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Like pretty much everyone else in the comics world, once the initial outrage over DC Comics' announcement of a series of Watchmen prequels wore off, I found it fairly easy to ignore Before Watchmen. The original Watchmen was still there, after all, and if it survived Zack Snyder's weirdly on-the-nose-but-still-wrong movie adaptation, it would survive a bunch of ill-advised prequels, too. So when I got review copies of the collected editions of Nite Owl/Dr. Manhattan and Comedian/Rorschach in the mail, I wasn't filled with disgust, as I imagined I would be back when the books were first announced.

First of all: The books are gorgeous. I'm not a big fan of Andy Kubert's artwork, but even I can appreciate his art on Nite Owl, especially since the pencils are inked by Joe Kubert and Bill Sienkiewicz, giving his work more of a solid, finished feel than usual. And the other three chapters—Dr. Manhattan drawn by Adam Hughes, Comedian drawn by J.G. Jones, and Rorschach by Lee Bermejo—are some of the best-drawn comics I've seen this year. The layouts are dense and the figures are all exquisitely rendered, but your eye will glide easily across every page. Even Bermejo, who occasionally can lean too far toward the painterly and stiff, is doing some of his best work.

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Too bad about the writing. Brian Azzarello is a gifted comics writer, and J. Michael Straczynski has written a few great comics, but they're just writing fan fiction, here. Rorschach says "hurm" a lot and eats cold beans out of the can, because that's what we saw him do in Watchmen. The Comedian starts out as pragmatic and then becomes the drunk nihilist we encounter in Watchmen. Nite Owl and Rorschach argue a lot, just like they did in Watchmen. Even the bits that don't appear in Watchmen—Straczynski tries to bring an additional level of quantum mechanics to Dr. Manhattan's understanding of time and space, for instance—are boxed up and packed away at the end of the book, to clear the way for Watchmen. These aren't characters who change and evolve, they're action figures who need to remain in pristine condition for the sake of profits. These books don't detract from Watchmen, but they don't add anything of worth to Watchmen, either.