Before Watchmen Minutemen #1; Darwyn Cooke

I want to start off this entry by just cutting to the chase: Before Watchmen Minutemen #1, written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke is fantastic and was even better than I hoped it would be! Seriously, if you had any doubts about how a Watchmen comic would be sans Alan Moore, well just read Minutemen #1 and your concerns will be addressed. I'm going to say that if you don't like Minutemen #1, then this isn't the comic for you (and it's a money back guarantee comic at Alternate Reality Comics!). For those of you who aren't familiar with Darwyn Cooke, he wrote and drew the excellent Justice League story set in the 1960's, New Frontier, has adopted two Richard Stark Hunter crime fiction novels into two excellent graphic novels from IDW (with a third one scheduled for release in July), and did Batman Ego, which was a great Batman year one story. What is Before Watchmen, specifically Minutemen? Before Watchmen is exactly what it sounds like, stories that take place before Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's legendary Watchmen comic / graphic novel from 1986. Watchmen, is of course the pinnacle example of how to write (and draw) a comic book with superheroes and how the presence of said superheroes would entirely change the world. Watchmen is also one of the very best written comics ever, one that is so multi-layered that every time you re-read it, you'll find new amazing things you didn't notice on previous readings. There are many people who would argue that Watchmen is such a complete work that doing any other stories is akin to Citizen Kane having prequels. That's a good argument, but if you really want to see what an A list line up of comic book creators can do with these characters and the Watchmen world, well the seven different mini series that comprise Before Watchmen (three of them are six issues, four of them will be four issues in length) will be your ticket to fine fine comics if Minutemen is any indication of what's to come.