Before Watchmen: Comedian/Rorschach Paperback – Illustrated, June 24, 2014

These guys did a great job giving the Comedian and Rorschach great back stories. Going back from Alan Moore's classic is not an easy thing. Great artwork to go with these stories. Give it a shot.

I will be truthful not only do I stillConsider Watchmen one of theGreatest story ever but I consider the prequels great ..Why ? Because I rank stories on how they make me feel...It has been awhile that I haven't been moved to hate and disgust as when I read the comedian..I.felt pity for Rosarch...Ozymandias was brilliant.....Nite Owl fascinating to see he is a positive product of domestic violence...Against all odds he didn't become rosarch because he had a positiveFigure in his mind...Len wein was great....he should.still be writing.

My one critique is that in Watchmen, in that timeline the United States win the Vietnam War by having Dr. Manhattan there along with the Comedian. Nixon was never outed because of Watergate. I don’t know in the merging of the Watchmen universe is now mix with the main DC universe and it’s different or something. Other than that it’s a dark series with dark characters, a very imperfect beings dealing with how it could run in a world like it. Great writing and artwork throughout. I know the Watchmen book is considered taboo to expand on, it’s considered a masterpiece in storytelling , art, coloring and composition a perfect storm of excellence but this was extremely enjoyable. Glad I read it.

If you love The Watchmen then you’ll love this compilation of the Rorschach and Comedian Before the Watchmen comics. There both interesting and fun to read. Well worth checking out! Can’t wait for the HBO series about The Watchmen!!

These short series about the Comedian and Rorshach have some interesting moments to them and some solid art, but bail to offer a particularly rewarding or insightful take on the Watchmen mythos. To start with, the Comedian series has some decent things going for it. It describes Blake's first tour in Vietnam, his relationship with the Kennedys, and gives a bit of an ideas as to how his own philosophies drive the things he does. To the story's credit, Azzarello captures The Comedian's voice perfectly. He speaks and acts how you'd expect The Comedian to. The story does seem jumpy at first, but by the end we do see how see how the various plot threads tie together, how his relationship with the Kennedy's ties into his time in vietnam, and how his own actions seem to make things harder for himself. That said, I felt like the story never really delved into he is. We see him doing the types of things we expect him to, saying things that are in-line with what we know of him, but we never really get what motivates him. We never really find the underlying source of his hatred or why he sees everything as a joke, just that he's willing to do certain things because he believes certain things. At the end of the day, Comedian's just a jerk because that's what he is. On the art side, J.G. Jones does great work. He captures the gritty, sweltering jungles of Vietnam perfectly, renders military hardware with great detail, and does a great job with the likenesses of the real-world figures who appear in the story. Action scenes have a good sense of motion, and it felt like something from a proper war movie. The Rorschach series, by comparison, is pretty bad. While Azzarello captured the Comedian's voice pretty well, he does a poor job capturing what makes Rorschach tick. The first, noticeable problem is that Rorschach's Journals feel a bit too clearheaded and detailed. In the original, his language during the journals was indeed flowery, but it was convise and conveyed the extreme nature of his character, here they feel more like a typical book narrator, whose not particularly a zealot about much of anything, trying to do a noir monologue. The next issue is that Rorschach swears quite a bit here, something very out of character for him. I'm not against swearing or anything, but for Rorschach the slightest indecency always seemed inexcusable. Rorschach's problems don't end with the writing style, however. The story here simply isn't that good. The story starts of somewhat promsingly, we see a dead body with some messages carved into it, and we're told that this is the work of a serial killer called "The Bard". You'd think the story would be about Rorschach trying to hunt down a serial killer, but no, The Bard is basically a non-entity in this story. The real plot is Rorschach trying to take down a local drug dealer named "Rawhead". This is, unfortunately, the most bog-standard, "crime fighter vs. a gang" story you could imagine. I would expect the main plot of these four issues to be the inciting incident in maybe a single issue of Batman. Nothing is surprising, there's no twists or clever takes on any characters or incidents from the original, really only one conversation seems even somewhat insighful, and nothing that happens seems to shape or inform Rorschach's character. There's really no mystery or intrigue to keep you wanting to know what happens next, nor does it partifularly feel like much of an investigation. At the very, very end we find out (through narration) that five years after his spat with the drug dealer, Rorschach tracks down who the Bard was. That could have been interesting but they told instead of showing. Despite lasting four whole issues, Before: Watchmen Rorschach felt like it could have been a one-shot. The one saving grace of the Rorschach series is the absolutely amazing artwork by Lee Bermejo. It's detailed, vibrant, and full of both texture and life, oftentimes looking a surreal photograph. Bermejo's depiction of 70's New York feels straight out of something like The Warriors or Taxi Driver (and indeed we get a bizarre cameo from Travis Bickle). It's a shame that art of such quality got paired with such a poor story.At the end of the day, neither story is amazing, and neither one sheds particular light on the original Watchmen story in a way that feels truly compelling. I think the Comedian story at least has enough interesting moments, and both stories have good enough artwork that this book is worth <i>looking at<i> if you can get it from the library or rent it on an app like Hoopla, but I wouldn't say to plop down your hard earned money for it.

Oh my, this book is cray cray, matches in perfectly with the WATCHMEN graphic novel. and all the before watchmen books kind of link into each in certain spots so thats cool too. essential reading for Watchmen fans

Very good story, not enough Rorschach

I got this for a college class. It was in perfect condition and the artwork is phenomenal.