The fine people at Titan Books have sent me a new stack of graphic novels, this time based on the Dead Space video game series. I’ve never actually played the games, but I’m more than happy to review good comics when I get them. We’ll start with the collected edition of Dead Space, written by Antony Johnston and drawn by Ben Templesmith. The series was first published as six separate issues in 2008. It’s a prequel to the first game, telling the story of the original Necromorph outbreak on the planet Aegis VII. I can’t say how well it ties into the first game, or what fans of the series might think, but I can say that it’s a pretty cool story, playing out like your typical space monster movie.

Dead Space

If you’re a fan of the Dead Space video game series, I think you’ll enjoy this prequel adventure. Non-fans might enjoy this gripping and claustrophobic monster tale, drawn with some very moody art.

Comic Rating: 4/5: Good.

This graphic novel plays out exactly like a good old fashioned monster movie, especially one in space. A far-off, isolated space colony discovers something mysterious and alien, it slowly starts to drive people insane and then finally everything explodes in gore, guts and reanimated corpses! That this graphic novel is a prequel instead of just an adaptation of the video game is a good idea. It tells its own story, and for fans of the series, I bet it would make a nice companion piece.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Dead Space games, they’re a series of third-person, survival horror shooters starring space engineer Isaac Clarke. They typically involve exploring dark and spooky environments that get more and more wicked and dangerous as the Necromorphs start taking over. It’s a fairly popular series, I believe, with Dead Space 3 released earlier this month. And like most good video game franchises these days, there’s a whole wealth of backstory to discover and pour over as you play. I know the first Dead Space game is littered with various tidbits of information about the breakout, and it appears that writer Antony Johnston has taken some of those clips and turned them into their own fascinating story.

This kind of comic is right up my alley. And there are two more Dead Space graphic novels to review at a latter date. For now, let’s explore Dead Space, which you can find on Amazon.com.

In my younger days, I was a huge fan of the Resident Evil franchise. I played all the games, and then, being the geek that I am, I bought, read and thoroughly enjoy a series of prose novels. Some of them were adaptations of the games and some were new, original stories starring the same characters. I think I actually read the adaptation of Resident Evil 1 before actually going back and playing it for the original Playstation. I have no idea if any of these extra novels are considered canon, but I do know that I enjoyed them for what they were, because some of the best video games create worlds that cannot be contained solely to the games. The same is true for World of Warcraft novels.

So I like the very idea of these tie-in comics, fleshing out the Dead Space universe and giving us a wider appreciation of what’s happening. Are they necessary for the games? Of course not. But sometimes you just want to spend a little more time in the world.

Especially one that looks this freaky

Dead Space tells the story of the people living and working on Aegis VII, a planet has been selected for mining by the Concordance Extraction Corporation (CEC). Everything starts going wrong when miners uncover a Marker, a large stone artifact that is very significant to the Unitology religion. Some evil force within the Marker starts causing the miners and other civilians to start going insane, but the devout Unitologists in charge of CEC want to keep the Marker safe for studying, which includes bringing it aboard their ship, the Ishimura. Fans of the first game will remember that name.

Planetside, it’s up to P-Sec detective Bram Neumann, his partner Cortez, his girlfriend Marla and a handful of other characters to try and figure out what’s gone wrong and hopefully stop it before things get out of control.

But not before flirting with his girlfriend

Neumann doesn’t appear in the first Dead Space video game, but he is featured on one of the audio files you find throughout the game. So in a way, he becomes a pretty neat Easter Egg.

There’s also a backup story starring Isaac Clarke’s girlfriend Nicole. She actually appears in the first video game, and her backup story details what happened to her and the crew of the Ishimura when the Necromorphs started killing everybody.

Both the main Dead Space story and Nicole’s backup are good reads. They’re both tightly packed stories filled with action and menace, with a strong focus on the growing sense of dread. As with any good monster movie, you’re left wondering who might survive to the end even though their whole world is falling apart around them. Bram Neumann is a fun protagonist. His character isn’t very deep, I suppose. He’s the typical hard-nosed cop determined to do the right thing. And while that doesn’t change, he easily steps into the role of alien-killing badass. His co-workers and allies are just as compelling, providing a nice supporting cast destined to be cut to pieces by the Necromorphs.

The glasses guy is cut to especially gruesome ribbons

Nicole’s backup story is very good. The story is much shorter than the main feature and is told exclusively through Nicole and her inner thoughts. This provides a stronger immediacy than the main feature, and really helps to flesh out her character a as a nurse who wants to help people, but finds herself in increasingly horrible situations. I am a sucker for good people trying to survive in horror movies.

The art by Ben Templesmith takes a little getting used to at first, but it grew on me by the end of the story. I tend to like clean, detailed artwork in my comics, but Templesmith clearly has a style all his own. The art is a very serious kind of cartoony, with characters drawn more as sketches than as actual people. It definitely works in creating a certain mood for the series. And once the story picks up near the end, the art is a strength. The colors are washed out and rarely solid, but like I said, it becomes a strength of the story towards the end, when Aegis VII descends into deadly chaos. Sometimes, though, it was a struggle to tell certain characters apart, especially the women. Most of the male characters had something distinctive about them to tell them apart, but the women were all females with similar long hair.

The art definitely works when it comes to drawing the gruesome Necromorphs. They’re bloody, ugly and absolutely killer.

I suppose that’s the point

The art fails, however, in the background shots of the growing Necromorph threat. In certain scenes, I believe we’re supposed to be seeing the walls of the space station covered in big splotches of disgusting, bloody Necromorph fungus. Instead, we just get some generic squiggly lines and a little red coloring. Definitely let down there. I imagine we were supposed to be seeing something really gross and frightening growing on the walls, but that’s not what we got.

And as far as monsters go, the Necromorphs were not the scariest I’ve ever seen. Some of the bigger monsters definitely looked scary, but there was nothing especially compelling or personal about the Necromorphs. None of the characters we know ever really come back as Necromorphs. And there are no singular monsters to pick out as someone we should watch out for. They’re all just generic evil space monsters. That probably works fine for a video game, but in a graphic novel, I would have liked something a bit deeper. The opening chapters of the Marker and its effect on the civilian population are good though. The tension builds and builds, getting spookier and spookier.

You can never go home again

This first Dead Space graphic novel has a lot to enjoy, with a few flaws, especially in the art. If you’re a fan of the series, especially the first game, I think this graphic novel would be a great addition to your fandom. It’s a fully realized prequel with characters that tie in to the backstory already presented in the game. This might even fill in some of the blanks. As a monster story, it’s also good, with interesting characters and a good hold on the tension and growing dread of a space station overrun by zealots and Necromorphs.

After reading this graphic novel, I might actually give Dead Space a try.