Breaking Bad, "Confessions"

**SPOILERS HEREIN!**

Six episodes doesn’t seem like a very much time to wrap everything up, but apparently it’s enough for the show to jerk us around some more.

Todd (Jesse Plemons) and his Nazi counterparts appear before the credits like harbingers of death, then aren’t even mentioned again in the episode. Walt’s (Bryan Cranston) major bargaining chip, that being paying for Hank’s (Dean Norris) physical therapy, has been played, but Hank’s oncoming recourse is as ambiguous as it was after last episode. And we know Jesse’s (Aaron Paul) actions after realizing just how far his former teacher’s manipulation went won’t likely end in flames; the flash forward at the beginning of “Blood Money” showed that the Whites’ home didn’t burn down. But Jesse’s capability in this state of mind is still unpredictable.

Oh, and speaking of that flash forward, I still haven’t discerned a single clue about what series of events could have led to that.

Not a single question is answered, no plotline resolved or even hinting at what directions they’ll take. Just infuriating. And yet in spite of my anger at the show for playing us like this, it just makes me want to see next week’s episode even more. The writers know exactly what they’re doing, and they do it very well.

But aside from just yanking our chain, there are two sequences that open up new levels about the characters. One is Walt’s video “confession” naming Hank as a drug lord holding him hostage to cook meth. The immediate reaction would be that Walt has reached a new low, that he now no longer cares if he smears or harms his family to protect himself (it’s getting harder and harder to remember that he originally got into this for his family, isn’t it?).

But…he hasn’t harmed Hank or framed him yet, as far as we know. Since “tread lightly” didn’t deter Hank, this might be another attempt to get him to back off with just a warning, and Walt's putting off using violence against his own family as long as he can. Then again, that very idea sounds like a cop-out rationalization that a criminal would use to justify their actions, and just thinking that way makes me feel as dirty as Walt. These are my favorite scenes to watch Cranston as an actor. For all the heinous acts he commits, he never seems more evil than when he’s smugly, calmly playing innocent.

The other scene was the one in the desert, where Walt and Saul (Bob Odenkirk) try to convince Jesse to go into hiding. This is not a great moment of acting on Cranston’s part, I must say. Walt is way too obvious in his attempt at manipulation, like he’s so used to getting Jesse to do what he wants that he’s not even trying.  But in their awkward hug after Jesse calls him on his manipulation (which, by the way, made me laugh pretty hard), I did detect a little sadness in Walt’s eyes. Not from remorse, but because he actually does kind of care for Jesse, and he’ll be forced to kill him if he refuses to cooperate. It’s as much a final goodbye hug as it is a last ditch attempt to sway Jesse.

Jesse does comply, eventually. Not as a favor, not because he has no choice if he wants to live, but because he doesn’t have any real reason to stay in Albuquerque. This makes me wonder exactly how long Jesse has known Walt’s been controlling him, and was just going along with it because his life had so little meaning that doing whatever Walt wanted seemed as good as any action to him. It’s kind of sad, and Paul emits this extreme desperation so painfully believably.

But Jesse has one thing: a moral line. Specifically, not harming any children. And now that he knows his partner crossed that line in season 4, I don’t think Walt’s  going to be able to manipulate his way out of this. Maybe I was wrong about “Hank vs. Walt” being the main battle that brings Walt down; maybe it’s going to be Jesse’s doing.

Or maybe the show’s just messing with us. Again!

The World's End

Making a good parody film is an art form. It’s not enough to just copy certain genre pictures scene-for-scene, throw in some crude jokes, and call it a movie. For every Airplane! or Naked Gun, there are many such spoofs that do this badly and fail. The best parodies not only send up a certain genre, but also work on their own as solid films, offering actual plot and characters, and funny and entertaining even to viewers who’ve never seen a movie in the genre they’re targeting. The great Mel Brooks understood this in his heyday, and the team of Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright understand it now.

