Moloch Whose Comics Are Judgement!

I have to say that, of all these silly Before Watchmen books, the surprise solicited J. Michael Straczynski and Eduardo Risso Moloch is the second most tempting, after that one that I already bought an issue of.

Moral issues and problems with the premise aside, its always good to see Eduardo Risso's name on a comic book, particularly since Spaceman, which had some high quality issues, seems to have fallen off of my pull list for one reason or another. His drawing, when he takes his pen to characters that are not his own, has a revealing, almost transgressive, quality, one that I think is perfect for the Before Watchmen project. And to apply it, of all the Alan Moore creations that have been so far violated in this manner, to Moloch? Moloch, who was more of a cancer-ridden plot device than a real character? Moloch, who, even under Dave Gibbons's steady hand, already looks like something from Risso's sketchbook? This new mini is suddenly the most interesting of the lot of them.

Of course, that doesn't make the Moloch book interesting or in any real way necessary, and it certainly doesn't make the project any less toxic. Although it's hard to look at the preview art and not be tempted to deal with the demon, Alan Ginsberg seems apropos:

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open
      their skulls and ate up their brains and imagi-
      nation?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob
       tainable dollars! Children screaming under the
       stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men
       weeping in the parks!

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