If you are a facebook friend then you know that at 10:45 last night I was playing Gears of War 2. I shot, stabbed, and maimed my way through several stages of Horde with my Golden Lancer before calling it quits. I love the game, and the comic book that goes along with it is a big part of the reason why. Look at it this way, the comic book helps to expand the world that is Gears of War into to something you can really understand and even feel.
The story of Gears works as a metaphor for the political problems we face today, instead of killing each other over oil, the soldiers of Gears of War die over emulsion, it’s not until a bigger threat comes along that humanity unites under a single banner.
The Gears of War comic isn’t a continuation of the Gears video game, instead it serves to bridge the gap between the first game and the second. There are more characters introduced in the comic series and certain aspects of the story are further explored in the books. Things like rustlung (an affliction brought about by the ending of the first game) are further explored through character interaction.
Kudos go out to the writers of the comic because they have to operate within a certain window of time and that can be difficult. Issue 8 takes a step away from Marcus Fenix and his team to focus on a Gear who unfortunately doesn’t make it. The story is dramatic and intense and it really puts you into the shoes of a Gear.
Issue 9 picks up the main story once again and also introduces you to the first female Gear to appear in the book. Her name is Alex and she’s awesome, her story blows the universe of Gears of War wide open and takes the story to places that you might not have thought possible. The trick to storytelling has to be painting a clear picture of the entire world your characters live in, and this issue serves to do just that. The issue explores what lengths a government would go through to keep it’s population going and it isn’t pretty.
If you are a fan of the video games and the story they tell then this is the book for you, Gears of War is visceral and hard hitting with all the action you would expect from a war book. Do yourself a favor and check out Gears of War before you’re too many issues behind.
