Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt #1 - "Watch"

[laughing_tree]

There's a lot here, born of my love of Watchmen and a frustration with the primary parts of its influence. It's like if everyone loved Daft Punk but the only thing they lifted was wearing robot hats on stage. Like ... that? That's what you take? So taking a character who influenced Watchmen and then using him to examine Watchmen's influence seemed a useful angle. Let's look at the superhero comics, how we've got here, and what we can do with it. -- Kieron Gillen

Comments

[doodleboy]

Peter Cannon's approach is definitely not for everyone (hell Kieron acknowledges it in the second issue "We may lose some people"), but so far I'm enjoying it.

My only caveat is that since you're using Watchmen with the subtlety of the wrecking ball you better have a good target to smash by the end of it. Part of the theme of this comic is "a better world". Both Peter Cannon wishing for a better world then the current oligarchies and the writer wishing for a better state for the superhero genre.

So I'm hoping to see what he thinks that better world is, rather then just a list of what Kieron like and doesn't like about superhero comics now. Watchmen is the failed revolution, so what's your vision?

I think of all of Kieron's comics this has the most in common with SIEGE. Both are meta-commentaries on superhero comics. Peter Cannon is a commentary of the current genre tropes, SIEGE is more of a commentary on what it's like to be a creator working for Marvel/DC.

With SIEGE, the ultimate thesis was that Marvel had to be destroyed for a chance of a comics ecosystem that had better ideas and was more equitable to comic creators. So yeah... it had a big target.

Anyways that was a tangent, sorry, I had a lot of thoughts about SIEGE and nowhere to put it.

[thanekos]

I like to imagine the creation of the Test as a character as " Okay, he can't be ersatz Question because that's too on-the-nose. Let's just give the Creeper a haircut, a vest, and gun-hands - Shade's too much, and who even remembers Static? "

(Gillen's said he's analogous to some things, but still.)

[remial]

How does Mr Gunhands go to the bathroom?
and what nation is he supposed to represent? does America have 2 representatives?

[werehawk]

Looks like Thunderbolt is really working to scratch a deep itch on that cover.

[icon_uk]

Looking at how hot Tabu is, I can't really blame him.