312: From the Disc to the Page

Nick Jewell

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Jun 20, 2011
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From the Disc to the Page

Comics are proving to be fertile ground for expanding game universes.

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PrinceofPersia

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I may have an Xbox 360 but I downloaded the Mass Effect Genesis comic, just to see what all the fuss was about and I love it. It is the smooth blending of both interactivity of gaming with a graphic novel feel of comics. A great vehicle to immerse the player in the game and give them a sense of agency in their play style.

A good comparison would be with the manga, anime, and video games coming out in Japan. Those three industries are very closely tied together that the creation in one field gets ported over to the other two on a regular basis. Not all of it is good but I would be fascinated with a study of that phenomena compared to what is happening in the United States.
 

TundraWolf

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PrinceofPersia said:
I may have an Xbox 360 but I downloaded the Mass Effect Genesis comic, just to see what all the fuss was about and I love it. It is the smooth blending of both interactivity of gaming with a graphic novel feel of comics. A great vehicle to immerse the player in the game and give them a sense of agency in their play style.

A good comparison would be with the manga, anime, and video games coming out in Japan. Those three industries are very closely tied together that the creation in one field gets ported over to the other two on a regular basis. Not all of it is good but I would be fascinated with a study of that phenomena compared to what is happening in the United States.
Thanks for commenting!

I agree about Genesis; I thoroughly enjoyed it myself. Heck, the only reason I got it was to get a better understanding of it for my article, but it reminded me how awesome Mass Effect 2 was and now I'm playing through the game again!

It's very true that the manga, anime and video game markets are extremely close in Japan: it was because of that relationship that we have stuff like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! becoming such huge franchises. I think that the North American culture of gaming is starting to mimic how closely related the markets are in Japan, and I too think that an actual study would be broker some very interesting facts on the topic.

sroske said:
i would be interested in a Fallout comic
You're in luck! Included in the collector's edition of Fallout: New Vegas was a comic entitled All Roads: it set up the story leading to the beginning of the game. You'd probably be able to find it on eBay, if you're really interested.

I'm not sure if Bethesda has decided to hire Dark Horse to continue the series but I'd imagine we'll see more of those comics in the future, if Bethesda is taking note of how successful that media is.
 

The Random One

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Eh, I dunno. It sounds like people are just thinking, 'Hey, gamers are nerds, and nerds like comics, right? Let's make some comics about games!' Also, when you need to convey a narrative comics are essentially one step up from written media, which is the easiest way to do it (from a business perspective, in which it amounts to 'hire a guy to write' - writing itself, as all creative endeavours, is actually quite hard.) Comics need you to hire two guys but the result is much simpler to absorb. And animated comics maybe need you to hire a guy after the others to do the animation and perhaps a bunch of voice actor but it's so much simpler to comprehend! In the end you're making a bad flash movie and calling it a comic so people don't call you out on it, just because you couldn't stick the bits in the game proper and like a bad DM you can't bear to see it go to waste. And your amazing interactive movie your million dollar company put together isn't one tenth as good as the one a few amateurs put together. Nine years ago. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_saints].
 

Iron Lightning

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Oct 19, 2009
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So... the point of this article is "video game comic books exist."

Thanks Nick Jewell, I had no idea.
 

olicon

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May 8, 2008
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Can't believe you skipped the biggest offender- .//hack.
I guess I can see that the author was only looking at his side of the pond (mostly), but the oldest videogames comics dated back to those Zelda and Megaman strategy guides.
And not mentioning Valve's treatment of the TF2 multiverse when talking about comics and tie-ins is a sin in and of itself.