Summer Blockbuster: Before Watchmen

Summer means different things to everyone. For kids and teenagers, it's a time of relaxation and pure bliss because there's no school. For college students, it's a time to work and maybe take more classes. For hippies it means festival season is in full swing, for water parks it means business, and for the comic book industry, it means big crossover events, and this summer DC Comics has the coolest one.

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Issue #1 covers for all seven mini-series and back-up.

As reported by many news outlets, the biggest - and most controversial - of these  is Before Watchmen, a look into the world of the Watchmen before the events of the original series by Alan Moore over 20 years ago. With some of the industry's biggest names in writing and artwork signed on, DC is going all-out and releasing seven mini-series complete with an ongoing back-up story and a bookend epilogue at the end of the summer.

Watchmen co-creator and author Alan Moore has publicly stated his distaste with the new series, likening DC's actions to writing a "Bible II" without consulting God. Moore's stance reflects his feelings toward the live-action feature film version of Watchmen released in 2009 to critical and popular praise. Many of the writers and artists attached to the project have come to their own defense stating their intent to enrich the world of the Watchmen, not to sully it as Moore believes.

Each of the main characters from the original Watchmen has their own title - Rorschach, Nite Owl, Comedian, Silk Spectre, Ozymandias, and Dr. Manhattan - as well as Before Watchmen: Minutemen which will focus on the first superhero team, the Minutemen, who operated decades before the Watchmen. The seven mini-series will be released intermittently, one issue per week, throughout the summer months until they finish up with Before Watchmen: Epilogue. At the end of each issue, a two-page back-up story featuring the Crimson Corsair will run the entirety of the event and finish up in the pages of Epilogue.

Stay tuned to "The Endless Reel" for weekly coverage of Before Watchmen as it unfolds this summer.