Heartlessed Review: Before Watchmen Pt.3 (so far)
Ozymandias: written by Lein Wein and drawn by Jae Lee
Lein Wein, Watchmen’s editor who also created The Swamp Thing with Alan Moore, wrote the story for Ozymandias. This does show in the writings: no matter it is Adrian’s monologue throughout the series or his lines, they feel very close to the original writing by Moore. I do have a problem with the reason Adrian started the masked hero endeavor-do we really need a dead girlfriend to push him into that? Do we really need this cliché? What about “Possibly homosexual”? (Although there is one picture in issue 1 that seems to suggest…something)
Artistically, Ozymandias is the most impressive. It has a classical watercolour painting feel to it, which fits nicely with Adrian’s personality. Without that dead girlfriend cliché, it could be the best series of Before Watchmen so far.
Bonus: The Curse of the Crimson Corsair ; Previewing Rorschach and Doctor Manhattan
Of course, you can’t talk about Watchmen without mentioning Curse of the Black Freighter. And those dastardly smart people at DC know just how to keep the fanboys buying: a new Black Freighter story, spliced into two pages per issue! And damn they actually put effort into this. The art style resembles a lot like that of Marooned (which is the actual name of the story-Curse of the Black Freighter is the name of the fictional series). The story, about an unfortunate young (and dead) marine trying to leave the cursed fate of eternal labor on the infamous Flying Dutchmen, feels a bit like Marooned, too. Both the protagonist wanted to preserve their humanity and break the curse-the Captain in Marooned suffered for it, and you can only imagine what our hapless protagonist will face.
As for the two yet-to-be released series, Rorschach and Doctor Manhattan, I wasn’t as excited for them as I was for Minutemen and Comedian. These two characters’ backstory happens to be the most comprehensively covered in Watchmen. There won’t be much space to work with as in the other characters. To me, it really depends on two things: whether if the writers can come up with a good story; and whether they can imitate the characters’ monologue (which is like the best thing in Watchmen. Yeah you heard me, THE BEST).
Azzarello wrote for Rorschach, which could be more of his forte than Comedian. It may turn out to be the most graphical series-with good reasons, too. Judging from the patterns in the previous series I’m guessing Big Figure would make an appearance. As for Doctor Manhattan, I don’t really know much about Straczynski but I do know he created Babylon 5 (thanks Wikipedia!) so…it could be more of his forte than Nite Owl? I don’t know, but at least we’ll know more about Doc and Laurie’s relationship.