This seems to be the month of The Last of Us. The game came out. The art book for the video game came out. And it seems to me that everywhere I look on the internet everyone who cares about gaming is all over it, from Tim Buckley of Ctrl+Alt+Del, to The Escapist‘s Josh Vanderwall and Felicia Day’s Twitter. And now we have the third part of a four part comic miniseries that really pulls us into the meat of the setting with the first glimpse of the Fireflies and the Infected. Follow me and we’ll check it out together.
This is what I have been waiting for. Smoke grenades, gun fire, mushroom zombies; what’s not to love? Let’s be honest: this game may be more focused on the people than on the mushroom zombies, but without them there wouldn’t much of a story, now would there?
In this issue, Ellie and Riley are chased by everyone. The good guys, the bad guys, the questionably good guys, everyone. They probably shouldn’t have left home. But between getting shot at, fighting off snarling fungi and nearly getting killed by people they risked their lives to save, they can at least return home with a great tale of adventure. Assuming they make it home alive at all. It ends on a cliffhanger, like the first two issues, but this one is definitely more tense. The others just left you wondering what will happen next, whereas this time, we have more immediate reasons to actually be concerned for for our main characters.
Now, I have to point out that while the art is usually very good, and mostly keeps to that standard of quality this time, there’s one cell that really bugs me. Ellie and Riley are climbing off a roof, with Riley going first, and she’s low enough on the ladder/in the frame that only her shoulders, arms, and head are visible. This wouldn’t normally be much of an issue, but the reason it looks odd is because the cell is on the last row of images for the page, and the cells go right to the edge of the page. So instead of drawing the reader’s eye down to the next line, it draws their eye off the bottom of the page and out of the comic. It’s just a major artistic collapse that shakes the reader out of any sense of immersion they had! Faith Erin Hicks, I love you art in this series, but this was an amateur mistake. I expect better from you.
I knit pick. It happens. That doesn’t make this a bad comic, though and I still definitely recommend it. It’s $3.99, which is a little more expensive than the average comic ($3.50), but it’s also a little longer (32 pages), so I’d say that’s a fair trade.
Matthew Bryant, aka Baker Street Holmes, is an Editor for the Red Shirt Crew. He minored in social psychology, focusing on the impact of environment on the mind’s experience, so sometimes little things annoy him. You can follow him on Twitter at @BStreetHolmes or e-mail him at HMCrazySS@gmail.com.
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