BEFORE WATCHMEN: COMEDIAN #1

If you didn't know (and, really, why are you reading a comic book blog if you didn't?), Watchmen came out in 1985. So here we are twenty-seven years later and we're finally getting more Watchmen. It's a long story of why, but the new DC publisher, Dan Didio, is going balls to the wall trying to improve sales. He made a big marketing gimmick out of pricing most of the books at $2.99, he re-introduced letter columns (they're gone already), and he re-numbered every book #1 last September and re-booted most aspects of the DC universe. Six new Watchmen prequel books are his latest salvo...and the controversy is astounding. I say...who cares? If you don't like Alan Moore's book being tampered with than don't read it. I think this is good for comics as it's something to talk about. The problem is that so far the books suck. Hard. This is the third book, a six-parter written by Brian Azzarello and drawn by JG Jones. It's about, obviously, The Comedian, a super-hero bad-ass that killed JFK in the original but here didn't. What? I'm confounded. Some say that Alan Moore has used other characters in his books (Moriarty, Alice in Wonderland, Jeckyl & Hyde, etc.) so why is he pissed someone is using his characters? & sure, wasn't Watchmen like 50% flashbacks anyway? Is there a point to have prequels? The art in this book is good but the writing and story are dull. Perhaps it'll go somewhere. I doubt it. * (out of ****)