Well, after last time around, things really couldn’t get much worse, could they?
If you’ll recall — and even if you don’t — the third issue of Brian Azzarello and J.G. Jones’?Before Watchmen : Comedian is a book I had literally nothing good to say about whatsoever. Not only did it mark, in my mind, the low point (at least to date) of the entire BW enterprise, it was , no exaggeration, one of the very worst comics I have ever read in my life, period. ?It’s pretty rough to imagine that the next ?issue would lower the bar even further, and while I’ve learned never to underestimate the ability of a good many of these titles to be even more pointlessly lame than I imagined going in, I’m relieved — even?pleased — to report that this book ?has, at least for the time being, pleasantly interrupted this particular series’ post-debut issue downward spiral.
Following Eddie Blake’s rather public meltdown on the mean streets of Watts the last time we saw him, it seems that Uncle Sam has decided that the best place for their top psycho-for-hire is back in the jungles of Viet Nam, and while his first go-’round there in issue two was a rather listless and bog-standard affair, this time around scribe Brian Azzarello has taken the time to actually develop some supporting characters for the Comedian to interact with (particularly a couple of local kids that Blake is teaching to play cards, among other things) and has even gone to the extent of having his title character do something actually?interesting, which is always a plus in any comic.
And what is this interesting thing he has him do, you ask? Well, he has him drop acid. We don’t know how it’s all going to play out yet — only that it ends bad — but hey, between this and Hollis Mason getting high in the final issue of?Silk Spectre, at least the various BW books are providing equal time to the onerous and predictable anti-drug message presented in the first two issues of Len Wein and Jae Lee’s?Ozymandias.
The other notable thing about about what Azzarello’s done — finally! — with this fourth issue ?is that the story actually?builds on preceding events to show some sort of character trajectory for Eddie Blake going on. Even if it’s a rather simple tale of one guy’s gradual mental breakdown, and it arrives pretty late in the day (after the series’ halfway point), at least it’s there — which, again, is more than you can say for?Ozymandias, which is still stuck in basic “career-recap” mode.
To be sure,?Before Watchmen : Comedian #4 (variant covers this time around by Jones and Brian Stelfreeze, respectively, as shown — is that getting to be my most predictable line or what?) is still far from a great comic . In fact, it’s very barely what I would generously term as a good one.??J.G. Jones’ art still does absolutely nothing for me, and while I really can’t point to anything actively?bad?about it, for the most part it just strikes me as being — well, kind of?there, you know what I mean? As for Azzarello, he still has a tendency to mask out-and-out laziness as an “economy of words” or pseudo-”gritty” realism, and the fact of the matter is that biggest knock on this particular segment of his little six-parter is that not a whole lot actually happens in it. But hey, after that absolutely horrendous third issue, a story that’s ?competently enough executed for the most part, even if it’s still miles away from the work of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons on even their worst day, at least feels like a step in the right direction. Even if it’s just a baby step.
No comments:
Post a Comment