But Pegg and Wright go above and beyond just making a good comedy. Shaun of the Dead wasn’t only a very funny zombie spoof, but actually a solid zombie picture in itself (one whose ending I found far more believable than so much “serious” zombie fare). Their buddy cop action spoof Hot Fuzz was…well, definitely more on the side of satire, but the murder mystery that drove the narrative could have plausibly worked if done straight.

With The World’s End, the third entry in a loose trilogy with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Wright and Pegg set their sights on paranoid science fiction thrillers. I’m not sure if it would have worked as well if they played it straight, and if they did it would have at least seemed very unoriginal. But as comedy, it’s gold.

The film opens with a montage recounting five teenage school mates partaking in their small town’s famous pub crawl, with the twelfth and final pub being the eponymous The World’s End. They don’t quite finish. 20 years later, four of them (Eddie Marsan, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, and Nick Frost) have moved away and onto bigger and better things. But ringleader Gary (Pegg), a mega-slacker still living in his teen years, hasn’t forgotten the crawl, and convinces the old gang to reluctantly return home and attempt it once more. But during the crawl, weird happenings gradually reveal that the town’s been taken over in an alien conspiracy à la Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Yet, in spite of the terrifying happenings around them, they continue on the crawl.

One reason the spoofs from this creative team have been a cut above is that they don’t just make us laugh in just the basic ways, with only written and spoken jokes (though there are still plenty of those). They employ the aesthetic and filmmaking techniques in very humorous ways, too. For example, this and the aforementioned films employ stylized kinetic editing, but for sequences that are so inane and unstylish that it’s funny to see them presented this way. In Shaun of the Dead, the technique was used for a toilet flushing. In The World’s End, it’s used to show pints of beer filling in each pub the heroes attend, but gets brought to a screeching halt for the glass of water ordered by the one responsible character. Subtle, but funny, especially when you recognize this trademark after seeing their other movies. Another example in this one would be the fighting between the humans and the sort-of-robots, which are expertly choreographed mixes of hilarious slapstick and surprisingly good hand-to-hand technique.

But the robots don’t show up for a least a half hour. Until then, the strength of the picture lies in the rapid back-and-forth between the five main actors. A lot of credit is due to Pegg, whose character is so hopelessly immature and backward that in a more serious film, he’d crossed the line from lovable loser to detestable degenerate. The character would be pathetic if he weren’t so funny, and still might be even though he keeps us laughing. But it’s not just Pegg; the other four play off him, and each other, quite well. So well that I think I missed quite a few lines in between laughing fits. And the robots coming into play doesn’t put an end to this repartee, but injects a new undercurrent of energy into it. In fact, some of the dialogue with the robot copies of locals (including the second ex-James Bond to appear in this trilogy) are even funnier than the blue gore slapstick that happens most of the time.

When the big sci-fi conspiracy is explained, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense (I’m still not sure what exactly the plan for the town entailed), and the resultant conclusion is a little ridiculous. But then, that seems to be the point: to mock the inherent dopiness and pious grandiosity of so much post-apocalyptic fiction. I much preferred this intentional ridiculousness to the sentimental direction the movie seemed to be taking as things wrapped up, and it’s a solid, funny stamp on the best comedy of the year.

Breaking Bad, "Buried"

**SPOILERS HEREIN!**

I don’t know what I liked better: the family fallout from Hank (Dean Norris) discovering Walt’s (Bryan Cranston) true identity that takes up the bulk of the episode, or the single expository scene where Lydia (Laura Fraser) enlists Todd (Jesse Plemons) and his neo-Nazi gang to massacre Walt’s former competitor/business partner Declan (Louis Ferreira). But I definitely loved them both.

I’ll start with the latter, since it’s only one scene. But it’s an effective one, the way the massacre happens offscreen, leaving us imagining the horror, and wondering if Lydia is in for it, too, or in on it (I correctly guessed she was in on it myself). It reminded me of Gus Fring’s war with the Cartel that formed an entertaining side plot in season four, like a great gangster picture just happening to go on in the background. I doubt this plot is going to be on the sidelines for very long, though, and whatever’s in store for Walt looks like it’s going to be messy.

