Written by Mac Walters and John Jackson Miller
Illustrated by Omar FranciaAn essential new story from the Mass Effect 3 universe!
The Omega space station is the center of lawlessness in the galaxy, a den of vice ruled by the deadly asari Aria. It is also a strategic foothold in a galaxy-wide power struggle, and when the station comes under attack from a new threat unleashed by the humanity-first organization Cerberus, Aria is forced to become more ruthless than ever to protect her home–and her dominion!
A comic book is like a video game that you play by manipulating time — turning the pages back and forth and stretching or compressing the time spent reading them. Well, okay, it’s not like a video game at all. This comic is, though, and it’s not really a good thing. More after the jump.
Mass Effect is, as you almost certainly know, a video game. Not only that, it’s a video game with a ridiculously large fan base. As such, Mass Effect comic books don’t need to cater to the concept of “new readers,” just like how a Star Wars comic book would never have to explain what the Force is. If you don’t play Mass Effect, you don’t even need to read this review. Just stop, and move on to some new news article, or whatever we post on Mondays. This isn’t a comic book that wants to lure in the uninitiated, so much as tide over the faithful until the next game.
Whether it does that job is really debatable. The curse of tie-in comic books, especially ones that are meant to be taken as canon for other media, is that there’s a built-in expectation of the whole thing being a trifle at best, and waste of time at worst. The crew of the Normandy aren’t going to roll into this thing, because what would they do? Moreover, how could they appear in any way that fit into the highly variable approach of the games, where one player has a female Shepard romancing Garrus, but another has a male one hooked up with Jack? At least with Star Wars, the Expanded Universe can be fitted around works that don’t change every time you watch them (CGI aside). So from the start, we’re B-list at best, with Invasion focusing on scuzzy Omega Station and its haughty leader, Aria T’Loak (whose purpose in the games is mostly just to feed you information for a couple missions).
Invasion has a story by Mac Walters, the creator of Mass Effect, and a script by John Jackson Miller, longtime Star Wars vet. Theirs comes off as a strained collaboration, or at the very least two styles that don’t mesh. Part of the problem is that this issue is sequenced like a video game. Infodump, fight, infodump, fight, infodump…. Characters bleat out constant reminders of Aria’s superiority like the random dialogue of a game area. Fight scenes consist of ‘shooting shit in the face for a couple panels.’ If you were playing this as a game, you could sit through the infodump cutscenes, and then run around, hearing about Aria from the side characters and shooting the monsters in the face as you found them. You’d also be able to make choices and have some minor effect on the outcome. This reads like watching someone else play.
Omar Francia’s art has detailed figures and good use of shadows on their forms. Unfortunately, the figures appear to be floating in thinly-rendered scenery that captures the visual iconography of Omega Station, but none of the feel that the game infused in it. Omega is dark, dank, and more than a little desolate — it was like going through Blade Runner‘s Los Angeles, just shot off into space and left to rot. (There was also a nightclub that looked like a neon opium dream.) Francia’s Omega is just — grey. Michael Atiyeh tries to give the corridors a rusty texture with his colors, but it’s not enough. Why do I bitch about the backgrounds when the figures are well-done? Well, because like I said above: this comic book exists to be pored over by Mass Effect nerds, so if you’re not going to give them the atmosphere they expect, why bother?
If you’re a Mass Effect nerd, you’ll get a jolt out of this. Maybe a good one, maybe a bad one, but it’s there. If you care about the Illusive Man, or Aria T’Loak, you will probably be tempted toward a bit of nerd outrage at how things appear to be developing. If you’re not the sort of player who obsesses over the side characters who you can’t even affect in the game, then don’t bother. If you’ve never played Mass Effect, go play the games before you even think about picking this up. In the end, it’s another fragment that will be fitted into the lattice of the Mass Effect Expanded Universe (or whatever they end up calling it) to say what happened to some characters who don’t get to come along on Shepard’s adventures. I just really doubt it will mean anything more than that.
Final Verdict: 5 – Someone pressed B and kept this from evolving
