“Before Watchmen” First Phase (DC)

Reviewed by Abhinav Jain

My prior experience with Watchmen is limited to the 2009 film adaptation. I remember that it was an extremely weird experience, as I had no prior familiarity with it and I was rather confused for the whole of it. My friends helped fill in a few blanks later during dinner and then that was that. As you can no doubt tell, I was not motivated to go pick up Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel and read the source material.

Recently, however, I’ve been getting back into comics after a rather long break, and when I heard that DC was planning a prequel phase, the Before Watchmen series, I was mildly curious. I like the idea of prequels, especially for things like these. To give but one example, Tolkien’s Silmarillion is one of my favourite novels ever; although it is almost entirely prequel stories set in Middle-Earth and in Valinor and our heroes of the original trilogy barely feature in it.

So when the Before Watchmen comics started releasing last month, I picked them up one by one: the first issues of Minutemen, Silk Spectre, Comedian and Nite Owl. I still somewhat prevaricated on this, and didn’t read them right away as I had some other reading commitments to get out of the way first.

Upcoming: DC Announces Watchmen Prequels…

… and I really don’t understand why so many people are getting into such a tizzy over it. Most of my initial impression was drawn from the blizzard of tweets that have been cropping up throughout the day, so bear with me. They have been described as in DC’s own announcement “As highly anticipated as they are controversial.”

“It’s our responsibility as publishers to find new ways to keep all of our characters relevant,” said DC Entertainment Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee. “After twenty five years, the Watchmen are classic characters whose time has come for new stories to be told. We sought out the best writers and artists in the industry to build on the complex mythology of the original.”

Right off the bat, I should state that I’ve seen the movie (which I thought was brilliant), but have not read the graphic novel – only because I just never got around to buying it. Therefore, I do not have the connection or emotional attachment to the original material that I know some people do. I was also unaware of the long history of friction between Alan Moore and DC Publishing.

Nevertheless, I really don’t see why a lot of people are getting themselves so worked up about this. An NPR article claims that “Comic-book nerds are outraged today” resulting in much “teeth-gnashing” and the internet “hit[ing] Defcon.2”, but all I’ve noticed is some mild grumbling referring to much anger on the part of comic fans. The author of the NPR piece, Marc Hirsh, nevertheless then goes on to call DC “stupid” for making the decision to commission and release these comics, and proceeds to write an article filled with derision and far more adverbs than necessary. In fact, it’s the only piece I’ve read that includes the outrage many others have mentioned.

However. If there has been outrage, I don’t really understand it. If you don’t think there should be prequels or anything else Watchmen-related, then… don’t read them.

Or am I missing something fundamental here?