Before Watchmen Solicitations Released

, DC Comics has made the first month of Before Watchmen solicitations available today. One book will ship every week in June, beginning with the June 6 release of Before Watchmen: Minutemen #1 by Darwyn Cooke. The rest of the month will see releases for the first issues of Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre, Before Watchmen: Comedian and Before Watchmen: Nite Owl. The story also confirms fans' suspicions that all of the Before Watchmen titles will ship not only in print and digital copies but also as digital combo packs, like DC is currently using for Justice League, Green Lantern and a handful of other best-selling titles. The cover images for these first issues are the same as previous images made available by DC on the day of the original Before Watchmen announcement. Each issue will ship with two variant covers plus a standard cover; one variant in each case will be by Justice League artist and DC co-publisher Jim Lee. Dave Johnson, Kevin Nowlan, Michael Golden and Eduardo Risso also provide variants. The solicitation text itself is just an out-of-context line of dialogue for each title, providing little insight into the content or plot of the titles. Each issue will, as promised, ship with a backup feature featuring the Crimson Corsair, written by Len Wein and featuring John Higgins' art. Higgins was the colorist on the original Watchmen, and Wein was one of the editors who oversaw the project. Neither original series writer Alan Moore nor artist Dave Gibbons are contributing to the event, although Gibbons regularly works for DC and has wished all involved the best of luck. Moore, who has a history of conflicts with the publisher stemming from rights issues regarding the original Watchmen, declared in a New York Times interview that "I tend to take this latest development as a kind of eager confirmation that they are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago."