Sword Art Online fan in 2020Before Watchmen Minutemen is tragic on so many levels. First because you know where all these characters end up and second because it makes you wonder what Darwyn Cooke could have been able to achieve
His use of nine-panel grids in this is insane. unlike everyone other than Gibbons who ever drew a watchmen comic, he understands when to turn the pattern off, when to break it, and he even splits up one image across multiple panels to make you perceive it as if you’re looking around. incredible
This is similar to the irishman in a way
The appearance of doctor manhattan right towards the end is genius. The “symbol” that he chose for himself is obscured by his hand but you see every piece of the weapon he’s disassembling. that’s the real meaning, that’s his real legacy. also it’s drawn from the point of view of the person holding the gun. a metaphor for Hollis Mason and the Minutemen becoming completely useless. A suggestion that you, the reader, are as powerless in the face of the system as Hollis is when he cuts the book down
Here’s the page i referenced earlier, where Cooke splits up one image into nine panels to suggest a chronology. this is cooke at the height of his powers, and it works on every conceivable level. it has a lot of weight behind it with the context of the full issue too
Kai (Seasonal Depression Mode)@cosmicevan the writing here is obviously amazing but i think visually displaying the sort of contempt that hollis feels about what happened to the kid in the clock tower and how it relates to his contempt for dr manhattan is like deeply powerful
@tasnyx oh yeah definitely. i love this and the part where Hollis meets dr manhattan and in his narration he’s like “something in my head kept screaming out: not human! not human!”
@cosmicevan yeah, i love how much disdain he has for dr manhattan, like he doesnt pity him or anything, he just kind of sees him as a weirdo who thinks hes above it all which is the most rational reading anyone in that universe has of him
@tasnyx really wish the show had internalized more of that reading of doctor manhattan instead of just stealing stuff from this comic without credit like the egg motif
@cosmicevan i think it ultimately just comes down to the fact that cooke clearly thinks that all the characters in the watchmen universe are complicit and lindelof thinks they are all his friend and that as long as they apologize it's okay
@cosmicevan cooke also openly talked about how he had no great reverence for watchmen or thought of it as sacred in any way which is what i think enabled him to really dig into the gross and tough to think about aspects of the series
@tasnyx i think that’s the best way to think about it if you’re going to make a sequel to anything. lindelof always talks about assembling a team of writers like getting a couple guys together to move a very large, delicate pane of glass across the street and Cooke‘s approach was to drive a car through that glass and shatter it
@cosmicevan yeah, lindelof talking about making this was like a big fucking 4 page written as dr manhattan thing about how much reverence he has for the series and how he'll promise to be gentle and cooke in an interview about before watchmen basically just said he doesnt care if alan moore doesnt like what he makes and that the only expectations hes afraid of not meeting are his own. absolute king shit
@cosmicevan the fact that before he talks about the doomsday clock being another useless maxim and symbol he's put back on his patrolling outfit is also like a great visual signifier that it's also an equally useless symbol to him