DC Comics has announced at Fan Expo that J. Michael Straczynski will write and Eduardo Risso will illustrate a new two-issue Before Watchmen Moloch miniseries featuring Moloch the Mystic (Edgar Jacobi).  The Moloch comics will form the eighth miniseries in DC’s controversial, but highly successful Before Watchmen initiative, which the company has published in spite of the vehement objections of Watchmen co-creator Alan Moore.  The first issue of the Moloch miniseries will arrive on November 7th while the second is slated for release on December 26th.

 

The news of the Moloch miniseries first surfaced at USA Today.  Moloch has appeared already in Before Watchmen: The Comedian and in Before Watchmen: Ozymandias, but the full two-issue series will help flesh out the stories of the Comedian, the Silk Spectre and Rorshach. by showing how they interacted with Moloch.  JMS, who is writing the Moloch miniseries, also writes the Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan Before Watchmen prequels.

 

Moloch played a key role in Moore’s original Watchmen saga in which he appears as a former supervillain who is now dying of cancer, and whose death precipitates much of the action in the classic superhero saga.

 

DC also announced in USA Today that it will wrap up the Before Watchmen event with a special Before Watchmen: Epilogue, which will ship in early 2013.