Continuing the 35-part review of DC Comics' 35-part Before Watchmen event, this week the first issue of Silk Spectre is out. This week's 23-page lead story is by Darwyn Cooke (co-writer) and Amanda Conner (co-writer and artist). Conner also provided the standard cover art.

Cooke, as mentioned in last week's review, is best known for his writing and artwork on DC Comics' "Selina's Big Score", "The New Frontier", and "The Spirit" as well as adaptations for IDW Publishing of Donald Westlake's "Parker" graphic novels. Conner on the other hand is best known as a "good-girl artist" for her work for various companies on such titles as "Gatecrasher", "Vampirella", "Soulsearchers and Company", and "Power Girl".

While it is not known which portions of the plot, layouts, and dialogue can be attributed to Cooke and which to Conner, there is clearly a woman's touch on the story. The series' lead character is Laurie (Juspeczyk) Jupiter the second superhero known as the "Silk Spectre", who in turn is the daughter of the first Silk Spectre, Sally (Juspeczyk) Jupiter. The story "Mean Goodbye" focuses on Laurie's struggle with both living up to and living down her mother's reputation.

In 1966 Sally wants the teenage Laurie to take up the superheroine and celebrity mantles that she worked hard to develop, both with her own talents and with the management of her ex-husband. To that end Sally becomes more Marine drill sergeant than caring mother, pushing Laurie to her physical limits. But Sally also has a ribald nature, which affects Laurie tremendously whether Sally is present or not. Since Laurie was both raised without a father figure and to be tough as nails, she naturally rebels against Sally's strictures and runs away from home, only to encounter Fred, Shaggy, and Daphne.

From a superheroic point of view, it is unusual to see a teenage girl being brutally pushed by their parent into that lifestyle. Other elements of the story are not so unusual, from Laurie's "mean girls" classmates to the "Harper Valley PTA" community in which they live to the troubled jock on whom Laurie has a crush. So as in last week's Before Watchmen installment, there is little new thematic ground being broke, although the emotional turmoil of a teenage girl has not exactly been done to the death by the American comic book industry.

And while Conner's artistic style, like Cooke's last week, differs from the majority of 21st-Century superhero illustrations, unlike Cooke she seems to have made a conscious choice to echo the style and layouts of original Watchmen series artist David Gibbons. From the cover illustration to the first page snowglobe sequence throughout the book, there is a marked similarity to Gibbons over Conner's usual body of work. However she does manage to sneak in a few unique touches, like Laurie's pictographic emotions.

Furthermore, the Cooke-Conner team deliver dialogue that is just as good as last week's, the coloring (by Paul Mounts this week) is just as good, and the scene transitions are functional but not clever. The 2-page "Crimson Corsair" installment reveals a little bit of where the plot is going, but not enough to tell if there is any relation to the main narrative(s).

In summary, while Before Watchmen's sophomore issue continues to lack the originality and complexity of the original series, Amanda Conner (with Darwyn Cooke) has delivered more than the usual superhero comic. Here's hoping the next installment is as good or better than this week's!

I found this to be a far superior effort than MINUTEMEN #1. There's still an introductory aspect to it but that's woven into an actual story about a young girl not only having to deal with her own emotions but also the demands of her mother and the burdens of her mother's past.

Mike

So the basic conundrum here is DC is taking special effort to make sure these books are as good as or better than any other DC or Marvel book in the stores, as a way of trying to deal with the objections by longtime fans, both publisher and fans knowing full well these new books will never be as good as the original Watchmen.

If DC is capable of upping their game like this, if they can simply decide to make better books when necessary, why don't they do it for their regular line? Why don't they make the best books they can all the time?

I'm sure they'll tell you that's what they do, but the reality is that DC and Marvel simply publish too many titles and have abandoned too much editorial authority to maintain quality control. In May, with all the titles shipping twice a month, Marvel put out 74 comics. With talent that diluted and concepts stretched that thin, how good can the comics be?

Mike

I'd like to think it isn't impossible. It obviously isn't a case of expanding too quickly, they've had years to get it right, I think it's more an issue of upper management not bothering to do what would be necessary to control the quality of whatever size line they want to publish.

Found a separate .cbr download of this one comic, as opposed to the package ZCult puts up every week.


Several attempts at pulling details from Watchmen into a "you didn't know this before" narrative without actually contradicting (or adding anyhing to) the original. Probably should have been called Silk Spectre: The Hidden Years. The replay of the home invasion scene FROM THE MOVIE was way bad. The quasi-Archie feel of the malt shop scene was interesting.

I haven't looked at Conner's work since Gatecrasher, but she's obviously been studying the work of Arthur Adams.

The lettering was better (on the lead feature) than last week.

Upper management has no concept of what constitutes quality.

If that is the issue, then they need to go. I don't think that's it though, if they can up their game for special projects, then they know what do to, they just don't seem to bother to do it unless properly motivated.

But they haven't.

