This is kinda transmogrifying into a WoW Blog, isn’t it? I need to discuss Kendo or workouts or my big personal electronics project one of these days. Put some stuff in here that adds some more words to the old Tag Cloud over there. Anyhow, I do like comics. My big faves are The Walking Dead, Powers, and the BPRD/Hellboy continuum. I started picking up the World of Warcraft comic though, because I do play the game and PR people said that the comic would feed into the continuity of the game. Turns out that wasn’t just tangential (That doesn’t look right. Spellcheck checks out though) stuff too; the events in the comic would reshape the game for good and ill. I’ve got a few problems with the comic and the way it was handled though.

First, the art and lettering is VERY inconsistent. Every character in the comic comes off as that annoying guy from Friends with the weird speech pattern. Bold, italics and caps are thrown around in everybody’s dialogue boxes like they are going out of style. Art is very rarely on-model with orcs depicted as even more monstrous pinheads than the game makes them out to be. And I realize that the armor styling is pretty misogynistic on females, but seeing Valeera’s entire ass on every page is a bit over the top. Hell, she SLEEPS in that thong. Between Doomsday, Aeon Flux and Underworld I thought the skintight leather catsuit for an agile combatant was making a comeback… Not that those were good movies, just that they did feature chicks in catsuits.

Second, they are abusing the game pretty heavily. C’thun is listed as “Dead” in stage directions in the edge of a panel just so the Twilight’s Hammer can have a Sekrit Fort in AQ40. They couldn’t use any of the already existing Twilight’s Hammer setups scattered all over Azeroth, they had to make the comic and the game incompatible. C’thun is still in AQ40. If I got a few friends together tonight we could go kill him. Before that, during the Varian Wrynn arc, Wrynn rescues Marshall Windsor and goes off to slay Onyxia. There is no reason to break the most cinematic experience in Vanilla Wow. Prestor can remain in the capitol city, running domestic affairs while Wrynn concentrates on his campaign against the Horde and the Lich King. This allows Windsor to still be spring from the Ring of Law and the showdown between Onyxia’s Royal guard and the Stormwind peeps to still go down. Hell, you could even put Wrynn, Broll and Vareesa in the fight. Increase the number and quality of Onyxia’s guards, and you have a deal. This goes back to the neglected midgame as well, something I’ll probably talk about in the future.

Third and finally, they are using the completely cliche Chosen One storyline now that they are finished with “The Adventures of Varian Wrynn in a WRD Arena Team.” Turns out not only is Garona Halforcen still alive, but she’s had a Quarter-orc/Quarter-Draenei/Half-Something-else (Human?) kid and the kid is some kind of secret angsty Chosen Shaman Hero (I wonder if Thrall knows his role is being usurped). Not only is the walking angst ball the Prophesy Fulfilled but he’s training with an Undead Mage who is not Scourged undead. He is just dead and still living for other reasons. A completely ridiculous contrivance given that there are already Undead Mages who would already be angsty and vengeance driven. World of Warcraft as a whole is anti-Chosen One. Everybody in the game is chosen for something or other even if it is just taking out the trash (dailies) or running a book back to the library (Dire Maul).

The fact of the matter is that we don’t need any of it. None of the crazy over the top punctuation, inconsistent art, lore stamping or insane cliches. There is a great world out there, full of characters and situations that beg to be told. None of this silly epic fantasy crap needs to be involved. If I was writing it, the comic should would an anthology story showing people all over Azeroth getting involved in the weird crap that makes up their daily lives. Here’s a Paladin investigating the Deadmines, here’s a rogue stealing something from a mage, here’s a hunter chasing a rare animal to tame, here’s a warrior locked in a life and death struggle with some ogres. Show a swordsmith running all over creation gathering materials for a rare and potent weapon then hocking it on the auction house only to have an enchanter break it down for dream dust. Do a series from the perspective of the kid ghost in Darrowshire. Show Tirion Fordring’s In Dreams questline. Show an impromptu battle (DOGPILE!) for the Arena Master trinket in the Stranglethorn Arena. Do an issue from the POV of those chuckleheads in Zul’gurub as a party works its way through the instance. Just two guys talking trash as a 20 man group battles everybody else then mostly wipes to Mandokir. I loved the “Ding!” when he killed somebody (and gained power) answered by a “Grats” from the other guy. There are tons of stories waiting to be told a la World War Z all over Azeroth.

One bright light though, the Ashbringer comic is really quite good. Not good enough to pay $20 for a hardcover edition of four comics with no added concept drawings, interviews, timelines, or bonus material to speak of. There is one single page of “Lineart to finished page” transition stuff, but not only is it one physical page, but it uses a full page of art as an example, splitting that page into four small boxes. In the day and age of multiple director commentary + posters + trailers + behind the scenes features DVDs, such a high price/low content special edition is crap. But that’s DC/Wildstorm for you. It took ten years to get all the Starman issues collected, let alone the sidestories. And I’m paying out the ass for it.

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