Published on June 9th, 2021
I always feel a little uneasy when a something new in the Watchmen universe comes out. The reason is that the writer of Watchmen, Alan Moore, famously was told by DC that he'd get the rights to it back when it wasn't in print anymore. DC then sneakily never let it go out of print so they'd never lose the rights to it. There actually hasn't been much of anything done with Watchmen until ten years ago or so when DC published the Before Watchmen event with multiple books and the Watchmen movie came out. Then there was the great HBO TV show and the Doomsday Clock comic book and now Tom King's Rorschach 12 issue mini-series. The only thing worthwhile in any of that was J.J. Abrahm's HBO show. The comic book sequels/prequels have all been pretty forgettable. Rorschach seems to be the ultimate in pointlessness. After 9 issues, I'm still baffled as to why this exists. The book is a why-dunnit. It starts with a guy dressed up in a Rorschach mask and a girl dressed up like a cowboy being killed while trying to assassinate a politician running for president. The rest of the story follows a detective trying to figure out who those two assassins were and why they attempted it. So far the answers are pretty dull. The guy dressed up like Rorschach was a retired comic book artist. The Kid, a girl in a cowboy outfit, is still a bit of a mystery, though she believes that giant squids are telepathically controlling the world or something stupid. I guess this squid conspiracy has to do with the Trump Qanon conspiracy stuff and how people lose their minds over that sort of thing. In this issue, we learn that a political worker was killed at Rorschach and The Kid's house in the desert. And that's about it. A slow burn is putting it mildly. This book literally could have been wrapped up in one issue. Jorge Fornes does the art, and it definitely fits the 70's political/conspiracy vibe. His stuff reminds me of Outcast's Paul Azaceta a bit. I think the huge problem in this book is that in every issue you're waiting for some huge bombshell to show up and make the book interesting. Otherwise, it feels like it's going nowhere slowly. *1/2
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