But back to Walt right now...

Last week, I commented how Hank confronting Walt wasn’t as explosive as it could have been. Well, the explosions came this week, emotionally speaking. The scenes where Skyler (Anna Gunn) is confronted by Hank, and then by Marie (Betsy Brandt), are all at once tense, captivating, painful, cathartic, and yet completely unresolving of the main conflict. The only difference now is that Hank knows exactly who he’s chasing, and Walt can’t feed his brother-in-law lies to throw him off. But that doesn’t take the strength and weight away from these scenes one bit.

And that war brewing between Walt and Hank is going to be good, I think. Walt spends most of this episode hiding his money, but his very first moment onscreen, staring down Hank while leaving the garage after last episode, is like seeing two gunfighters about to draw in a Western (and seems obviously filmed to look like it). Everything Hank and Walt do afterward are moves in their battle of wills, but that one moment suggests the fight’s going to be long and intense, maybe almost like the “Walt vs. Gus” conflict. I’m not sure it’s possible for even the same show to actually match that level of tension, but hey, this show hasn’t let me down yet.

Along with their renewed conflict, we get a few small revealing bits about both men. For Walt, it’s when Skyler confronts him about the cancer returning, and he inquires if she is, in fact, happy about it, as she said she’d be after her pool suicide attempt. Subtle, maybe, but this might show Walt isn’t hiding it this time to spare his family the pain. Rather, it’s a slight against Skyler, to not give her the satisfaction. Even though it looks like a futile battle, Walt’s ego—or rather Heisenberg’s ego—won’t give in while he’s still alive.

For Hank, it’s his hesitancy to turn Walt in, as it could ruin his DEA career. The way the wind leaves his sails after his talk with Skyler failed, I had a feeling that Hank would look the other way. He still might, in my opinion. While the episode gives no indication he will, the closing scene where he’s about to question a very low, detached Jesse (Aaron Paul) has an aura of finality, like if this doesn’t work, he’ll give up and let Walt win.

I hope he doesn’t. Even if it costs him his life in the end, I want the one uncompromised character left in the series to make it to the end without breaking even a little bad.

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.

Before Watchmen: Nite Owl/Dr. Manhattan

**SPOILERS HEREIN!**

Nite Owl

We don’t get to know very much about the second Nite Owl in Watchmen. He’s the one main player that doesn’t get a chapter of flashbacks to reveal his story. All we do know is that he uses an array of gadgetry, and that at one point he partnered with Rorschach. We also learn that Dan Dreiberg can’t get aroused out of costume, but I could have lived without that knowledge.

J. Michael Stracynski tries to fill in those blanks in Nite Owl, the most hit-or-miss—or rather, hit and miss—of the whole Before Watchmen event. There’s a lot of stuff crammed into four little issues, some good, some not.

On the good side, Nite Owl II’s untold origin is wonderful. It turns out young Dan looked up to the Hollis Mason Nite Owl as an escape from his abusive father. Only his enthusiasm didn’t stop where most diehard fans' would; having a knack for science and technology and the family fortune at his disposal allowed him the opportunity to impress the old Nite Owl enough to pass him the torch. Thus establishes a theme about hero worship, in this case literal hero worship, and how symbols (even human symbols) can inspire people. In addition, the story makes it clear that Dan takes after Mason’s example so much that he comes to define himself as Nite Owl, rather than his alter-ego. Such was hinted at in Watchmen by his empty post-hero life and aforementioned bedroom difficulties out of costume, but it’s more obvious here. These ideas are interesting, and the comic could have been quite insightful had it explored them more. But even with these themes, Dan comes off as more human than his hero counterparts.

Then there’s the bad, which pervades the latter half (maybe a little more than half) of the arc, and stays with you after reading it more than the good.

