Posted in: Comics | Tagged: before watchmen, comedian, Comics, darwyn cooke, dc, Minutemen, Watchmen

No, This Is Not A Continuity Flub In Before Watchmen: Minutemen

We'd mentioned how Seymour couldn't have been writing for the New Frontiersman in 1975. But that was just a marketing bit of bumf.

But the first issue of Before Watchmen: Minutemen goes out of its way to line itself up to the future. Hollis Mason moving into the aprtment he will one day die in, including time spent with the statue that will one day become his murder weapon. We see the building being built that will one day be Ozymandias' tower. And we get an extract of Hollis Mason trying to write the end of his book Under The Hood.

Which causes a problem. For some. Specifically this bit.

Naming Eduardo Blake as a costume adventurer of the Minutemen. And that one of the main points of the initial plot of Watchmen is that no one knows Eduardo Blake is the Comedian.

Execept… and here's what some people aren't getting. We read the initial white box captions as part of what Hollis is planning to write for the end of his book.

But the second time they appear, it's meant to be internal narrative, Hollis telling his story to us – but not the story that he wrote in his book. Indeed there are a number of discrepencies between what he is saying here and what is published and seen in Watchmen. So naming Edward Blake as the Comedian – to us – is fine.

Using the same caption system for both is unnecessarily confusing. It's a mistake. It's not a Moore mistake, he is very deliberate over captioning and the differential of such – when he makes them confusing or similar, such as in Neonomicon, it's there to deliberately blur the lines of reality. But in Watchmen, the captions are often artifacts – Rorschach's diary or lettering from The Black Freighter – or the blue and white bordered narrative of Dr Manhattan.

Here we get two different narratives treated in the same way, so you can forgive people's confusion.

Sloppy, possibly. Slip, no.

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