Yes, that's your opinion. But the premise of the question posed above, is that DC has stepped up it's game for this event. If you disagree with the premise, that's fair, but people are allowed to discuss things you don't agree with.

They're probably paying the people involved exta so better output, plus the expectations are way higher. They're not going to pull out all the stops for something they only expect so much from.

I would agree with this. DC has priced these issues $1 more than their regular issues, without a corresponding 33% increase in content, and I presume some (but not all) of the extra revenue will go to the creators involved.

Good lawd. FOUR BUCKS? That's some Elliot Spitzer level whoring going on right there.

I skimmed through this one in the store but didn't buy it.

I like Amanda Conner's art well enough, but her work isn't must-buy level for me.

The high school romance and dealing-with-mean-girls stuff seemed to have potential. On the one hand it was completely unmentioned in the original Watchmen, so it wasn't just retreading the original. On the other hand it's been done in every other teen comic, movie, book, and tv show, so it would have to bring something new in order to avoid retreading all of those. And my brief skim didn't show anything that really grabbed my interest.

Overall, it looked okay. I agree with the comments above that it looked superior to the average DC book but not at Watchmen level.

I have been re-reading Watchmen over the last week, both in single issues and collected form. It blew me away all over again. What an amazing comic.

I've also been looking at a few other tribute series over the last month, of one kind or another. Books where creators gave their own takes on favorite characters, like Hellboy, Rocketeer, Atomic Robo, and the Spirit, or indy takes on mainstream characters, like in the Bizarro World or Strange Tales anthologies. Those stories widely vary in quality, but overall the whole enterprise is both fun and respectful of the original work. If DC did the right thing decades ago and gave Moore and Gibbons full ownership of Watchmen (not likely, I know), there's no reason that we couldn't have seen some similar projects for Watchmen by now. Alternatively, if Alan Moore would give up his hatred of DC (even less likely), same thing.

This Comics Journal post has a very good discussion of BW and Watchmen in the comments. I especially liked this defense of Dave Gibbons' art after some earlier posts had questioned if he was really the best man for the job:



If Before Watchmen included scenes of the heroes turning to crystal or becoming apes, that might be a significant improvement of the whole enterprise.

Plus, see lots of other good points made by Eddie Campbell, Jeet Heer, Kim Thompson, and others.

"Give up his hatred?" That's sounds a bit unfair. Are you dismissing any legitimate issues Moore may have against the corporation's treatment of himself and others as some mere fit of pique, or a snit?

I'm apologize if I'm misinterpreting you here. And I agree it would have been very cool to see a Bizarro World-style anthology with indy creators making stories featuring Watchmen characters. In fact that may have been less controversial. But I think you do a disservice to the man if you cast him as some sort of grumpy old man who won't drop a grudge, and DC's role in this is no more than just of that pesky corporation that keeps annoying the crotchity old Mr. Wilson.

I don't know about Gibbons drawing people turning to crystal as a reason he was perfect for Watchmen.

I think he was perfect because the story needed someone who could draw somewhat realistically, not unlike Brian Bolland, but also caricaturize faces. Drawing crazy action poses or exaggerated effects would have gone against Moore's approach.

As for the pricing of BW, that's too much if it's only 21 pages.

You're right, I didn't mean to minimize the actual bad actions by DC that Moore is angry over. He has a right to be angry.

At some point, though, that anger becomes unproductive.

For example, Moore's anger with Steve Bissette still prevents any reprinting of the 1963 series. They had to go through protracted third-party negotiations to divide up their rights to the 1963 characters so that Bissette could produce new work featuring them. Since the original printing up to today, Bissette has not earned any royalties from 1963, a creator-owned series (nor have any of the other creators). Whereas his work-for-hire work on Swamp Thing still gets him regular quarterly checks from DC. A bitterly ironic ending for all of us who believed and still believe in creators' rights.

For another example, Rick Veitch had his Swamp Thing-meets-Jesus story scrapped by DC, arguably as egregious an insult as many of the insults that Moore suffered from them. It took years, but eventually Veitch was able to forgive DC for that, and able to make comics at DC again.

So compromise is possible. I admire Moore for sticking to his principles. I think DC is in the wrong. But the current impasse is not and does not have to be the only possible outcome.

I think that quote meant more that Gibbons drew in a manner somewhat similar to Kurt Schaffenberger or Curt Swan, with restraint and solidity in the way he drew figures. So it would remind the reader of those old fanciful comics, even though the story of Watchmen treated the world in a very different way. Those old stories had fantasy elements as an expected and unsurprising part of their world. Watchmen starts from a more grounded version of reality, so when the amazing fantasy elements start to come back in, they are surprising once again, their power to amaze is restored.

I think I get what you're saying, and I would tend to agree, but are you defining a decision to not want to work with or for DC again as unproductive part of anger?

Giving his honest opinion when asked in interviews, doesn't necessarily mean the guy is pounding his pillow every night and tossing darts at a DC logo all day. We are making assumptions about his so called anger.

