This first appeared on The Huffington Post.

The Comedian, created by Alan Moore and played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the film adaptation, is one of the most unhinged and disturbing superheros to come out of The Watchmen mythos. He almost makes Rorschach look sane.

With the Before Watchmen series, DC Comics is giving us a look at the events before the seminal graphic novel from the characters we were all clamoring to read more about, even though Alan Moore had no more stories to tell. Or, perhaps, he did, and just didn’t want to end his feud with DC Comics. I’m sure I’ll never know for sure.

To bring to life the backstory of The Comedian, DC Comics turned to writer Brian Azzarello and illustrator JG Jones. Azzarello is best known for his gritty, over the top crime comics (most notably 100 Bullets) and seemed a perfect fit to give someone as unbalanced as The Comedian a back story.

Here you are, without further ado, two covers and three pages of the comic that explores the Comedian’s time in Vietnam. It hits comic book stands on Wednesday, July 25, 2012.

Bryan Young is the editor of the geek news site Big Shiny Robot! and an author, most recently of the critically acclaimed science fiction adventure, Operation: Montauk.