At Fan Expo on Saturday, DC Comics announced they will publish a two-issue BEFORE WATCHMEN: MOLOCH series. Written by J. Michael Straczynski with art by Eduardo Risso, this two issue series will join the seven miniseries that DC originally planned. More after the obligatory preview images.
BEFORE WATCHMEN: MOLOCH #1 will be on sale November 7 and issue #2 will be available December 26.
Now, regular readers will be aware that I have not looked too kindly on the Before Watchmen titles. This is not to say I haven’t given them a try, having read every issue that has come out. The quality has varied between them, but not a single one of them have I found worth recommending to anyone who has read the original. This might change with further issues, as the entire stories are revealed, and if it does, I will be happy to tell all who will listen to buy the collected editions (or, more likely, the digital books, since they will undoubtedly be less expensive.)
However, this latest announcement seems to this reviewer to be nothing more than an unmitigated cash grab by DC.
What I don’t understand is how a minor character who is only in 52 panels (13 as a background character, 12 as a corpse, dropping the number of appearances as an actual character to 27) of the original series deserves his own 2 book mini. Look, I’m all for back-story, if done well, but out of all the characters in the original book, Moloch is about the most 1 dimensional of them all, and isn’t even the minor character who had the most time on the page. That honor goes to Bernard, the guy who runs the news stand, with 125 panels (with Seymour, the borderline mental incompetent coming in at a close 3rd, with 25 panels)
Why aren’t we seeing Before Watchmen: Bernard the Newsagent? Well, obviously, because that wouldn’t sell as many books.
So DC gives us more Moloch, despite him already getting another 17 mind boggling panels in Before Watchmen: The Comedian #1, hoping that somehow this will make them more money. The sad part is, it will. Though a question we should be asking ourselves, as the fans who they are trying to get the money from, is “Do they deserve my money when this is how little they think of this?”
About Mark Driscoll
When not ranting about the current state of his favorite comics or working on L33t, Mark spends a majority of his time renovating his newly purchased, 120 year old Victorian house. Badly. He is very bad at talking about himself in the third person, as he thinks it make him sound pretentious.
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