another kill of historic value.)
That wasn’t an invention of the movie. Read Watchmen XI, page 18, panel 8. Veidt seems to think that Blake shot Kennedy, and he specifically places him in Dallas (with tricky Dick) when the assassination occurs. This story directly contradicts the original material.
@rwpos Huh, never noticed that before in the original book. Thanks for pointing that out. I’d like to think there’s purpose for everything in the story. Maybe they’ll address the inconsistency. To be honest, if they never mentioned it, but the story was still this good, I probably wouldn’t be bothered by it too much. I’ll just choose to enjoy each on their own merits.
I had missed that too. This makes me wonder if there will be some sort of dialogue between them concerning this. It’s not an insignificant detail (especially given the prominence it was given in the film) but with knowing where it all winds up it might have been that this was purposefully floated by Veidt to help justify getting rid of him or something. Who knows how a psychopath’s mind works?
Alan Moore apparently, since he wrote a whole book of em! 🙂
I’ve gotta believe the writer and editor knew about Watchmen ish #11…I mean, there are only 12 issues of the original book, Comedian is related to less than half, and I certainly remember the scene as well as rwpos does. How could it sneak by Azz and his editor?? So I very much am hoping the current team will explain the inconsistency, hopefully Comedian gets to smack Ozy’s smug face at some point as well!
I thought it was ballsy to include so much JFK and Jackie material.
There’s no way this got by the creators. Something is still up someone’s sleeve. This is only issue one, folks.