The aftermaths of the King of Iron Fist Tournament shouldn’t be this blasé.
Creative Staff:
Story: Cavan Scott
Art: Andie Tong
Colors: Mauricio Wallace
What They Say:
All new comic series based on the iconic fighting game franchise! Written by Cavan Scott (Doctor Who, Vikings) and illustrated by Andie Tong! This sensational new comic series will tap into TEKKEN’s rich history, and will feature memorable characters from the celebrated video game canon including Heihachi Mishima, Yoshimitsu, Nina Williams and Paul Phoenix.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
One of the premier fighter gaming in the world, Tekken captures the audience with its expansive roster, core mechanics, and various fighting styles. It makes for a great fighting game, but the transition to a comic leaves a ho-hum impression. Everything isn’t extravagant in this first issue, but nothing gives it a standout as compared to its video game source material.
Jin Kazama is missing. After the last King of Iron Fist Tournament, he disappeared without a trace and no one can seem to locate him. Meanwhile, Ling Xiaoyu is running late to a meetup when she’s suddenly attacked. Who are these attackers, and what do they want from Ling? More importantly, is it tied to Jin and if so how? These questions do get answered but do not do enough work to maintain an interest of how these questions are answered.
This story has a lack of drawing power. We get introduced to a roster characters but very little to give you emotionally connected them. It feels as if they just want to push a roster just to say “Hey I know this character.” No proper emotional connection. The very few times that the connections to occur they feel superfluous. It just does not feel like the story wants you to believe the importance of the events and the characters that are driving these events. To further the disconnect, it assumes a lot of the readers. It doesn’t talk about the various corporations or the reason why these corporations are of importance. It expects you to know the backgrounds of the stories and the characters. And even assuming you are familiar with the franchise it does feel a bit disjointed as it comes off not fully establishing the narrative tone.
Speaking of disjointed, the action scenes come off disjointed as well. Opting against proper transitions for each sequence, the fighting scenes feel like a bunch of frames. Each major action feels like a snapshot but doesn’t evoke the transition in or out of the fighting sequence. It makes the work feel stiff at times and not as enticing or enthralling to read and view as you’re going from one page to another. On one hand, it feels nice to have pictures that feel like decent paintings. At the same time, it, like the artwork, feels like it’s working to the letter of a job and calling it a day.
The artwork for this volume is serviceable. The designs all hark back from Tekken and look on the model. The scenery passes for regular detail within comics and does help set the mood for each panel. The drawn scenes feel regular and established for the genre and medium. It feels like they wanted to avert risks by playing it safe. While they did, it doesn’t really stand out except for the fact that it’s Tekken.
In Summary:
Tekken really does not break boundaries of video game comics. Rather, it decides to join the various list of video game comics that are there to attract the core fans. With its dedication to the story without proper entry and lack of elaboration on characters, new readers simply won’t feel ready to jump into the Tekken universe. For fans, however, it’s a nice comic to have and read but not necessary to own.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Titan Comics
Release Date: May 3rd, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
