Before Watchmen: Comedian #6 Review

There are rumblings that DC has quietly canceled the Before Watchmen epilogue issue, and the afterword in The Comedian #6 seems to corroborate as much. So it is that this is the final Before Watchmen review I'll be writing. My interest in this entire marketing event pretty much died away once the Minutemen and Silk Spectre books wrapped up. The Comedian in particular was a series that had some strong potential but tended to meander terribly during Edward Blake's time in Vietnam. This is not a book that needed six issues to be told.

Fortunately, issue #6 is able to redeem the series to an extent. It feels much more eventful than recent chapters have been, dealing with the fallout of Blake's war crimes and the strain in his relationship with Robert Kennedy. Particularly in terms of that Kennedy dynamic, this issue calls back to the first in a very significant way. Their interaction highlights the dark path Blake has taken since the idealistic early days of this saga. And even though I'll never fully buy Brian Azzarello's portrayal of Blake as a good man corrupted by war, it's still a satisfying conclusion to that character arc. Readers will know the broad strokes of where this issue is heading from the start, but that only makes the inevitable conclusion all the more tragic.

The final page is especially effective. Plenty of Before Watchmen writers have attempted to follow Alan Moore's example of working song lyrics into the stories, but Azzarello's might be the most memorable. Again, I've never been completely sold on his take on the lead character, but I can certainly appreciate the sad, wistful quality of this finale sequence.

It seems that the delay for this final issue was worthwhile, as it allows J.G. Jones to deliver some of his best pencils of the series. His facial work is consistently detailed and just plain consistent, not qualities that were always in effect beforehand. Jones plays around with his presentation, sometimes employing the standard nine-panel grid and other times making use of wider, more cinematic panels. Coupled with the effectively moody colors, this issue is a real visual showpiece.

Before Watchmen as a whole might just be a textbook case of a mixed bag. But if we're never going to see that epilogue issue, DC could certainly have picked a far worse finale issue to cap off this lengthy experiment.

Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.

Source : ign[dot]com