Like Mother, Like Daughter: Silk Spectre #1 Review

I will say this about Silk Spectre #1, written by Darwyn Cooke with art by Amanda Conner: these are two artists who are bringing their A Game to the very possibly losing proposition of Before Watchmen.

This is a book that, at least generally, looks like Watchmen, reads more like Watchmen than Cooke’s Minutemen (which reads more like a standard DC superhero comic, only with Hooded Justice as Batman and Nite Owl as Batman and Captain Metropolis as Batman), and embraces the character-over-action ethos of Watchmen, and what action is here is visceral and real-feeling, as it generally did in its parent book.

The book features a relatable and believable sixteen year old female protagonist, and a believable character in her mother, provided you believe that any WASPy community middle-1960s suburban community would accept a Polish former softcore porn star and her Jewish husband… but it also portrays that community being intolerant of the “family” in a way that feels realistic… for 1966. If it took place anytime after 1988, Sally Jupiter’s house would be surrounded by teenaged boys with copies of She Devils In Silk whimpering for an autograph and praying she understood that “autograph” was shorthand for “handjob.” But I digress.

My point is that, God help me, Silk Spectre #1 is a good comic book. However, it is a good comic book that takes place in the Watchmen universe, and I’m not sure my prejudices in favor of the original will ever allow me to rank one of these Before Watchmen books as great.

For a change, I want to start by talking about the art in this book. Unlike Minutemen #1 from last week, which eschewed the general look and layout of the original Watchmen, Silk Spectre firmly embraces the nine-panel grid look of the original book. In addition, it closes with the title on the last page, and with a half-panel quote from popular culture. Also, Conner’s art generally mimics the general visual style of Dave Gibbons’s original look, with a lot of close-in faces, forced perspective shots, and controlled pacing in the standard grid to show slowly-progressing action. This book looks like Watchmen.

However, Conner has her own style, and doesn’t feel utterly compelled to follow Gibbons’s original layout. Given that this is a story about a teenaged girl, Conner lays in some cartoony panels of Laurie’s internal fantasy life (sadly, no hot, sweet, Silk Spectre Tijuana Bible style action fantasies here), and those panels break the hard panel border and lay the art into the bleed around the surrounding panels. In addition, in a couple of panels, she eschews the hard-and-fast realism of Gibbons’s stuff and lays in more standard comic-booky speed line effects, and even some sound-effect captions. So while Conner gets the general style of the original, she clearly doesn’t feel beholden to it…

But therein lies a problem. Because this is a Watchmen book, and since so Goddamned much of it follows the visual language of that book – to the point where there clocks laid about, and I defy you to look at this book’s page 12 first panel without seeing Watchmen #1 page three’s third panel and going, “C’mon, really?” – the deviations in the slavish reproduction of the format just scream off the page. Don’t get me wrong – the last thing I want from any of these books is a by-rote reproduction of the original… but if 95 percent of the book does just that, the remaining five percent is gonna stick out like a third nipple.

Still and all, Conner makes no effort to make her art look like Gibbons’s beyond the page layout and pacing. This is still Conner art, with big anime eyes, realistic figures, and damn expressive faces. While she does yeoman’s work reproducing Gibbons’s series-of-snapshots-looking action in the battle between Laurie and the masked assailant, she doesn’t forsake her own style. So for Conner fans, the goods are here.

But then there is the story, which while interesting, is not something that I think we needed. Cooke opens the book showing us the aftermath of the first memory of dropping the snow globe that Laurie relates to Dr. Manhattan in the original Watchmen, and while a nice piece of dialogue on the part of Sally, I’m not sure knowing what happened half an hour after the original moment is anything I ever wanted or needed to know. It doesn’t add anything to the moment beyond panels to the story.

Frankly, a lot of this story is about Laurie chafing under the regimented training requirements that Sally has set for her. And while well-written and engaging, I don’t feel it adds a lot to the scene from the original graphic novel of Laurie meeting all the older Minutemen and showing a marked lack of enthusiasm for her training, which said it all in about two panels.

The most engaging part of the book is where Laurie is sneak-attacked by her mother in a ski mask, like Kato and Clouseau, which would add a level of horror to Laurie’s childhood if it weren’t for the fact that it is so clearly written and drawn to directly reference Ozymandias’s murder of The Comedian (See aforementioned reference to Page 12, Panel one). So what should be an effective amping up of the tensions between Sally and Laurie from the original level of Hollywood Parent to “Hi, my name is Casey Anthony and this is my daughter Caylee” winds up feeling like a “Lookit me! I’m a-making a Watchmen!” moment that dragged me out of the story.

And therein lies the problem that I am probably going to have with all of the Before Watchmen books that I don’t know that I will be able to put aside: these books can be good, and this book actually is. But there is simply no way to look at this book without comparing it to Watchmen, and pretty much any book skating that angle is simply going to lose.

Look, this is a well-written and well-drawn comic book that, if it were about Nightshade or Power Girl or even Stripperella I would wholeheartedly recommend. However, it’s about Silk Spectre, which means that you will be unable to read it without seeing the DNA from whence it came. That doesn’t mean you won’t like it – it’s good enough that you should – but as with Laurie in this book, it will always be compared with its parent.