Before Watchmen: "Ozymandias/Crimson Corsair" and last thoughts

**SPOILERS HEREIN!**

Ozymandias

A villain with motivations you can understand is much more interesting than a simple black-and-white bad guy. Alan Moore took this concept to a thought-provoking degree by having one of the heroes carry out the brutal supervillain plot (that being fooling humanity into ending the escalating Cold War by killing millions in New York with a mutant brain squid monster that gets mistaken for an alien). Usually, a character that does wrong for the right reasons still comes off as the bad guy in most narratives. Simply labeling Ozymandias as evil is trickier because he succeeds in carrying out his master plan, and it actually does lead to a more peaceful world…for now.

It really is something to think about, whether or not Ozymandias’ act is justifiable. But regardless of where you stand, I think one thing is inarguable: he’s definitely not a “good guy.” He may not be a clear-cut villain, but to carry out such a devastating act, he had to have crossed a major line into humanity’s darkest nature.

But you don’t get that vibe from Ozymandias. The whole thing is like a rewrite of the penultimate chapter of Watchmen, in which Adrain Veidt narrates his life story. It doesn’t present much new material, just covers it in more detail. The only revelation is that Veidt’s master plan was much longer in the making than we thought (or at least I thought), and it spells out every detail of it that was only implied before. Oh, and that Outer Limits episode that bears a striking similarity to Veidt’s plan, and is fleetingly referenced in Watchmen? Turns out his plan was actually copied off that very show. This was humorous as a little Easter egg, but expanding it like this kills the joke. It also seems like somewhat of a lazy plot device.

Len Wein (an editor on Watchmen) only gives us Veidt’s view of things, and never does the protagonist ever doubt that he’s right. The only thing that hints to the contrary is the way some panels in shadows turn Veidt’s head into a completely black shape with two white slits for eyes, like he’s drifting into darkness. But this is too subtle to be a construed as an argument (plus, he looks vaguely like Batman without horns, and Batman's no bad guy). Veidt is as obliviously callous and egomaniacal as in Watchmen, thinking his superior intellect and abilities justify his plan, and killing even his trusted employees as emotionlessly as Dr. Manhattan to keep it secret. Never does it show him “feeling every death,” as he put it after his plan was carried out. 

Watchmen lets us feel at least some of the deaths. All the regular people who appear on the New York street, especially the newsvendor and his comic-reading customer, seem superfluous for most of the story. But their importance becomes clear when they find themselves at ground zero for Veidt’s teleporting monster. They're human faces put on the casualty figures. Not as easy to justify such destruction when you’ve spent 11 chapters getting to know these people. 

Ozymandias only gives us the distant, detached view, Veidt’s view. And while the tone is mostly neutral, I kind of got the idea that the comic sides with him, believing the end result of peace justified his near-genocidal means. That point is arguable, but Wein’s argument is too one-sided. It’s like debating Hiroshima and Nagasaki and only talking to the victorious American commanders, while ignoring the victims killed or stricken with radiation sickness (I hate analogizing a work fiction to real life, but that’s the most apt comparison I could think of).

Jae Lee’s art is beautiful, the best in all of the volumes except for Rorschach, but it’s wasted in a narrative that just expands a storyline we already know, offering no insightful moral arguments or new elements to the title character. Ozymandias’ arc is the greatest moral quandary in all of Watchmen. That his own comic only covers events we’ve seen before with a magnifying glass and a fresh coat of ink is a major disappointment.

Crimson Corsair

Tales of the Black Freighter, the comic-within-a-comic read by the kid at the corner newsstand in Watchmen, is a brilliant device of art and storytelling. Its story of a sailor going to horrific lengths to save his home from the eponymous pirate ship forms a sort of Greek chorus with the talkative newsvendor, the comic providing running commentary on what befalls the heroes of Watchmen, and the vendor keeping us up to date on the escalating U.S.-Soviet conflict. And the reader’s words when he finishes the comic (just seconds before he and the vendor, and millions of others, are killed by the squid) is a not-so-subtle hint to read more than once to get the full experience. But hey, he’s not lying. The first time I read Watchmen, I kind of skimmed the Black Freighter sections, assuming them to just be a pretty sidetrack to show that a world where heroes are real writes comics about other things. Only upon rereading did I see how crucial and directly related to the plot it was.

