Before Watchmen: Minutemen #5 - The Minutemen's Last Mission

[zapbiffpow]

In a departure from the classic saying, this is the one series I can believe no one's posted yet.

Not because the writing is terrible (it's not), or the art is sub-par (like hell it is), but because at all times the story's either so distrurbing or heartbreaking or controversial that it's hard to find which pages to post (i.e., the villain known only as The Friend of the Children.)

Before Watchmen: Minutemen #5 gives us the team's last moment as a unit. Four pages after the cut:



Here's what's happened during the series:

Silhouette - Murdered, mourned. I love how Cooke really expanded her back-story - she's now one of my favorite characters.
Dollar Bill - Shot dead, revolving door incident.
Silk Spectre - Quit after having avenged Silhouette, by way of 'taking care' of the Liquidator.
Comedian - Currently wetworks operative for the U.S. government.

The remaining Minutemen are just about ready to end the whole thing when they get an S.O.S from Bluecoat and Scout, a pair of heroes straight from the funny books who warn them of a Japanese plan to cause a meltdown in New York.

The target turns out to be the Statue of Liberty and the resulting radiation poisoning casualties, Bluecoat reports, would number in the thousands.

The Minutemen, although skeptical of the two, head for the Statue after the threat gets confirmed.



As the Minutemen hold off enemy gunfire at the base of the statue, Bluecoat is shot and killed, leaving Scout and Nite Owl to disable the nuclear device.

Then, in a freak twist of fate, Nite Owl is pinned down the stairs by the enemy he had shot to save Scout, forcing the kid to defuse a heavily radiated machine on his own.



This tearjerking sequence of words and images then happens:




This series has been executed so well it doesn't feel like a prequel or a fanfic anymore. Here's to Darwyn Cooke!

 

Comments

[coldfury]

Is it fair to draw a comparison between these characters and creator-owned characters?

I'm not a big Watchmen history buff, but I believe the characters were all based on Golden age Charleston characters, until someone (Moore, DC, I dunno) decided it worked better on its own two feet.

So he made a really great story using DC properties, changed it around and refined it, and ended up with a really compelling piece of art. Why does he get the assumption of retaining his rights to the work any more than Judd Winnick would get rights for writing Green Arrow? I don't really see the distinction, is it because it turned out to be such a huge success?

I'm quite sure Alan Moore has been jerked around by DC, and he has every right to hate on them without justifying it to us. But I'm not sure that these complaints about Watchmen really hold that much water, at least in comparisons to 'creator-owned' items.

[sadoeuphemist]

He gets the assumption of retaining the rights because that was the deal he made with DC! I said this earlier! DC agreed that the rights to Watchmen would eventually revert to Moore once it went out of print, both sides agreed to the deal expecting this to eventually happen. It's just that DC never let it go out of print, and now Moore feels screwed over.

[mrstatham]

It's also worth noting that the contracts Moore and Gibbons worked with were supposedly heralded, from what I recall reading, as something of a triumph for the creator in terms of their relations with the company, and were new at the time.

[kamino_neko]

He gets the assumption of retaining the rights because that was the deal he made with DC!

It most certainly was not.

That whole deal with with V for Vendetta, not, repeat, not Watchmen.

If Moore thought he could get that for Watchmen, he was an idiot of the highest order, because, in the initial stages of the planning, it was completely derivative work.

[sadoeuphemist]

No, it absolutely was for Watchmen. Who cares what it was in the initial stages of planning, by the time they had finalized the agreement the deal was like I said.

http://www.tcj.com/sick-as-a-dog/

[kamino_neko]

So, Moore is an even bigger idiot than I credited him with. Not a surprise, I suppose.

Mod Note

[salinea]

Insulting comics creators is against the rules of scans_daily. Don't do it, please.

Re: Mod Note

[kamino_neko]

Fine.

[sadoeuphemist]

I like how you're informed that Moore got a much better deal than you thought he did, and your response is to call him an idiot. How on earth did you reach that conclusion???

[mrstatham]

They were based on the Charlton characters, yes, but given the work he did on them in terms of their varying personalities (for instance, does Rorschach really have that much in common with the Question, or Nite-Owl with Blue Beetle?) and given the massively differing visuals, that to me singles them out as characters who, in any other circumstances, would be creator owned. As such, sure, they were based on DC properties, but once Watchmen came to be what it is, there's very little they have in common with the Charlton characters. DC apparently sees it the same way and they are putting out Before Watchmen and not say, Charlton New52 or Before Charlton or whatever also speaks volumes to their worth as standalone characters.

To say that the Watchmen characters aren't original - which, again, compare the Watchmen characters to most uses of the Charlton ones - just isn't true, to me. It's not the same as Winnick writing Green Arrow, because Green Arrow is a long-term DC character. If Winnick had gone and made a character based around Green Arrow partially, but then switched things up rather drastically, then it would be comparable.

[icon_uk]

hey were based on the Charlton characters, yes, but given the work he did on them in terms of their varying personalities (for instance, does Rorschach really have that much in common with the Question, or Nite-Owl with Blue Beetle?) and given the massively differing visuals, that to me singles them out as characters who, in any other circumstances, would be creator owned.

I don't think we have enough information to comment on that, as we don't know how different the Question would have been in Watchmen if he had been used instead of Rorschach. And the visuals being different are hardly THAT major, especially with things like Archie and the Beetle's Bug, and Rorschach and the Question, both pretty much textbook faceless vigilantes.

[mrstatham]

True enough. But as DC decided they didn't want Moore and Gibbons using the characters, regardless of whether they were initially derivative the Watchmen characters are now pretty much massively different than the Charlton ones. If only because, in some instances, Moore didn't know enough, as was the case with Nightshade. But the level of work put in and the differences that exist to me means there's as much difference between the Watchmen and Charlton characters as there is between Superman and Majestic. Which is, needless to say, quite a bit.

[icon_uk]

Again, we have no evidence to assume that.

Rorschach might, aside from the mask, be EXACTLY how he would have used the Question. Nite-Owl might be his take on Blue Beetle with feathers. The Charlton Heroes weren't in use at the time (Aside from Blue Beetle, whose own title had only just started up) so were fair game for a revamp.

[turtlefu]

That argument is the same argument made about Captain Marvel/Superman. A lot of superheroes are derivative of each-other. Does that mean that Thanos should become DC property because he is influenced by Darkseid?

[thezmage]

Did Starlin or whoever created Thanos sign a contract with DC giving them the rights to Thanos?

[bardbrain]

Moore didn't sign a contract giving DC rights to Watchmen. He has the rights. They're borrowing it.

He signed a contract saying they could license the rights as long as the book's print run doesn't lapse.

And Before Watchmen, the films, and action figures are all built on the shaky premise that they are marketing materials for Moore's comic rather than derivative works.

That's a bit like telling your friend he can crash on your couch until he gets a hot meal and 30 years later, your friend is still there, eating a diet of only salad and ice cream.