World of Warcraft: The Comic issue 13 preview
by Alex Ziebart 
Nov 19th 2008 at 3:00PM
If you've been following the World of Warcraft comic, you might be pleased to hear the official WoW website posted a preview of issue #13 last night. After reading it, if you're like me, you'll be dramatically less pleased. Maybe you'll enjoy it, but I personally have no idea how much longer I'll keep reading this thing. The comic was never really good good, it was corny good, which is sometimes exactly what you're looking for. It's quickly falling out of corny good into bad. Varian Wrynn talking to Varian Wrynn #2 is just a silly, piss-poor way or trying to drag character development out of him. Come on now. He can't talk to another character about his past? He needs to talk to himself? Oh no, it can't be an inner monologue, either! You know what we need? Two Varians so they can be emo together. Come on. Varian Wrynn has the potential to be a really engaging character, but this writing make me cringe. I don't care if the clone turns out to have some totally super awesome twist in the end, this is still terrible.
Oh, and if I see one more character thrust their chest to the sky in a futile attempt to look powerful and noble I am going to stab myself in the eyeballs. Gah. It's so bad it hurts. It feels like we're in the early 90s again.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Comics
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Breck Nov 19th 2008 3:13PM
Damn, that artist is the biggest Joe Mad swiper since Roger Cruz.
Tarean Nov 19th 2008 3:14PM
Meh, it's just canon filler until they release the Arthas and Stormrage novels.
Nobby Nov 19th 2008 3:16PM
I read the preview.
It wasn't that good. The writing is pretty dull and the art work reminds me more of anime than of warcraft, thematically.
Thumbs down.
Deadly. Off. Topic. Nov 19th 2008 4:54PM
I wish they'd get people with some skill to write their books and their comics - it's like they want to ruin the stories for the series.
Tengu Nov 19th 2008 3:30PM
You know what would've been good. A comic about the horde and the alliance... kinda like a Warcraft comic book or something. owait...
futurebiblehero Nov 19th 2008 3:41PM
Is all Warcraft-based fiction of this quality? I've been told it's all great, but the people that have been telling me that I'm missing out also love this comic (which I think is total garbage).
I've developed an interest in finding out about the lore beyond the games, but this just isn't doing it for me.
Alex Ziebart Nov 19th 2008 3:43PM
Many of the books are good, some of them aren't so great, none of them are as bad as the comic has become.
Dean Nov 19th 2008 3:59PM
That'd be a good idea for a feature or even a regular column looking at the tie-ins actually. What's genuinely good, what's good if you love the lore, and what's downright bad.
I found the comic shockingly bad which is a shame as the only novel I've read (Cycle of Hatred) was awesome.
Dunwich Nov 19th 2008 4:06PM
Yeah, most of it is absolute bilge - The manga is painful, Knaaks books are tripe, and the comic is horrible.
A shame. I still say having various "short" stories about the more outlandish or offbeat parts of the setting would be far better than GENERIC HUMAN TOUGH GUY and GENERIC ELF CHICK WITH STONKING GREAT... Yeah. I can get that from a thousand and one truly awful fantasy novels. I can't get a troll rogue and a gnome rogue embroiled in a deadly game of cat and mouse over stolen Steamwheedle Cartel schematics.
daimajin39 Nov 19th 2008 4:10PM
The comic is just not very good I'm afraid. I was expecting something more along the lines of 'the Adventurers' indy comic from the mid to late 80's. The art wasn't fantastic on that but the story was much better imo.
Zal Nov 19th 2008 4:50PM
I love the books but the comic? Holy crap I hate it. I keep reading for the sake of the lore but man is it boring. The plot just drags and the characters are all dull. If it doesn't pick up soon I'll probably just stop reading altogether.
Danath Nov 19th 2008 4:14PM
I personally like the novels, but the comic was garbage from issue one, filled with ridiculous amounts of wangst (look it up), and it only grows worse as it goes on, spilling over into World of Warcraft (Varian Wrynn, Undercity, blare some Linken Park and watch him scream at the horde for no particular reason when he knows exactly what actually happened).
I actually liked all the novels I've read, but im a fantasy buff, so im a bit biased on that note, although maybe its the fact none of the characters angst out so hard for so long that you want to scream at them "GET OVER IT!".
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Wangst
Read it.
Agent StanSmith Nov 19th 2008 4:51PM
The comics I've read have sucked hard.
