World Of Warcraft, The Comic

[John M. Coker (Johnny C.)]

So that was better than I expected. Licensed comics, whether they be movie adaptations or video games or whathaveyou, haven't always had the best track record, but this was pretty darn good I thought. Now, I'll preface this by saying that I don't play WoW, I know nothing about WoW, nor the world it takes place in, yet I ended up digging this regardless. This was fun stuff. Walt Simonson being Walt Simonson, I mean, it's a fantasy comic, where he excels in my opinion, so this was a good fit. Fun story, nice action, some decent character work, I kinda dig the blood elf character, and while the art isn't really my cup of tea, it did have a lot of energy to it, and added to the funness. Yes, I just said FUNNESS.

[TheKraken]

There are a few elements that seem pretty "wrong" from the perspective of a long-time Warcraft fan, but the book's being overseen by the man who created and maintains the world, Chris Metzen, so I guess it'll all work out. Metzen has often cited Simonson's Thor as the main influence on him to create a fantasy game. You can imagine how excited he is to have Walt writing this. :) I liked the issue for the most part. They got the look & feel of the world right. There's a lot of speculation in the Warcraft community about who this mysterious human is (and he's also heavily rumored to be the main character of the upcoming WoW live-action movie). I'm not terribly big on the art, either, but it's been growing on me since that preview comic a few months ago. Metzen has talked about writing an arc for Simonson to draw sometime in the future... that would be amazing. For now, I'm definitely willing to see where this goes.

In case you're curious, the main problems for a Warcraft fan:
Warcraft orcs aren't evil. At least, the kind that have shamans and live in Orgrimmar aren't. Seeing them portrayed as heartless brutes was annoying, but they could easily introduce some more noble orcs later. I'm not gonna judge the whole series by one issue. :)

More troublesome is Rehgar being a shaman. Shamans, as you might expect, are spiritualists whose powers only work by communing with nature. The spirits planet itself have to allow them to use their resources or shaman have no powers. In other words, shamans are usually good guys. There was only one example in all of Warcraft history of an orc shaman that was an evil bastard until Rehgar, and that other evil shaman was also created outside the games by a writer Metzen really respects. I think they get away with this because he loves them. :)

In Warcraft, any druid so advanced in his arts that he's sprouted antlers like the one in this book could wipe the floor with a small army of orcs. That guy being anybody's slave should be impossible. But, again, it's only the first issue, there's no telling what's going on with that.
Nothing too glaring, really. And seeing the blood elf use one of her in-game abilities was geeky fun. I'm on board for more.

EDIT: Oh yeah, here's (http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2007/11/09/exclusive-read-world-of-warcraft-issue-0-right-here/) an online-only #0 if you're curious. Some of this stuff was referred to in #1.