The stuff about the 1963 reprints sounds a bit fucked up though. Could be spite, and I agree that sounds like some unproductive anger. But choosing to not work for DC again, isn't in and of itself, an unhealthy decision. Some might call it choosing to not risk getting played again. And giving his negative opinion of DC to the press might be considered unprofessional, but some might call it, "straight shooting," or even cautionary tales for others not to get caught in the same traps he did.

So four bucks is expensive for a whore in your neck of the woods?

I guess the line I see where it is unproductive is where it starts to hurt his co-creators. I don't think Moore should ever have to work with DC again. But I am saddened when, for instance, he feels he has to cut off ties with Dave Gibbons when Gibbons does want to keep working with DC. That puts Gibbons in an untenable situation.



Agreed.

Times however many copies they sold, yes.

All Gibbons had to do not to alienate Moore was not bring up Watchmen every time they talked. If that's the only reason Gibbons had to call Moore in the first place, then that's Gibbons' problem.

Do YOU call up your co-workers from twenty-five years ago to talk about the job you did back then?

Good for you. Stay on message, no joking around here, this is serious!

I do still talk to my high school and college friends about issues having to do with those schools, alumni stuff, who's the new principal, that sort of thing. I've lost track of the folks who worked with me at the deli and the pizza place, but if I was still getting a pension from those places, then I would have more reason to seek them out. And if the deli was the subject of a major motion picture, based partially on my superlative floor-mopping skills, then I definitely think it would come up in conversation, yes. Even though the deli owner was a tyrant who insulted me on a daily basis, it would still be worth it.

In Gibbons' case, Moore told him not to talk about Watchmen, but he also told him to give a thank-you call or note when Gibbons received the Watchmen movie money. So which request was Gibbons supposed to follow? Sort of a "Freeze! Get your hands up!" conundrum there.

For the future of the comic book industry, yes, I agree.

The company I worked for in the early 90's was one of the subjects of a book about how consulting firms can badly mismanage companies and have no legal or financial responsibility if the client goes out of business. There are quite a number of points in there I would like to discuss with people who were more in the know about what exactly went down, and thanks to Facebook I probably could do so very easily. However, I think it's best to simply leave it alone.



I think you may be conflating David Lloyd and V For Vendetta with Dave Gibbons and Watchmen, but even if that's so the situation is very tenable: Thanks for the Watchmen money, now let's move on to other topics. But DC was trying to use Gibbons as a go-between to perhaps get some kind of "blessing" out of Moore for the movie and knock-off garbage like Before Watchmen. If Gibbons weren't an avaricious and two-faced little shitstain he would have never played that role.

Those vile insults against Gibbons are completely unwarranted. He was caught in a difficult, almost impossible situation, torn between competing interests and personal connections on both sides. Maybe he made some mistakes or poor decisions, but your attacks on him are so disproportionate as to be utter nonsense.

No. He. Was. Not.

Moore gave Gibbons all the Watchmen movie money in exchange for his friendship. Which at the barest minimum means not phoning Moore up with the intent of soliciting on behalf of DC. As Moore explicitly laid out for Gibbons, and then Gibbons still went on to do anyway.

Even if your description of the situation is accurate (which I disagree with in some minor respects, but don't care to get into a detailed argument over), your insults are still unwarranted.

Gibbons was paid to honor a very simple agreement. He chose not to honor it. I realize there's currently a very limited market for his boring-ass artwork, but that's no excuse for double-crossing his former collaborator.

Dave Gibbons wanted to stay in DC's good graces, so he agreed (if reluctantly) to corporate plans for WATCHMEN sequels and asked Alan Moore about it repeatedly -- to the point of nagging. I fully understand Gibbons' reasons, having my own bills to pay. I also understand how that alienated Moore.

I think Gibbons is a talented artist. I'd like to think that DC would have continued giving him assignments even if he said, "No, I'm sorry, but Alan and I don't want more WATCHMEN projects out there, please stop asking." In reality, one corporate boss or another probably would have cut him loose then.

Flipped through this at the comic shop.

The cover is glossy like the All-Star line up. Amanda Conner's art is nice but it looked different than her previous work in PowerGirl and Terra, which was not too long ago. Then I noticed that every single panel has a detailed background.

So I'm assuming that the artists are getting a bonus or more $$ for this project and maybe even getting more time/less side assignments in order to make this thing look good.

Unfortunately, despite the extra effort, I don't see this comic book providing any real competition with other forms of entertainment or even other comic books. Even looking past the script and dialogue, it still looks like an average DC comic.

Even Jim Lee and Jeph Loeb's HUSH looked better than this, not because I prefer Jim Lee's pencils to Amanda Connor's but they atleast used two different mediums in each issue. Traditional inked pages for the present, and water color painted panels to denote Bruce's memories. It was pretty cool to see that in Batman #6whatever.

There might be some surprises ahead because we still have yet to read Rorshach, Dr Manhattan, etc.