The books I've read have ranged from pretty good filler on lore to really good filler on lore.
The Last Guardian is really cool if you're doing Karazhan.
The Well of Eternity etc is pretty interesting background if you're doing Black Temple.
Best background information, especially in light of the expansion would still be to play through the Warcraft III series. It makes parts of WoW REALLY interesting.
Of course, its another game + 2 xpacs that will take up a lot more time. Reading can be done on the toilet, not so much an RTS. If only the game had cheats so you could blaze through the missions and watch the cut-scenes. I don't really need to build a base, zerg the other guy's base, repeat in order to know the lore, but the cutscenes are GREAT!
Agent StanSmith Nov 19th 2008 4:56PM
Heh I just followed the link to the preview. Its even worse than I remember. And what's with the art? It looks like a retarded sock monkey drew it while hammered on lysterine.
Doffencrag Nov 19th 2008 5:11PM
AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs
(Instant victory in WC3 and WC3:TFT. Go straight to cut scene. Do not pass "Go").
Andostre Nov 19th 2008 4:57PM
Sadly, this is the state of most comic books today. (Not all, but most.) I'm sure the comic's publisher was giddy at the chance of introducing comic books to a large, new audience that would buy a Warcraft comic, but with the quality of this work, all that it's going to do is keep this large, new audience away from comic books.
CrippledByStupidity Nov 19th 2008 5:08PM
You guys are just jumping on the hater wagon! Its not that bad! Yes, it could be better but the writers probably never even played WoW.
Alveredus Nov 19th 2008 5:12PM
I think the thing, for better and worse, is that they chose Walt Simonson to write this comic.
He's a product of the 70s and while his mythological knowledge and love for classical fantasy tropes is there, he doesn't necessarily mesh well with Warcraft, even though Metzen is a big fan and Simonson's Thor comic book run, which has some precursors to steampunk in it and a mix of high adventure and humor, is obviously a big influence on Metzen's Warcraft.
The result is that Warcraft feels a little too reverent, a little too fantasy based, a little too fairy tale.
And, honestly, if I were to place Simonson on a Warcraft project, it would be one focussed on the Vrykul. The norse-inspired stuff shines under Simonson and I feel like someone told him to play down the kind of humor he used to do in Fantastic Four.
Off the top of my head, they should consider making these projects shorter (six-issues tops) and amping up the FUN content a little, focusing on story rather than straight lore.
Joe Kelly could do an engaging story about an engineer. He has a steampunk sensibility and his writing would mesh well with a very animated art style and the Gnomes and Goblins. It would be worth it for the anarchronism alone -- and it isn't Warcraft without some modern speech and anachronism worked in.
And while it's a pipe dream, Neil Gaiman would be well-suited to the quasi-Japanese, quasi-Elizabethan, quasi-amazon Night Elves. The elves and the Emerald Dream could practically function as an extension of his Sandman.
Somebody should hand Jeph Loeb a big book of crazy trinkets and quest lines like the Orb of Deception and the Caverns of Time and let him and Ed McGuinness spend six issues breaking the lore (and the universe) with Rhonin and Saurfang.
Mark Millar could probably do something engaging with Varien and Thrall, since his sensibilities blend together war and national security concerns. He's able to instill war-mongering tyrants with a bit of majesty.
Geoff Johns is a perfect fir for Illidan's biography. He grasps the idea of the angry outsider as anti-hero quite well and is a trivia nerd capable of absorbing the lore.
Grant Morrison belongs on a project involving the Titans and the Burning Legion, probably interspliced with a modern story centering around a five man party present day.
Simonson is best suited to the Vrykul and the origins of humanity.
Judd Winick seems like the guy to handle the Blood Elves in all their seedy majesty. Sure, his women are trampy, his characters are uber trendy, his characters alternate between borderline gay jokes and lectures against the evils of homophobia... But that sounds like a Blood Elf comic to me.
Gary Nov 19th 2008 5:28PM
Kinky.
Nene Nov 19th 2008 6:12PM
I'm really fond of Valeera. She's a plucky little thing, and Broll is also pretty cool although he very much has some "I am a bad father, I will make up for it by becoming the daddy to this orphan Blood Elf jailbait" issues going on.
Varian was a pretty cool guy before he remembered he was the king of Stormwind and an unabashed racist, eh, cuts orcs in half and doesn't afraid of anything
It's sad when you realize Anduin is probably a better choice for the Alliance than his father.