Amanda Conner Shines on Silk Spectre

 I wanted to like The Watchmen.  I really did.  Unfortunately, it was ultimately a bit boring for me.  I tried reading the maxi-series back in the 1980s when it first came out and didn't get beyond the first issue.  Compared to my favorite comics at the time (Marv Wolfman and George Perez' The New Teen Titans, John Byrne's Fantastic Four, and Chris Claremont's Uncanny X-Men), it lacked a lot, both in story and in art.  

I again tried to read the entire collection in 2009 before the movie came out.  I got about halfway through the graphic novel before finally deciding to put it to rest.  I discovered that I wasn't actually too young at the time to appreciate it in the 80s; it was actually very boring.  Worse, each page consisted of 9 tiny rectangular panels, one after the other.  It didn't vary at all from that formula, making the artwork bland as well.  And each tiny panel had more words in it than should have been allowed.  What happened to showing the story instead of just telling it?   I'm all for dialogue to keep a story flowing.  In fact, I thrive on dialogue much more than descriptions when reading a novel, but too much -- especially in a comic book -- can be incredibly distracting.  

I saw the Watchmen movie and enjoyed it overall, although I felt that it did drag in spots.  Following that, I decided to pick up a few of the Before Watchmen series that DC Comics released in 2012.  I picked up Comedian, Doctor Manhattan, Nite Owl, Rorshach, and Silk Spectre.  While I surprisingly enjoyed Nite Owl more than some of the others, it was Silk Spectre that really stood out, both in story and art.  I wasn't that crazy for Amanda Conner's cartoonish art in the short-lived Power Girl series, but in Silk Spectre, she really did an AMAZING job.  The quality rivals Nicola Scott and George Perez, two of my favorite artists.  The characters feel very lifelike and each panel feels like a work of art.  I was VERY impressed.  After seeing what she can do on this book, I'd love to see her on a monthly series. 

The story itself was more interesting than the others, too.  Silk Spectre's mother Sally Jupiter (the first Silk Spectre) is very controlling and self-centered.  She's like the Norma Desmond (Sunset Boulevard) of superheroes, always concerned about aging and her looks.  She consistently puts down Laurie, making her feel alone and unwanted.  Unlike in the original Watchmen series, in the panel to the right, the author Darwyn Cooke shows how a 9-panel page can tell a LOT about a person (aka Sally) and hold the reader's attention.  Naturally, the excellent artwork by Amanda Conner complements the scene.  

Cooke wraps the Silk Spectre's story up nicely, introducing her to the rest of the Watchmen team, giving us her first impressions. Again, he does this successfully in a page cluttered with words, but Amanda Conner's beautiful art doesn't take a backseat. 

I'm not saying that I'd read any other Watchmen series in the future.  I'm really not that crazy about any of the characters and the world in which they live.  However, I would love Amanda Conner to get another regular monthly gig on a DC Comics series because she's demonstrated that she can do so much more than Power Girl.