Unbeatable Comics: Nite Owl #1

writer: J. Michael Straczynski
artist: Andy & Joe Kubert

I don't usually acknowledge the inker (when I wrote for Paperback Reader, I used to get to plug in the entire creative team, so maybe that's why I don't do that anymore), but in this instance it's as notable and necessary as pointing out that this is another entry in DC's Before Watchmen project.

The reason is that Andy Kubert is being inked by his father, Joe, and the difference is huge.  It's the first time I'm familiar with where Andy's art ends up looking like his father's, and it's undeniably because his father's inking it, lending a huge influence to the effort that creates something distinctively familiar and new.

Much like Before Watchmen.  This one is all about Nite Owl, the Blue Beetle surrogate Alan Moore created that most outsiders will probably assume is a stand-in for Batman, especially for the general look.  A legacy hero (like Blue Beetle), Nite Owl is both the Minutemen's Hollis Mason and the Watchmen's Dan Dreiberg.  The transition from one to the other is the crux of this issue, which portrays Dan growing up in an affluent household with a father who doesn't understand or support him, leading Dan to idolize and then seek out Hollis, who retires from the vigilante business and decides to train the eager youngster to replace him.

It's with Nite Owl perhaps that it becomes clear that Dan Dreiberg is at the center of the whole Watchmen story.  Some might argue that the Comedian is, or perhaps Dr. Manhattan, but it's Dreiberg who connects two generations most clearly, and forms key relationships with the second Silk Spectre and notably Rorschach, the psycho who serves as the most colorful of these characters.  It's the dynamic between Nite Owl and Rorschach, emerging in this issue, that may serve as one of the more intriguing revelations of Before Watchmen.  J. Michael Straczynski writes the standard Rorschach here, and it may seem like a parody or it may prove the real strength of Moore's original vision.  Perhaps we won't know until Rorschach's own book, but here he emerges as a more entertaining figure than anyone previously imagined.

There's a lot to learn in Before Watchmen, and Nite Owl may prove to be the source for the most knowledge.