The Back-Matter
With
this fifth chapter, Moore offers something new again in the back-matter, a
chapter from a retrospective volume of pirate comics titled Treasure Island
Treasury of Comics. This particular
chapter examines a much-lauded series published by National, later DC, comics,
“Tales of the Black Freighter.” This is
significant because Bernie, the young boy at the newsstand, has been reading a
reprint of one of these Black Freighter
stories. In fact, it is the two-parter,
“Marooned,” which is highlighted within the text of the back-matter as writer
Max Shea, and then-artist Walt Feinberg, at “their blood-freezing best.”
This retrospective’s
chapter, “A Man on Fifteen Dead Men’s Chests,” opens with a distinct variation
in the history of the world of Watchmen, with respect to our own. It notes that the “brief surge of anti-comic
book sentiment in the mid-fifties” was soon quashed, allowing EC comics to come
through even stronger for it. The fact
that actual superheroes were employed by the government is the main reason
given for the favorable attitude toward the comic publishers by Uncle Sam, and
is yet another bit of detail added by Moore to flesh out this world in a
logical fashion. In reality, the U.S.
Senate subcommittee hearings on juvenile delinquency chaired by Estes Kefauver saw
the comics medium enter a period of decline as publishers worked to overcome
the stigma that became associated with their product. In an effort to appease the public, the
Comics Code Authority was created, and, directly or not, EC comics – which
published a line of sophisticated and beautifully illustrated crime, horror,
and war comics – soon went out of business after these hearings.
According
to this Treasury, “Tales of the Black
Freighter” was National’s answer to the EC sales juggernauts “Piracy” and
“Buccaneers.” And though it did not achieve
the sales figures of these two books, in this alternate history, Black Freighter became an influential
book that cast a long shadow over pirate books that followed. Ironically, Watchmen became that book
in our world – its presence still felt within the medium twenty-five years
after its initial publication. Another
ironic connection between Freighter
and Watchmen can be seen later in the retrospective, as the author
details friction between writer, Shea, and original series artist, Joe Orlando,
due to, among other things, the “impossibly detailed panel descriptions” of
Shea, a quality famously attributed to the scripts of Alan Moore. But unlike Shea, Moore, by all accounts, is
very open to input from those artists with whom he collaborates.
Perhaps
the most important bit of information offered here, which could easily be seen
as a throwaway detail, is the name of the writer who helped create Black Freighter, the aforementioned Max
Shea. For first-time readers, this name
may hold no significance. But Shea is
the missing writer whose picture was seen on page 1, panel 3 of Chapter
III of the main narrative. And
though it isn’t obvious yet, he will become important later in the story.
And
one final note – a bit of trivia. The
full page from “The Shanty of Edward Teach” seen on the second page of this Treasure Island Treasury of Comics is the only piece of artwork within Watchmen
not drawn by Dave Gibbons. Joe Orlando,
a noted artist who did work for EC before coming to DC comics where he was an
editor as well as an artist, actually drew that page. And, as one can see, he would have been
perfect if the medium had gone down the “pirate” road it did in Watchmen
rather than the superhero road we have experienced.
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