Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
World of Warcraft #1
Wildstorm (DC Comics)
Simonson, Lullabi & Hope
I know nothing of this story other than it is a video game. I get this information from the many, many ads I've seen in other titles (and this one too). I picked it up for two reasons: 1) I like a good sword story and 2) I wanted to test this title to see if just anyone off the street can pick it up.
I wanted to start this review off by stating that while I was in the local comic shop, purchasing this week's books, a young man walked in, walked directly to this comic, picked it up, bought it and left. My assumption is that this guy played the video game, heard about the comic and wanted to check it out. If this is true then Wildstorm is already succeeding in bringing in new readers into the comics world. Now if they can keep them….
Those of you familiar with Lord of the Rings or Forgotten Realms know many of the character types. We have Orcs, Elves, Trolls and many others. They may look a little different from story to story, but the gist is usually the same.
This story opens with a human laying in the surf while a band of orcs pass by. The human is attacked by some type of crocodile and the orcs begin to wager on whether he will survive or not. One orc, in particular, likes the fighting style he sees in the human and decides that the human must live through the battle so that he can be captured for gladiator warfare. The human lives, he's captured by the orcs and meets up with some other captives.
The human, who is nameless because he has amnesia, meets up with two elves. The first is a shape shifting night elf named Broll Bearmantle, a giant, long-horned blue elf. The second is a blood elf who is deemed a traitor by the first, named Valeera Sanguinar - a child-like female.
The three are to be teammates in the arena, but first they must survive some tests. They mainly battle a team led by a one-eyed goblin who has on his team a zombie, a troll and a grimtotem tauren. At this point you are either lost, don’t care or are intrigued enough to pick this up. I liked it.
At first the human wont fight and the elves just fight each other, until faced with extreme adversity and then the human shows he has some mad skills. After pretty much being the only one left, the human is faced with a giant Orc warrior, who actually wants the human on his team at the Dire Maul - the great orc games. Kind of like Orc Olympics I guess. That's our issue. The cliffhanger being that the human will battle the big, bad orc in the next issue.
In all, the art work is excellent. I was particularly taken by the coloring. The eyes of the elves and the orcs are freaky and deep, yet they have a shine to them. I also really liked the details on the armor and weapons. I understand much of this probably is in the game, but still its impressive in print. To a newbie, like me, its pretty damn cool.
The story moves quickly and has lots of action. What is a little strange is I feel I want to know more about the orcs, the elves and the goblin-lead team than the human. I find his character very uninteresting at this point. But nonetheless, the dialog from the other characters keeps the story moving. I particularly like the stress between the two elves.
Basically, I liked this story. Sword and sorcery comics are fairly hard to get into. Sometimes they bombard you with names and cities and geography that you just get numb to it. This comic has less than ten characters so far, they are mostly all different visually and the comic basically takes place in two locations. It's perfect for easing into the pool slowly. I'm in the water, so its up to Wildstorm not to chase me out now.
4 out of 5 geek goggles.
Check out the next issue:
World Of Warcraft #2
DC Comics
OCT070240D
