Before Watchmen It Could Be Worse

I read about Before Watchmen yesterday (as did apparently everyone else in the world) and my initial reaction to it was a clear concise WTF? "Cash grabbing sellout bullsh*t" was probably the first thing that ran across my mind.

Then I saw that there was some really nice talent attached, most notably two old favorites, Adam Hughes and Jae Lee. On top of that were a slew of other people that I am admittedly not as familiar with but I know enough about them to know that most of them carry a large amount of recognition amongst the comic reading community.

So the immediate angry fanboy side was kind of delivered a one two sucker punch in that when announcements like these are made you typically don't see some of the most amazing creative minds in the industry involved. You normally think of something like The Clone Saga or a throw away creative team on a cross-company crossover.

Or you think something like Rob Liefeld.

Given the fact that DC just a few weeks ago gave him the creative reigns on a number of books after Hawk & Dove's announced cancellation which was immediately followed by the company logo re-branding which was then immediately followed by this announcement, I could easily see a Watchmen prequel being spear headed by the enigmatic Mr. Liefeld.

That being said, I spent a lot of time over the last 24 hours looking at Rob Liefeld art. Some good, some bad, a lot of clenched teeth, lined faces, clenched fist, and tiny feet...some classically cool stuff from my childhood that I still see as being awesome both in spite of and in a few cases because of their flaws.

I hope I did a decent job of mimicking his style. The easy go to would have been to give EVERYBODY shoulder pads and toy guns but I don't think Liefeld would do that. Hell, given his fondness of Alan Moore, I'm not sure if he would have partaken in this at all given the opportunity. So I just tried to mimic the style. Parts of it worked, others didn't.

I will say, though, that I had a hell of a lot of fun attempting to draw like Liefeld. I understand why he draws like that now. I know Rob's one of the go to punching bag guys for artists but there is a fun aspect to his style that when studying closely reminds me of what was so fun about it when I was a kid.

As far as the whole debate upon whether you're pro-Moore or pro-Before, I'm still figuring out. I've read a lot of reactions, blogs, and columns both for and against it. I know I'll have to at least flip through the books when they come out that's for sure.