Could the second issue be any where near as bad as the first? It falls upon me to find out.
Pity me.
Written by Brian Azzarello
Illustrated by Lee Bermejo“Look over your shoulder. Someone is following.” And don’t miss the latest sensational chapter of the CRIMSON CORSAIR, from writer and artist JOHN HIGGINS.
1. Lee Beremjo crushes this issue
The first issue of Rorscach was a huge disappointment (if you had not picked up on that yet), and with good reason: the writing was atrocious, and for some reason, Lee Bermejo’s typically reliable art was subpar. This issue though? Not the case. He just crushes it, with a ton of great moments and some really, really beautiful work. You really can’t ask for more, especially given how thin a lot of the story is on the other side.
2. Tiger Blood
Speaking of great moments, how rad was the scene where Bermejo depicted Rawhead’s tiger going in to munch on one of his former cronies? In another artist’s hands, it might have been a little on the ridiculous side. With Bermejo’s level of realism, it doesn’t just make it feel grounded but hugely badass. I dug it.
3. Ten points on the Unintentional comedy scale
I hate to be that guy, but this comic was pretty funny, and not in an intentional way. It was just so gratuitous in so many different ways. Rorscach coughing up blood repeatedly was rough, but even scenes like the aforementioned Tiger one was kind of hilarious in a “are we really going there?” way. I shouldn’t be laughing at a comic about a grizzled vigilante. But I was.
4. Azzarello continues to phone it in
I want to re-ask this question: is it possible that Azzarello really hates this project and is trying to crush it with his writing? Sometimes it feels like that, because it is hard to imagine he is responsible for this. While nothing in this issue matches the first one (“bitch to be you right now” is the clubhouse leader for worst line in comics ever), it still suffers from being really boilerplate dialogue, especially for the lead. It makes me think of what the dialogue to a porn version of Watchmen would sound like.
That is not a compliment.
5. The central problem revealed
Rorschach just isn’t a lead.
That’s a fact.
He fits in the overall scheme of Watchmen incredibly well because he’s always the guy in the shadows, but on his own? He drags everything down. He’s obnoxious, and his murderous idiosyncrasies are less engaging and more just crazy. Granted, he is crazy, but he’s the guy we all are rooting for by the end of Watchmen. That guy is not here. I know Azz is to blame for a lot of it, but I think there is a foundational issue here, and that’s that Rorschach should never have had his own comic. In my mind, they could have made things better by making this a team-up book with Nite Owl. One is a huge pansy, the other is crazy. They are the yin to each other’s yang. Instead, we get this mess.
Bitch to be me right now.
