Before Watchmen: Minutemen/Silk Spectre

This volume collects two of the Before Watchmen series that DC commissioned and published against the wishes of Watchmen author Alan Moore. The first series is the six-issue Minutemen, chronicling the WWII-era predecessors to the Watchmen, and the second is four numbers of Silk Spectre, with a story about Laurie Jupiter in the 1960s. Darwyn Cooke serves as auteur for Minutemen, both writing and drawing throughout, and he gets a co-writer credit on the Silk Spectre issues by Amanda Conner. I wasn't interested in the individual issues when they were on comic shop shelves about five years ago, but curiosity got the better of me when I saw this book at the public library.

The opening of Minutemen is clever and effective. Cooke imitates show more Moore's portentous voice and the panel designs from Watchmen (i.e. stacked full-width panels, with a repeating geometric motif--in this case the centered circle that turns out to be a clock), only to pull the perspective back and reveal Hollis Mason (the original Nite Owl) frustrated with his own prose style as he composes his memoirs. That breaks the tension and assuages the anxiety of influence so that Cooke can get down to work telling a story that really does share the ethos of Watchmen in exploring the interactions of deeply flawed costumed vigilantes and their efforts to work together as a team. Cooke's visual characterizations are very different than those of Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons, but still suited to the material.

I was not as pleased with the shorter Silk Spectre story. It has Laurie running away from home and going to San Francisco to fall in with the sixties counterculture. It cast Owsley Stanley as a villain, collaborating to use hallucinogenic mind-control to re-instill materialistic consumerism in hippies. Neither Laurie nor her mother Sally were especially likable characters--the general approach of highlighting their personal flaws seemed to backfire here. I did enjoy Amanda Conner's art, though. It has a polished 21st-century comics ambiance, and she did excellent work depicting the retro-psychedelic subject matter. show less

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I was loathe to touch the Before Watchmen series at first because I thought the original graphic novel said it all and no more needed to be added. Eventually my curiosity got the better of me, and I've been slowly working my way through the Before Watchmen series. This addition - Minutemen/Silk Spectre is by far my favorite.

Exploring the past histories of the various members of the Minutemen is about the only origins story that makes sense to me, given that Moore gives us the least information about them in the original book. In the spirit of the original graphic novel, Darwyn Cooke presents a multi-layered, complex story. It is mainly told from the point of view of Hollis Mason in the 1960s, now show more retired from vigilantism and writing his soon-to-be famous Under the Hood book. He's using this book as a sort of tell-all to unburden his own guilty soul, and his former fellow costumed heroes are all in an upset over the drafts they've read. The narrative shifts back and forth between this storyline to the past of the Minutemen first individually donning their costumes, then coming together as a group, their early adventures as a unit, and the eventual unraveling of their group. One large undercurrent is an ongoing case involving the disappearance of children and the abuse they are likely enduring. These plotlines can be rather dark and bleak at times, but there's still enough well-meaning intentions behind various characters to not make the entire story seem like doom and gloom. In general, this book doesn't change the Minutemen characters dramatically but rather fills them out into more three-dimensional beings.

Silk Spectre was the story I was most looking forward to and simultaneously dreading when I first heard about the Before Watchmen series. Laurie is my favorite character from Watchmen, so I was eager to read more about her, yet wary that the new addition to her origins might get her character completely wrong. When I saw Amanda Conner was part of the creative team behind this offering, I was more hopeful than ever that this would be a good story. I was not disappointed. This story fits well in the continuity of Laurie's character as we knew her in Watchmen. It takes place in the mid-60s when Laurie is a teenager, rebelling against the way her mother is controlling her life and trying to shape her into a crime-fighter. She ends up running away from home, only to find that her mother's lessons come in handy after all, and she ultimately returns home to carry out the mantle of the Silk Spectre but on her own terms. The Laurie presented here is similar to the one we meet at the beginning of Watchmen, although arguably a smidge more immature. She's at the beginning of her journey, but she's already starting to gain some ground on all she has to learn. Despite a fairly ominous plot that draws Laurie into investigating the criminal element, there are a ton of fun bits here from Laurie's girlish daydreams (which reference romance comics) to several Easter eggs indicating the parentage she won't learn until towards the end of Watchmen to her inner thoughts on first meeting the Crimebusters group (including her internal comment that Dan is such a "square").

Both Cooke and Conner exceled at somehow still conveying their own personal illustrative styles in these two stories while remaining true to the original look and feel of the Watchmen characters. I personally very much enjoy comic books in which the drawings are by and large realistic and which feature a number of background details. This book delivered on both of those, so I was very pleased. While this book isn't the tour de force that Watchmen was, it is a delightful work of its own right, which should entertain all except the most hardcore purist of Watchmen fans. show less

I howled out loud while reading this book--howled with utter glee for how beautifully Darwyn Cooke pulled in historical figures and references and wove them into the backstory of the Silk Spectre. For instance, a teen Silk Spectre settles in to Haight Ashbury in the late sixties, only to find that the bad guys have enlisted the aid of Owlsley and his product to take over the minds of the hippie community and make them good consumers. Heh, heh. Great stuff. Looking forward to more in this series of Watchmen origins stories.

A valiant effort @ making the Minutemen & Silk Spectres back stories work. Does it work? Well largely, would be my answer to that. Whilst one could ONLY take Alan Moore's work as canon, & I have some sympathy for that position, the hard work, illustration & obvious respect & homage to the original Watchmen graphic novel shine through here. Worth a look but with an open mind. It won't be to every fan boys taste.

There was a lot of controversy surrounding the Watchmen book when they were first being written due to the original creator not wanting the series written. In the end I'm glad I decided to read them anyway. This volume contains portions of Hollis' book describing the forming of the Minutemen and how the team ran and interacted with each other excepting those parts that were extensively covered in The Watchmen and Lori's story of first becoming Silk Specter up until the first meeting of the Watchmen.

Both stories felt well written and beautifully illustrated to me. I'm glad they followed cohesive story lines rather then being episodic. I loved Silhouette's story and feel like she was worthy of her own book.

There was a lot of controversy surrounding the Watchmen book when they were first being written due to the original creator not wanting the series written. In the end I'm glad I decided to read them anyway. This volume contains portions of Hollis' book describing the forming of the Minutemen and how the team ran and interacted with each other excepting those parts that were extensively covered in The Watchmen and Lori's story of first becoming Silk Specter up until the first meeting of the Watchmen.

Both stories felt well written and beautifully illustrated to me. I'm glad they followed cohesive story lines rather then being episodic. I loved Silhouette's story and feel like she was worthy of her own book.

Soo glad that I found this gem at Half Price Books! It's been a few years since I read Watchmen and this prequel really got me in the mood to re-read it. There are several prequels but this one focuses on the Minutemen and Silk Spectre. The firdt half of the graphic novel is told from the viewpoint of an elderly Hollis (Nite Owl) as he writes his tell all book about his time in the Minutemen. He recalls the history of each of his masked friends and some of the major crimes that they solved. It was really nice getting more of a back story on Ursula (the silhouette) and some of the other characters. The second part of the graphic novel focuses on Silk Spectre's beginnings. It starts in her adolescence and follows though her teenage years. show more She becomes a hippie, meets a boy, and runs away from her mom's imposing nature. It's a fantastic book and one I will definitely come back to and reread. show less