The New Before Watchmen #1: Minutemen Went by faster than Cooke-ing Minute Rice! My Comic Review!

The following is my review of the new "Before Watchmen #1: The Minute of Truth" comic written by Darwyn Cooke. The original post is over at ComicVine.com. I'm just a user there and it's just a quick users review but I like to post stuff their because I am a fan of that site. If your fan of comics or just want to know more about a character their site is one of the best!

Minutemen Went by faster than Cooke-ing Minute Rice!

It is a nice and really quick start Darwyn has Cooke'd up here for the new Before Watchmen Series and, like many Firsts in a series, this one had but one job to do! ...and that Job was to make me want to read more. Here Darwyn re-introduces us to the original Minutemen characters giving us a nice first person view from the original retired Night Owl. We get a quick nostalgic 1 to 3 pages about each of the Minutemen characters established in the original Watchmen comic. Each is told in the same vein of Hollis Mason's Tell-all book as he quickly narrates us threw his recollection of the members of the team.

The Pros
As first issues in a series go, I think this issue is just fine.....Not to heavy not too deep. Like a baseball on a T, Cooke sets up the characters quite nicely without any weird loose ends or running off on any wild tangents. I Think the artwork is great! Typical of Darwyn's style, this issue is very similar in look to the now classic Justice League: The New Frontier style art! Which, I think, works great for the era this comic takes place in. All in all, it was easy to read and not all hard to follow.


The Cons
That being said, the comic doesn't take a lot of chances or tell a whole lot of the story but just T's it up to the rest of the series to arc out a decent story-line from here on out. Perhaps, like slowly stepping into a hot bathtub, this careful approach of not revealing too much of any of the future plot is an attempt to ease people back into the Watchmen universe with out burning or scalding any of the fans. If so it's not a bad strategy but it definitely is a not a daring one, either. But that is okay for a first issue!

Final Verdict
I feel if your a Watchmen fan, you have nothing to fear from reading this comic. It really feels like It could have easily been added between the pages of the Watchmen trade paper/ hardcover or as part of an addendum in the back of one of the re-issues. No real verdict can be made by books end whether this story will be as good as it's predecessor but it definitely does not ruin or in any way deface what the original Watchmen was able to accomplish.

In other words it does not "Jar Jar it up" or put "walkie talkies" instead of guns in hands of the cops! It does, however, put a lot of pressure on the next issue to be good since it barely did anything but intro the characters. Like I said before, first issues have but one job to do and that is to make me want read more. Though it is brief and not all that deep, I do think this issue has kind of peaked my interest to see where they are going. If nothing more, it does make me want to go back and look at the Minutemen as they each appear in the original Watchmen comic! So final verdict? Allen Moore has nothing to fear so far (well from this comic anyway)....and Before Watchmen #1 is Not too bad!!!