Dark Horse adds another video game adaptation to their catalogue with “World of Tanks” #1. Based off Wargaming’s massive multiplayer online game, this one comes with the distinction of being written by Garth Ennis (“The Pro”) and Carlos Ezquerra (“Judge Dredd”).
Written by Garth Ennis
Illustrated by Carlos Ezquerra and Michael Atiyeh
Garth Ennis (Preacher, Hellblazer) joins Carlos Ezquerra (Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog) to create a tense war story inspired by the massively popular (over 110 million players!) online game World of Tanks. An untested British crew inadvertently commands an unconventional Cromwell tank into France while hunted by a hardened German panzer unit.o Illustrated by comics luminary and cocreator of Judge Dredd Carlos Ezquerra!
o World of Tanks has a global audience of 110 million players!
o The global MMOG phenomenon comes to comics!
When you’re handed a book like “World of Tanks” #1, you’re going to expect a lot of mayhem and destruction. I mean, it’s not a book you want nuance and subtlety, and Garth Ennis and Carlos Ezquerra understand this. A book like this requires bombastic action, big set pieces, and an explosive soundtrack, and, in all honesty, it does not disappoint. “World of Tanks” #1 features ’80s-levels of pyrotechnics and chaos. It’s bristling with testosterone and looks like it could have been published by Avatar. The story’s kind of dumb, the action’s a little over-the-top, but when these colossal machines charge at each other, the whole thing is a lot of fun.
At the same time, it’s kind of boring. Anytime someone’s not in a tank, the book borders on being tedious and uninteresting. Everyone speaks in this pseudo-militaristic vernacular that makes it seem like they’re making great plans and strategies, but I don’t think they’re saying anything at all, or at most they’re repeating the same information with slightly different phrasing. I’d equate it to the shaky cam technique in action movies.
Most of the scene setting comes from a blurb at the beginning on the title page, introducing us to this British tank crew, arriving in Normandy a few days after D-Day. They’re hoping to join the Allied Forces until they find their path blocked by the wicked Panthers of Panzerableilung 130. It’s not like the politics of this story are necessarily complicated, since the whole thing persists on the idea the British are inherently good while the Germans are inherently bad, now let’s watch them fight to see what happens, I just wish there had been more context for everything.
A ton of characters appear throughout the story, but I honestly don’t remember a single one of them, despite Ennis taking the time to give them names in the caption boxes. It didn’t feel like they were having conversations as much as we were reading a meeting transcript. They’re all wandering through the jungle and make these big plans about what to do, but most of the events in the narrative spring up, the action appearing randomly.
But maybe that makes sense. It’s possible there’s a video game logic to “World of Tanks” #1. The characters are sketches, barely distinguishable from each other. In most cases you can only tell who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy by the color of their uniforms. It’s more effective to think of the people in this book as avatars.
As I was reading this, I also kept wondering what even is this book? What is its great ambition? Does it want to add backstory to the games? Does it want to flesh out the world? I’ll readily admit that I’ve never played World of Tanks and there might be a great deal of material and reference I’m missing. Ennis’s biggest storytelling goal seems to involve finding new ways for tanks to crash into each other. So, does it just want to have fun with them? This one seems to most probable.
Frankly, I wonder if anything about its ambition or context is even that important with a book like this. The tank battles themselves are an overall blast, and that’s probably the only thing that matters. Ezquerra spreads them across two pages, full of color and spectacle. He puts a hard emphasis on the tanks’ weight in the environment, so you can feel their power as they plow through the terrain. It’s easy to get caught up in the thrill and excitement of the action. I also like how in even the expositional scenes, he make sure the turrets of tanks are constantly looming above the respective armies.
Continued belowOf course, this only serves to remind you that you’d rather be watching tank battles instead of their operators’ boring conversations.
“World of Tanks: Roll Out” #1 is most fun when it’s at its most ridiculous. When it strays away from that, it turns bland, with some talking-heavy scenes difficult to plow through. It may be a richer experience for fans of the game, but it still has plenty of fun sequences and action to offer.
Final Verdict: 7.0 – A lot more fun than I was expecting.
