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| Cover D by Patrick Tatopoulos It's actually wrap-around. |
Beginning
a five-issue adaptation of On Basilisk Station, by David
Weber.
Especially
in this day and age, when comics projects are spoiled months in
advance even of the product's solicitation in Previews
and are old news by the time they actually see the light of day (the
Internet is a wonderful thing … but not in this respect), having
something as near to my heart as this is come onto my radar with only
a few weeks' warning (see my post of 17 January [LINK])
is virtually inconceivable. Were I among those privileged to attend
larger conventions, or even a more assiduous reader of the
Weber'verse fora, doubtless I would have known longer, but as far
as I can tell those not within those circles knew little or nothing
about the entire multimedia enterprise overseen by Evergreen Studios
to bring the tales of Honor
Harrington
to the wider world through comics, gaming, and film until the
appearance of the January Previews
and more specifically the issuance of the press release of 14 January
[LINK].
My own post linked above describes my immediate enthusiasm for the
prospect. Now, after an amazingly short period of anticipation, the
first issue is here. How
well does it hold up? Does it meet my expectations?
The
answers to those questions are, in short, Very
well,
and Yes,
for the most part.
Here's a short discussion of the issue, which I would definitely
recommend to anyone looking for an introduction to the Honorverse
in particular or
to a well-executed fairly “hard” military sci-fi comic – or
just a darn fine comic book story – in general. As I write the
second part of that – “a well-executed fairly 'hard' military
sci-fi comic” – it occurs to me that the Dark Horse Star
Wars
comics franchise (albeit a bit more in the realm of "sci-fantasy") is about to be a thing of the past, and while I
don't read much of it at all I know there are many
who do, and perhaps an Image Comics Honorverse
franchise could fill a void that I'm skeptical corporate
Disney/Marvel will be able to.
Overall,
in my opinion, both writer and artist do a fine job beginning a
five-issue adaptation of the first-published Honor
Harrington
novel, On
Basilisk Station,
into the form of artistic narrative. Telling the story in the form
of Honor's memories in the context of her time as a captive facing
torture, show-trial, and execution as described in the seventh novel,
In Enemy Hands (about half-way through the sequence of novels as they
currently stand), writer Matt Hawkins is able to give subtly
different perspectives on events and characters based on Honor's
knowledge of the events to be told in those half-dozen novels. The
characters all ring true, for the most part. The main thing I (and
others) missed was her new (in the flashback) X.O.'s hostility toward
Honor being given command. It's mentioned but not really shown. How
they go from antagonism to friendship is an important part of
McKeon's character development. For all the furor among devotees of
the series on the Weber'verse boards (which have an entire section
devoted to Evergreen's efforts [LINK])
I thought the visuals were just fine, again for the most part.
Overall, the art is stunning, and the space-scenes beautiful,
beginning with the map of human-settled space on the inside front
cover and continuing with the depiction of the drive-fields warping
space around the starships in motion and the defensive “sidewall”
shields fending off attackers' fire. I thought the uniforms worked
just fine in this medium, as did the ship designs. Would I have
preferred something a bit closer to the books' descriptions of the
ships? – Yes. But these are close enough, and provide a good
balance between prose canon and making something visually indicative
that “This
is a space-ship.”
There is a certain nondescript “sameness” in the characters'
appearances that I would like to see refined, some individuality
developed – but I can almost understand not
doing
so at this point since the presumed aim is that these comics pave the
way for movies starring actors who are far from being cast. I figure
that's not really a consideration, though, since I'm sure many other
visual elements will change from this early stage of development. Of
course, there is one
area of design I do
want to see change radically – and quickly. As seems nigh
universal on the boards, my main quibble design-wise is Honor's
treecat Nimitz, who looks far too reptilian, draconian,
even making me think more of Kitty Pryde's Lockheed (for you old-time
X-Men
fans) than anything remotely resembling (and therefore expected to be
likened to) a Terran “cat.” Evergreen seriously needs to rethink
their approach in that one instance. Otherwise, I was quite pleased
by Jung-Geun Yoon's visualization (with unspecified “art assists”
by Linda Sejic) of a world I have “seen” only in my head for most
of two decades. In fact, on second thought, the “nondescriptness”
in the characters means I don't think there's much chance of their
appearance here overlaying the visualizations I've had in my head as
I read the novels. Finally, I'd like to call notice to the
lettering. It is not your standard bland font that seems to be the
norm in comics today, which are long past the old-style
hand-lettering that was the standard for decades. And yet Troy
Peteri (I presume – he's credited as “letterer”) has designed a
font that emulates the character that hand-lettering imparted. It
fits very well the voice of the story, presented as first-person
ruminations on the career that has brought Honor to her current
state.
The
book opens with a page by David Weber himself as “Creator
of the Honorverse,”
and closes with a “Science
Class”
section including a text page by writer Matt Hawkins, several pages
of early designs for various characters and things depicted in the
comic itself, and an inside back-cover text excerpt from On
Basilisk Station describing “How
Ships Work in the Honorverse” (here illustrated with a schematic). Weber and Hawkins provide eagerly awaited (well, by me
at least – and I suspect I'm not alone) information about the
overall plans, Weber giving a bit of a broader perspective and
Hawkins being more specific to the comics and where they anticipate
going: “The
first five issues of this series will tell the core story of On
Basilisk Station,
and then we'll move on to The
Honor of the Queen
with the next five. We'll continue to slowly leak out the story from
In
Enemy Hands
until we get to it, and can do an arc specifically on that as well.”
I'm
excited! For
Honor!
Cheers!
– and Thanks for reading!
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