A new serial killer called The Bard doesn't quite cut it as a hook for Before Watchmen: Rorschach, even if the fiend does like to carve up naked women and leave them dead in the trash.
This is the 21st century, a time when desensitized violence and torture porn reign supreme in pop culture. Been there, done that.
Sadly, Rorschach No. 1, written by pulp specialist Brian Azzarello and drawn with fascinating detail and expression by Lee Bermejo, barely expands beyond what we already know of the title character who fights crime while wearing a shape-shifting mask. Rorschach was one of the most compelling antiheroic anchors of Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons' mythic comic book series Watchmen, so we've already wandered these streets with the absolutist avenger as he haunts or hunts hot whores, horny johns, muscled thugs and worse.
(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow.)
In the prequel series' debut, which hits stores Wednesday, we're barely introduced to the killer with the Shakespeare-inspired name. But we've seen the type of graphic violence The Bard commits – and the sexualized corpses he leaves behind – many times before, from Psycho to Silence of the Lambs to The Cell. Such pornographic horror was much more shocking in 1986, when both Watchmen and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns reinvigorated comics.
Rorschach's other excursions in Issue 1 end with not a bang but a whimper. After smacking down a pantsed junkie and threatening to rape him anally with his own hand, Rorschach chases down the bigger fish, and ends up getting his ass thoroughly kicked. It's a cute reversal of the type that has been showing up in other DC Comics reboots (like writer Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank's Batman: Earth One origin story, in which the Dark Knight gets served on his first vigilante missions).
Still, Rorschach's encounter with the physically imposing kingpin, who introduces himself as the living embodiment of crime, leaves one asking: Why would this bad guy stop one of his henchmen from peeling off Rorschach's mask, much less leave him alive after kicking his ass and monologuing about how hard it was to catch him?
Azzarello may have his reasons for leaving the question open, but the explanation is badly needed now, not later. Comics aren't cheap these days, and you need to aim high out of the gate if you're going to encroach on the hallowed mythology of Moore and Gibbons' meticulous original.
What would turn things around for coming issues of Before Watchmen: Rorschach? Perhaps venturing into intertextual merges with predecessors like Steve Ditko's Question and Mr. A – two superheroes upon which Rorschach was based before Moore mutated the character into comics legend – would have brought more compelling curve balls to the series debut. Such revisionism is not out of the question: Azzarello's Before Watchmen: Comedian series would have you believe that its bloodthirsty enforcer was best pals with JFK and RFK.
Rorschach No. 1 gets a boost from another cute reversal, in which Rorschach visits a diner and dryly chats up snarky employees who marvel at his bruises. It's funny, and well met amid 32 pages of violence that feels like fetishism. But overall, as important first impressions go, Before Watchmen: Rorschach can't sustain credulity, or even readers' interest, long enough to counter what feels like an unnecessarily drawn-out enterprise. So far, that's been the case with most of the entries in DC's controversial Before Watchmen comics.
Let's hope a coherent payoff is in the cards and newer patterns emerge from behind Rorschach's shape-shifting mask when future issues arrive. And that the quantum wonder of Dr. Manhattan No. 1, coming Aug. 22, veers into more ambitious territory.
WIRED Lee Bermejo's stunning art, Rorschach's diner pals, brilliant infinite regression cover.
TIRED Fetishized horror porn, Azzarello's hardboiled retread, not enough narrative development to warrant $3.99 cover price.
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