Dave Buesing's Comic Book Herald Writing!

It is often said that Watchmen is the most influential comic ever to be released. That comics wouldn’t be where they are without it, for good and for ill. But how did we get here, exactly? More to the point, just what influence did Watchmen provide to the larger world of comics? What, ultimately, is the legacy of Watchmen? Who watched the Watchmen?

Few creators agreeing to the Faustian Pact of DC’s 2013 “Before Watchmen” came out of the craven affair smelling particularly clean. In the aftermath of The New 52, DC was riding high on controversial yet conversation-dominating marketing, and before a book ever hit print, a series of prequels for Watchmen felt like a clear form of creative desecration in service of making a buck. This aura was cemented by a series of interviews with Watchmen co-creator Alan Moore, arguably the best comics writer of all time, in which Moore venomously denounced DC’s decision with scathing one-liners like, “I would hope that you wouldn’t want to buy a book knowing that its author actually had complete contempt for you.”

Nonetheless, celebrated writer and artist Darwyn Cooke signed up to write and draw Before Watchmen: Minutemen and co-write Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre with Amanda Conner. Although the experience and reaction was far from a party (Cooke described it as a “shit show”), Cooke’s legacy remains largely untarnished by his significant contributions to the debacle. At the time, I remember thinking of “Minutemen” as the series held in the highest regard (or at least as the one not held in contempt!). A near decade ago, I even spent an entire early Comic Book Herald review defending “Minutemen” as the lone success of “Before Watchmen,” but couldn’t muster much more passion than the repetition that the book’s “not a failure” (my highest praise!).

Looking back, I suppose that remains the question. Did “Minutemen” and Cooke succeed where the rest of “Before Watchmen” could not? [Read more…] about Who Watched the Watchmen? Before Watchmen: Minutemen by Darwyn Cooke