As we all discovered last month with WildStorm's Modern Warfare 2: Ghost #1 (read our review of Modern Warfare 2: Ghost #1), I'm not particularly high on video games being turned into comics. Often times the games that get comic book counterparts are the ones with little story to tell in their own medium, so why the holy hell would I want the same mindless jargon in my reading, minus the interactivity? Well, I'm happy to report that Dante's Inferno #1 assuaged my temptations to hate every video game tie-in book and gave me quite an enjoyable read.
The game, and subsequently this comic, are based on Dante Alighieri's first epic "chapter" of Divine Comedy, the shared title Dante's Inferno. My gripes with the cover being plastered with "Based on the Upcoming EA Video Game" aside (Alighieri gets the shaft), the book approaches the classic tale with a fresh skin, turning the titular Dante into a hero of the Crusades that returns from war to find his lover Beatrice slain. Her soul captured in Hell, Dante has no choice but to walk through the nine Circles to save her.
What writer Christos Gage and presumably, the team over at evil corporate conglomerate EA Games, has done with the tale is taken away the allegory of Alighieri's original piece and replaced it with character development. Dante and Beatrice become an eternally linked couple, both of whom have led imperfect lives and done drastic things in both love and war. Gage writes each of them poetically, and though some pages may become jumbled occasionally, it's clear that there was a passion for giving this legendary literary figure a new dimension, including a romantic counterpart and a history.
The real breadwinner of this issue issue though, is absolutely artist Diego Latorre. While his work is something that you need to experience for yourself, the best way I can describe it is a beautiful amalgamation of artists like Dave McKean, Sam Kieth and James O'Barr that results in a gloriously abstract storytelling experience.
I realize that "abstract storytelling" could sound like a bit of an oxymoron, but Gage takes control of the narrative while allowing Latorre to render his panels in any way he sees fit, be it with fractured segments of color that magically form the face of Satan or a series of pencil thin lines that miraculously blend together to form the image of a human body. If EA's video game has half the artistic integrity of WildStorm's book (it won't), then I swear I'll reconsider all my previous comments comparing EA to a conniving blackhole void of originality.
If you've been lambasted in your efforts to enjoy a book that ties into a video game you are pumped for playing, then look no further. If this first issue is anything to judge by, then those efforts are about to pay off in Dante's Inferno.
