Ok, so by now you've either seen the 2009 film Watchmen, or you've read the Graphic Novel. It's the best selling GN of all time and it's been out since 1985, so you've had plenty of opportunity.
At the beginning of 2013, DC, the company who owns the rights to Watchmen, printed Before Watchmen, eight prequel Graphic Novels based on the various characters in the Watchmen GN.
I just finished reading the last of them.
It took me two months, because I required frequent breaks. They are that awful.
You know how the Star Wars prequels were awful? These are much, much worse. Primarily because unlike the Star Wars prequels, no one involved with the original project was involved with Before Watchmen. That being the case, I went into the reading of them with the understanding that they were nothing more than authorized Fanfiction.
The people they got to write these things did NOT understand the characters. Every one of them was twisted in a way that was not natural and would not have led the characters to evolve into the chars we saw in the movie. Most of the things the characters did felt slightly out of place, some contradicted things you would pick up on after reading or watching several times, things that were implied, but some flew directly in the face of things that were STATED in the canon.
Not having been involved with the first GN is no excuse for this. I have read some superb Watchmen Fanfiction. 90% of it agrees with the basic characterization we saw in the original canon, and highlights and elaborates on it while keeping the essence of the story.
None of these prequels did that. Every one of them should be marked OOC. (Out of character.)
The art in these books is all very well done, though the art in Silk Spectre had a very intense early 2000's Spiderman quality to it. The art in Ozymandius was actually remarkable. But it, frankly, doesn't make up for the fact that the story lines are not up to world class standards, but not even good for a regular GN. When they're expected to follow one of the world's best Graphic Novels, well, they never stood a chance.
-Jasha