Much of the comic takes place during Nite Owl’s team up with Rorschach. At first, this makes for some entertaining back-and-forth between the shy and timid Dan and his ruthless partner. But eventually, Rorschach becomes the one doing all the investigating and crime fighting. And the bad guy they’re chasing, an insane minister who burns prostitutes in a kind of ritualistic sacrifice, is needlessly mean and so obviously just trying to offend. But in this era of comics, he's so routinely outrageous and unoriginal, and also out of place in a prequel to a comic so deep and thoughtful.

Nite Owl, meanwhile, spends most of the time romancing a high-priced hooker who dresses in hero garb. That’s another possible explanation for his costume fetish, but again, I didn’t need to know that. Most of Dan’s ink consists of gratuitous sex scenes that add nothing to his character. Or maybe they are defining elements of the character, in which case he’s kind of a pervert.

Dr. Manhattan

Dr. Manhattan is by far the greatest character in Watchmen. With him, Alan Moore took a concept that’s pure fantasy—a man gaining superpowers—and treated it realistically and scientifically. But he didn’t meditate on the morality of using those powers. Plenty of other superhero stories made that passé (and Ozymandias gives us enough moral implications to think about). Instead, Moore hypothesized how an all-knowing and all-powerful being thinks and perceives the universe.

He’s omnipotent, wielding complete control over matter and energy (and according to this comic, space). You could say he’s omniscient, but not in the way humans understand the term (which I think would be closer to “clairvoyant”). He isn’t just aware of every event past, present, and future, but he perceives them to all be happening at once, as linear time doesn’t exist to him. But knowing every fact and experiencing them all at once means major, sometimes horrific events happen all the time to his indifference. And seeing everything at the base atomic level doesn’t make for an emotional view of things. Clearly he’s no longer a human; his abilities are literally godlike, and the character transcends mere superheroism to become a hypothesis of how a real deity might actually think. Ever wonder why God lets bad things happen? Maybe it’s because he sees things like Dr. Manhattan.

And yet, to me, his arc is the most emotional part of Watchmen, despite the fact that he doesn’t feel emotion himself. There’s something inherently sad when a person loses their humanity. Most often, this means losing the civilizing qualities but keeping their flesh and blood and their more base tendencies. Jon Osterman quite literally and completely lost his humanity when he became Dr. Manhattan.

It’s already been established that the big blue being experiences what was and what will be simultaneously with the present, but in Dr. Manhattan, Straczynski explores what could have been. The title hero reminisces about how if Jon Osterman had been more careful in that atomizing chamber, he wouldn’t have been vaporized and reassembled as a superpowered being. From there, the alternate future multiplies into many timelines depending on several little, seemingly insignificant choices the un-super Osterman makes, as per quantum theory. Events change drastically (some even look like those in our timeline), but in all of them he’s married to his first love Janey Slater, and all end in worldwide nuclear war at some point or another.

There’s a sense of longing, of regret, in the doctor’s narration that he missed out on a normal life, but in the end, he sacrifices his chance at this to keep the correct timeline intact so that the human race can live on. And it’s a very human act of sacrifice, one out of love. This isn’t the first time Dr. Manhattan showed some partiality to the human race. My theory is that's because he wasn’t always all-powerful. He may no longer be human, but having been one gave him a perspective on humanity that such a being (or a deity) might not have otherwise. He understood our emotions and sense of nobility, even if he doesn’t feel them himself, and saw enough value in that to give our race a chance.

This comic fulfilled my hope of enriching and adding to the character beside what we saw in Watchmen, and is doubly an achievement for giving a new level of humanity to a character who’s not even human. It’s a work rich in emotion, masterfully told and deep but still accessible. The narrative deviates into different timelines, but is never hard to follow. And Adam Hughes’ art is beautiful.

Also, I must commend Straczynski for the final few pages, which depict what happens after we last see Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen. Here, the blue man travels to a distant solar system, planting the seeds of life on the third planet from its sun (possibly our Earth). The same thought actually crossed my mind when I read the original once. Honest!

