Nonplayer 1

This appealed because the drawing looked so lovely – the trailed comparison was Moebius, and I see that, but it reminded me a little more of Miyazaki on Nausicaa. These comparisons do of course overrate it some, but many of the panels are beautiful, there are a few very good faces, and the creature, costume and scenery designs are strong. I’m not as pleased with the narrative skills and compositional choices. I like the expansive panels of fantasy forest scenery with armoured men on dinosaury mounts; but when it gets to the action, it’s all tiny panels, 72 in a nine-page fight scene. A few of them are very unclear, or clear but don’t seem to contribute to the flow in any useful way. It also does at times, abetted by the computerised lettering and the clean colouring style, look a little like a comic made out of animation cels.

Some spoilers below – I don’t think the twists revealed are especially mind-blowing, and I couldn’t see how to discuss the comic while hiding them, since they are what offers what minor promise I could find that this could be worth reading rather than just looking at.

Sadly there isn’t really sufficient story to support the art. We start in a fantasy world, with two people attacking some caravan to assassinate a queen – no explanation of why, or why they are willing to take an almost certainly suicidal mission, but it soon becomes clear we are watching some sort of VR RPG, and indeed this is followed by seeing the two players, back in some more SF world with some pretty and futuristic art deco design. Of course the problem here is that if the bulk of the narrative is just a game, and not a particularly original one in style, and if the players can just resurrect their characters, why do we care about the outcome of the adventure filling the bulk of the comic?

Actually there are two things that perhaps make it slightly more promising than I am suggesting there. Firstly, in the game section, the Queen vanishes when about to be killed, mystifying the players and the other (non-player character) figures in the game: given that the title presumably references such game figures, I imagine we are in for some bleeding between the realms, but that is guesswork so far.

Secondly, after returning from the game world we get another break, to a grimmer-looking future, with dirty cities and crappy job opportunities: the main character here is clearly one of the two players in the fancier SF realm, so that is plainly a game world too. For all I know, a subsequent issue will reveal the less lovely world as a VR one as well (though it looks rather less fun). I don’t know what this three-tier stack will achieve or offer, but it did come as a bit of a surprise, and I suppose allows more complex opportunities for the worlds blending. Or perhaps the middle one isn’t a game world but some alternate universe she enters…

I can’t say that there is quite enough in the writing to get me back for future issues, but I think I’ll at least glance through the very fine drawing in the shop, and I can at least imagine something intriguing me sufficiently in that scan to make me want to buy it.