Comments Off | Posted: October 28th, 2008 | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: matthew smith, mirror's edge, Reviews, rhianna pratchett, wildstorm
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.
2 Comments | Posted: October 9th, 2008 | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: ferryman, gears of war, jonathan wayshak, liam sharp, mark andreyko, wildstorm
Gears of War #1 takes a grab bag of war and post-apocalyptic comic/movie clichés and slaps the appropriate branding on top. I’m not quite sure what the point of comic adaptations of video games are supposed to be if they don’t feature Cammie or Chun-Li. Why would anyone choose to read read static “stories” when they could plug in their 360 and actually shoot at the bad guys themselves? Liam Sharp does his always-nice work, but the book itself is nothing but a hollow echo of a thousand 2000 AD stories that he coud have worked on instead.
Ferryman #1 is “presented” by Joel Silver and Dark Castle Comics (the latter is a sub-division of Silver’s own Dark Castle Entertainment) and pretty much reads like what you’d expect: the first ten or so minutes of a high-concept horror/action movie. Mark (Manhunter) Andreyko’s quip-filed and self-aware script is serviceable and keeps the pages turning, even if there’s a distinct air of familiarity about the whole thing that kept me from being completely sold. Jonathan Wayshak’s art looks like Billy the Sink and Klaus Janson had a son hidden away in the Andes, just waiting for their big debut, and is easily my favorite thing about the book. May well be worth looking at in collected form, depending on how the usually-reliable Andreyko steers this particular ship.
2 Comments | Posted: August 21st, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: fringe, wildstorm
This was seen while I was prepping my latest order through DCBService.com: Wildstorm is asking retailers (and the fans who may pre-order the book) to buy the first three issues of their
Fringe tie-in comic without knowing who the creators involved are, only that the show is created by Abrams, Orci, and Kurtzman.
…
Yeah.