Moloch

Remember Moloch the Mystic? If not, he’s the former supervillain that we see in Watchmen as a dying old man. The Comedian spills the beans on Ozymandias’ plan to him. Rorschach visits a few times, the last time finding him with a bullet in his head in a trap set by Ozymandias to lead the police to Rorschach. Well, Moloch gets his own two-issue miniseries, also included in this volume.

The first issue recaps the villain’s life story, going from a bullied young man, to aspiring magician, to criminal mastermind and arch-enemy of costumed heroes, to prison, and finally to a born-again Catholic. At the very end, he gets hired as an errand boy for Adrian Veidt (the CEO formerly known as Ozymandias). The second issue depicts the odd jobs he does for Veidt, like delivering poisoned cigarettes to Janey Slater (to give her cancer to blame on Dr. Manhattan), unknowingly aiding in Veidt’s master plan. The story is brisk and concise, and Eduardo Risso’s art—wacky and nonsensical in the past parts but standard in the present one—is fun (Moloch looks like a gremlin rather than an old man). But, were you really wondering about the origin of this character? I wasn’t. I also kind of got the idea that he and Slater were pawns in Ozymandias’ plan already, and didn’t need this to spell out the details.

Sadly, this is a taste of what the Ozymandias series has in store, and the comic seems more intent on leading into that than telling its own story. Dr. Manhattan also contained a sequence clumsily leading into Ozymandias, but it was so good otherwise that you could ignore this and keep reading. Moloch, on the other hand, seems completely like a tie-in, and is just as disposable as most tie-in issues tend to be.

**Tomorrow: Ozymandias/Crimson Corsair**

Before Watchmen: Comedian/Rorschach

**SPOILERS HEREIN!**

Comedian

We never see the Comedian alive during Watchmen, only getting descriptions of his deeds in the prose sections and a few glimpses in flashbacks. That’s actually a good thing. Ed Blake is pure, malevolent nihilism incarnate, completely unsympathetic and relishing in the monstrous brutality he deals out. Such a character is more effective the less you get to know him; too much familiarity could lead to sympathy, in spite of all the awful things he does. Minutemen almost gave him a moment of sympathy, offering a horrific experience in the Pacific during World War II as a possible explanation for his extreme misanthropy. His discussion on how there are different truths at the end of the comic, however, negates this in my mind. To me, his war story seemed like just a big lie to get into Sally Jupiter’s pants, this time without raping her.

In Comedian, Brian Azzarello gets up close and personal with Blake, chronicling his time in Vietnam, and also depicting him as a close friend of the Kennedy family (the comic dispels the theory hinted at in Watchmen, and depicted in the movie, that he was behind the JFK assassination, but trades it for another Kennedy brother, and even throws in Marilyn Monroe). To Azzarello’s credit, he doesn’t make the guy the least bit sympathetic. If anything, the comic makes him look even worse

The Vietnam stuff is savagely violent, with J.G. Jones’ art (which is pretty damn good) holding little back. It’s got the excessive gore of the Max Punisher, but without the sick sense of humor to undercut it. Or maybe it’s the Comedian’s ultra-sick sense of humor, that everything about life is a meaningless joke. Whatever the case, it’s not a very pleasant read. It’s not even very horrifying, just tiring brutality for the hell of it. Then again, this might be the very point.

The one element that carries significant weight is his relationship with Robert Kennedy. On the ’68 campaign trail, the Democratic candidate plans to denounce his close friend the Comedian for a massacre on a Vietnamese village. But before he gets the chance, Blake assassinates him in the Ambassador Hotel, blaming it on Sirhan Sirhan. This turn of events shows that Blake’s brutality runs deeper than we previously thought. He so loves dealing out death that he’ll kill even those close to him to continue his lifestyle. Before, when we didn’t know any more about him than what was shown in descriptions and flashbacks, we could have imagined that Blake’s nihilism made at least some exceptions. He could have, must have, human attachment toward somebody. Comedian firmly and unsubtly says no, he doesn’t.

