TALES OF HONOR #1
This is an expansion into comics of the Honorverse military sci-fi novels written by David Weber. There are currently twenty-two novels out there right now. TOH looks to grow that universe by not just adapting, but creating new stories that fit seamlessly into the stories first explored in the books.
Written by Matt Hawkins (Think Tank, Aphrodite IX) and illustrated by Jung-Geun Yoon (Artifacts) we start off with a captured Commander Honor Harrington, imprisoned and reflecting on her past. It is a good setup to ease new readers into this expansive universe and present a between-the-lines tale that will seem fresh to longtime fans. Hawkins has a firm grasp of hard sci-fi that makes the more fantastic elements (wormhole transportation, gravitic phase disruption, grav lances, etc.) plausible. Kudos to him (and ultimately to David Weber as well) for delivering into comic book reader’s hands a strong female lead worth rooting for.
Jung-Geun’s art is simply beautiful. Never too stiff, balanced between pure illustration and photo realism, it possesses a warmth of tone that a lot of books that fall into this visual wheelhouse struggle to achieve. Take your favorite cut scenes from say, Halo, and replace the CGI with painted effects and you get an idea of how striking his visuals are to the eye.
If you have been jonesing for some good interstellar hard sci-fi ever since you finished that tenth play through of Mass Effect 3, then this is a comic you will want to pick up to feed that need. If you are a fan of the novels, think of this as your “Expanded Universe.” Whether this issue works effectively as such for those fans of the series, I can’t say. I haven’t yet gotten around to checking out Honor’s literary adventures; but as a comic, this issue works in delivering an engaging, character driven exploration of the main heroine, her world, and the dangers that lie in wait for her and her crew.
(Flip the page for 2 mini-reviews!)