Wein to the Rescue (Almost)
One of the persistent failings of the Before Watchmen series is the lack of unity among them, in the sense of no apparent guiding principle or conceit (other than the contemporary conceit of DC to grab quick bucks at the expense of integrity and one of their most valuable "possessions" that shouldn't be their property anyway). I am referring to the absence of a guiding principle along the lines of purpose or identity, as in "the purpose of the Before Watchmen series is ..." is what? to fill in the blanks of what is alluded to in the original series that might be interesting to see fleshed out, such as the Watchmen version of the Giant Rat of Sumatra? or simply the freedom of currenty writers to fabricate little short stories and vignettes in the mist-enshrouded earlier lives of these characters, such as Brian Daley's Han Solo trilogy? No apparent guiding principles exists in the 6 stories I've read so far: Minutemen, Silk Spectre, Comedian, Rorschach, Ozymandias, and Dollar Bill.
As I've noted elsewhere, the Silk Spectre and Rorschach stories tell us nothing new: we already knew these things about these characters, having actually PAID ATTENTION to what Moore and Gibbons already presented to us. Similarly, Dollar Bill's story gives us nothing we haven't already deduced. While there was some nice overlap with the Minutemen audition scene, the strained humor (Howe Dewey Cheatem? By coming up with cheap money-makers like Before Watchmen and delivering sub-par products, that's how) and bizarre ethereal postmortem narration by Bill himself leaves us with another "so what?" response. The Comedian and Minutemen stories at least try to go somewhere and tell us things, but they are waylaid by unnecessary language and contradictions (despite what some money-makers tell you, prequels should not contradict the stories that came first).
Now Ozymandias. Len Wein, at least, is a fairly trustworthy guy to go to for this project, if this projected even needed to occur. With Ozymandias, he does the best (of what I've read so far of the stories) at filling in gaps, making connections to the original story without the obnoxious "knowing winks" everyone else is doing, and giving us new insights into the character that don't contradict (at least not as overtly) the original material. Unlike most of the other stories, the narrator is Veidt himself, which works well considering the character (it really doesn't work for Dollar Bill, for obvious reasons). The problem is Adrian Veidt is such an uninteresting character: he shouldn't be, given his talents and brains and money, but, as with Superman, writing about someone who is always in control (just about) and can't lose (basically) is challenging and uninteresting. It's not that the potential to lose always makes a story (or game or whatever) worthwhile, but the whole conceit of Veidt's character is he is the man in control, despite Dr. Manhattan's superiority. As the man to save the world, in a supervillainy way, Veidt should be more interesting, since he's the villain-who-thinks-he's-the-hero, but, well, he's not. He should be: he patterns himself after Alexander and actually succeeds at uniting the world under his banner (in possibly the worst way imaginable - so bad it destroys the Comedian, after all he's seen, said, and done), but he's just too successful and callous to be thoroughly interesting. Wein does a fine job trying to make Veidt's backstory interesting, and it certainly was the best of the lot (so far), since it actually tries to do something meaningful and purposed (telling us who Veidt is, adding to what we don't already know - certainly the highlight is the origin of "Nostalgia"), but many readers will probably be disappointed because there isn't much swearing or nudity.
One niggle: Why does he do away with Marla? She had been with him so long and not divulged any of his secrets - there is no need for her to die. She could have been his Roxane, especially with his supposed "heartbreak" over Miranda and the origin of Nostalgia. I was also a bit irritated by all the "this moment changed my life forever" scenes, which occurred too often.
Still. Kudos Mr. Wein. Had the others been more like this, the Before Watchmen series would have been a much better success (or at least more worthwhile).
Dollar Bill: as I said, meh. We knew this already, essentially. And the cheesy happy ending feels wholly out of place in the Watchmen universe, even with the optimistic conclusion of the original series.
Crimson Corsair: why does this even exist? The Tales of the Black Freighter works so well in Watchmen because it actually relates to the story and other characters. This is just pandering to sub-visceral baseness in humanity and the diabolical, and it doesn't do anyone any good. McClachlan doesn't even deserve that fate: he didn't do anything wrong on his pseduo-quest. He tries to save N'Tunga, he tries to save the baby (and NOT just for the ring), he doesn't commit murder or steal anything - it's not his fault they used the water on him. He doesn't do anything wrong and yet he is punished like he's the stealer of souls or whatever. Tish and pish.