You could argue that Blake showed a little humanity in Watchmen the way he reacted and vented to Moloch after discovering Ozymandias’ master plan, but I never saw it that way. To me, this wasn’t a reaction of horror to the sheer scale and amount of death the plan would entail, but a shock to Blake’s system at the realization that this plan would put an end to the violent conflicts he lived for. I’d say Azzarello proved my theory right. The comic succeeds in presenting another level to the Comedian, even if that level is just another threshold for brutality. But frankly, Blake’s contempt for humanity was already plenty apparent long before this series.

And I liked the ambiguity about Blake’s connection to the JFK assassination in Watchmen better than his clear run-ins with real historical figures in this one. The worst is his sit-down with Nixon lackey G. Gordon Liddy (on whom the character was allegedly based). The two crossing paths was amusing in a single panel in Watchmen, but it’s quite corny over several pages here, and so self-aware that they’re practically winking at the reader. It’s also very out of place for such a violent and bleak story. It’s like pausing Apocalypse Now to include a lame piece of sketch comedy.

Rorschach

A lot of people hated Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again, the sequel to his epic The Dark Knight Returns, but I liked it. Yes, it’s an incomprehensible mess at times. But if you take it for what it is, a zany spoof of brooding superhero tales (at least I think that’s what it’s supposed to be), some parts of it are very funny. One such humorous element is the depiction of the hero the Question as an ultra-uncompromising individualist revolutionary, narrating so seriously it’s laughable. In this, I saw a spot-on parody of Rorschach (unsurprising, as he was the inspiration for the character).

Rorschach is psychotic. His unrelenting moral code may make sense to him, but it's completely twisted to any rational person. His extreme methods cross the line even when he’s dispatching monsters worse than him. His journal that serves as narration reads like the rambling writings of a serial killer. He’s almost like a costumed Travis Bickle. But Taxi Driver makes it clear that despite doing something relatively moral if brutal, Travis is still a very sick and troubled person, not a hero. I always felt Watchmen made it pretty obvious that Rorschach is decidedly un-heroic. Apparently it’s not as clear on that as I thought, because he seems to be everyone’s favorite character.

Me, I’ve reached the conclusion that Rorschach represents a moral standing so extreme that it’s impossible to take him seriously anymore. Indeed, the aforementioned version of the Question didn’t need to try very hard to parody Rorschach. A lot of his narration in Strikes Again sounds exactly like Rorschach. When a parody doesn’t even need to write a joke to poke fun at its target, it’s pretty obviously that target’s a caricature. Once I realized that, every word Rorschach says or writes in his journal, even the most triumphant and climactic ones, actually became funny. Hysterically funny.

Indeed.

Rorschach’s own title features the team of Azzarello and artist Lee Bermejo that also produced Joker and Lex Luthor: Man of Steel (both of which followed the villains instead of the heroes; are they trying to tell us something about Rorschach?), which is to say the artwork is awesome. But the story is just a vanilla gritty antihero crime caper, offering no new insights about the character or straying from the formula. Rorschach fits right into this mold, voicing his hatred of humanity outright and in his journal (throwing in some R-rated language this time that DC probably wouldn’t allow back in the 1980s), grunting out his trademark “hurm,” and laying down brutal beatings on people he deems deserving.

The narrative has him chasing a brutal drug gang and a serial killer on the eve of New York’s 1977 blackout. But instead of the real Son of Sam, the killer is a fictional creation called the Bard, as he carves ominous poetry into his victims’ flesh. Ominous poetry that struck me as similar to Rorschach’s ravings. This got me thinking that perhaps Azzarello shared my view of Rorschach, and might explore how the character is very much like the bad people he chases. Alas, no dice. The conflict with the drug dealers ends predictably and violently, and the serial killer mystery gets solved by mere coincidence, before the “hero” even gets a solid lead on it.

But the artwork’s really cool. That much makes the comic at least a passable distraction. To get the optimal experience, I recommend playing this every time Rorschach speaks.

**Tomorrow: Nite Owl/Dr. Manhattan**