Review: Mirror’s Edge #1

The third media tie-in comic I’ve received in a row for review from Wildstorm, Mirror’s Edge suffers the most compared to its source, a fast-moving, kinetic video game that’s set in a Dystopian future where parkour runners serve as an underground courier service. From the clips of the game online, it’s apparent that it’s a game centered around movement and vertigo and, by using the first-person point of view, giving the player the chance to do physical feats that would likely leave them in the hospital if attempted.

This leaves Rhianna Pratchett, who wrote the game’s script, and Matthew Dow Smith with an odious task: taking the focus of the title away from what players can do while picking up a controller and instead using static imagery and some licensee-approved backstory to craft something that captures something from the gameplay experience and brings it to the comics page. Not surprisingly, they fall short of their goal, but to be fair, there’s very few people (Paul Pope comes to mind) that could convey the motion that the source material is centered around. Smith’s art has progressed greatly from his earlier Mignola-derived work, but the generic-seeming world of the game and humorless, paper-thin characterizations don’t give him much to work with.  Mind you, I’m getting more and more likely to pick up the game itself, so maybe by giving me a reminder, the comic did its job just fine by the beancounters.