I wrote a lil review of Before Watchmen: Nite Owl yesterday. Here's what I thought of Before Watchmen: Rorschach (again spoilers):
BEFORE WATCHMEN: RORSCHACH
This one was considerably dumber.
I'll say this: I enjoyed the extreme Rorschach whump. Getting the shit beat of him and leaving a bloody trail through CVS to chug painkillers? A+. Getting bloody nose dabbed by sympathetic side character? great. Vomiting blood all over a diner table and passing out? standing ovation.
I loved how LB draws Walter's beautiful face.
The diner scenes were cute, would have read a whole comic that was just Walter hanging out in that diner.
So that's the positive stuff. Now:
Like first and fucking foremost: did we need a four-issue Taxi Driver pastiche? We get it, Rorschach is like Travis Bickle, that's a single-page joke not the premise for an entire miniseries.
And wow, that was a whole lotta screen time spent on a villain we don't give a shit about. Why.
Serial killer who leaves women's naked mutilated corpses around the city ugh why are we always doing this, do we have to do this?
The dialog, bro. This is some tryhard edgelord nonsense, Rorschach Would Not Say That, and also he sounds dumb. Why is he swearing?? And his journal voice is both too silly and not silly enough somehow. Moore had him say patently ridiculous shit with a kind of accidental poetry. Azzarello attempts edginess without irony and can't do the poetry.
(Side note: we now know that at some point between 1977 and 1982, Rorschach's typewriter broke I guess)
Okay not to go back to this but: it's been twenty years since I saw Taxi Driver but this is literally the same story right? Except that Rorschach is way less effective than Travis was. I guess that's the point, but - wait, what is the point exactly?
Right, if I'm being charitable, the point seems to be something like: Rorschach is obsessed with how free of human weakness he is but he's in fact as vulnerable as anyone else. He says "everyone's a victim but me" but he gets the shit beat out of him in like every scene and in the end avoids victimhood only by virtue of his enemies being fuckin idiots so maybe he's not doing as great as he thinks he is. But he needs to believe this because he was a little boy who was victimized by adults and he has lived his life telling himself he is not that little boy anymore and he is absolutely still that little boy. What happens to him near the end is deliberately similar to (if way less gendered than) what happens to Nancy (gross) but later he dismissively calls her a victim, then goes and murders her attacker like that's gonna somehow make him not a victim.
Did I get that right? I like that idea actually. I'd love to read a good comic that used that idea.
On a slightly more positive note: I know I said I was annoyed by the Taxi Driver stuff but I liked Nancy anyway. I was going to say "Walter's relationship with Nancy" but the relationship is all on her end. He does work suspiciously hard to make sure she knows that, though - she's all "you come in her a lot" and he's all "it's not to see you!" like dude calm down. But in this case I believed him. I liked the idea that he has this one positive presence in his life and this one place where he feels relatively safe and it's not about him having a crush on her or something.
So it's pretty weird when he asks her to dinner? Like He Would Not Do That, even within the parameters of this somewhat lax-Rorschach-characterization story? I did like how he did it, though - awkward as fuck with showing her the money and then being all "is that enough to thank you?" Like he's trying to make sure she knows it's purely about balancing a debt but he just comes off as weird and socially clueless. I gotta say, Nancy, not seeing what the appeal is here. Okay, I do, but I shouldn't.
I wanted them to meet up at the end. Instead we got more gratuitous woman-assault porn, great.
Right right, the point of them not meeting is that he has cut off any possibility of human connection by declaring himself separate from humanity. Given who he is, they can't meet. I get it, I just find it boring. Anyway I want to write some fanfic and put Nancy in it so she can be in a less stupid story.
(Side note: why does nobody seem to get that the Gunga Diner is in fact an Indian restaurant?)
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