For Before Watchmen, we get another pirate comic from this universe, entitled The Curse of the Crimson Corsair. The arc was serialized two-pages at a time in each individual issue, but gets collected as a whole by itself in this hardcover. I’m not sure why, because if it’s meant to be a commentary like Black Freighter, setting it apart from the main story kind of removes this element (plus, there's the gimmick factor to try to get readers to buy all four volumes). But, I didn’t put the book together, and whoever did chose this way.

The story follows Gordon McLachlan, a Scottish sailor in the 18^th century who unsuccessfully leads a mutiny against his cruel captain. Soon after, his ship is destroyed by a Spanish vessel, and he gets lost at sea. After floating aimlessly for some time, he’s picked up by the ghost ship The Flying Dutchman, captained by the title pirate, on which his soul is doomed to serve for all eternity. That is, unless he can collect three things to earn back his soul. He sets out on a journey to find these things, and gets taken captive by a Spanish slave ship bound for the New World. But as his quest progresses, his very soul that he’s trying to save sinks deeper and deeper into darkness as he witnesses, and takes part in, horrific and savage deeds.

Separating the comic from their corresponding issues in the other titles makes it a little difficult to see what, exactly, the events in the comic are commenting on. The only obvious parallel is to Ozymandias. Like the protagonist in Black Freighter, McLachlan’s quest to do good leads him to do awful things, which reflects Veidt’s character almost exactly. Only McLachlan’s trying to save himself, not other people, which seems to suggest that Veidt’s master plan is inherently selfish rather than altruistic. Other than that allegory, the violence in the story seems analogous to the Comedian, and some dialogue about keeping a moral code even in a savage world sounds a little like something Rorschach should say. But reading the segments on their own, I’m not sure if these assessments are accurate.

On its own, however, the comic actually tells a very good tale. We only saw pieces of Black Freighter embedded in the narrative of Watchmen, so we don’t get the whole story. The Crimson Corsair segments actually form a complete, cohesive whole. Wein gives us a darker and more thoughtful take on a typical swashbuckler yarn, both mystical and macabre. John Higgns’ art combines classic comic styles with some newer ones, and makes even the more grotesque moments look fantastic. I’d read this title if I lived in the world of Watchmen. But since living there would mean living in a brutal world where much of New York was wiped out, I’ll gladly settle for just this one.

Dollar Bill

Dollar Bill seems to exist only as a throwaway character, because the only thing we know about him is that he was undone by his cape trapping him in a revolving door (which always seemed like a joke). Even in Minutemen, which delves into the story of the has-been heroes in the background of Watchmen, he’s all but ignored. But Before Watchmen didn’t forget about him, giving him his very own one-shot.

The short comic shows why we don’t see him doing much crime fighting. After his promising football career ends due to an injury, the dashing William Brady aspires to be a movie star. The only gig he finds is playing Dollar Bill, a mascot created by a major bank to cash-in on the costumed hero fad. Of course, when the Minutemen form, Brady’s bosses (their names being a classic old gag) force him to join to bring more publicity, despite the fact that he merely plays a hero.

The story is humorously told, with the Golden aged-inspired tone and artwork from Steve Rude laughably clashing with some of the more mature content. There’s not a whole lot to it, and it certainly doesn’t dig very deep into the character of Dollar Bill, but it’s a fun and breezy little read. It’s also much, much less violent than the rest of Before Watchmen, which is quite refreshing. After four hardcovers of brutal realism, it’s kind of nice for things end on a lighter note.

Last Thoughts

Overall, my feelings on Before Watchmen varied with each separate series. Even though my reactions weren’t uniformly enthusiastic, I give credit to the different authors for taking their titles in their own directions and employing unique styles. A few of the series were just expansions on the events and details of Watchmen, while others began where the original left off and took the material in new directions. Some presented new, separate stories with little connection to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ tale other than one character.

That last one made me wonder what might have been if Watchmen hadn’t featured original characters, but the Charlton Comics heroes as Moore originally intended. We’ll never know how much the work would have been different, but if the main story had remained relatively intact, and the comic received the same acclaim, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to imagine that DC would have used it as a springboard to revamp these characters and give them their own titles. We might have gotten many more compelling arcs featuring these characters. Or maybe Moore's versions of the characters would have been integrated into DC’s regular continuity the way some of the Charlton players were (imagine: “Justice League meets Watchmen”).

But that possibility’s lost to history, and Before Watchmen is the only supplemental work we get. Of the different titles, the ones I highly recommend, the ones that enrich and add to the original, would be Minutemen and Dr. Manhattan. The rest—though even the worst isn’t that bad—I could take or leave.