Ashley Wood

The art was what drew me in, and it was the best part of the book. Love the conceit, and that the landscape of the book unfolds slowly, through epistolary narrative. But the writing didn't quite live up to the challenge of so many voices: there were some glaring off-tone moments, and mixed modes. Still, a great concept, engagingly told, and beautifully drawn.

OK, the basic idea behind this graphic novel is that mad scientists accidentally bring a zombie plague back from the future (or maybe the past?), which wipes out humanity, leaving our robotic replacements behind to fight the shambling undead remnants of their creators. I am sure that it would be possible to create a serious, thoughtful, internally consistent story based on this weirdly intriguing premise. This... is not that story. I'm not entirely sure what this is, but it's full of pulpy show more action and nonsensical plot twists, and eventually, for some reason, there are Amazons. It's actually pretty entertaining, in a WTFish sort of way, with lots of fun, dark humor, but ultimately it's a bit too all over the place to feel satisfying. And the messy, murky artwork, as well as not being much to my taste, often made the action annoyingly difficult to follow. I don't remotely regret the hour and a half I spent reading it, but I can't quite imagine recommending it to anybody else. show less

I've played the video game that this graphic novel is based on (or tried, at least - I was no good at it), and decided to have a look at this graphic novel. And, to save anyone the suspense of reading it, this is absolute trash. Don't bother.

The story of the graphic novel (and the game), though... terrorists that used to belong to disbanded American military unit have taken over a military base in Alaska. They're demanding the dead body of a legendary soldier to analyse it and study it to show more obtain soldier genes. Apparently, excellent soldiers have certain genetic combinations, and you can use these to genetically engineer super soldiers. Or something like that. To ensure their demands are met, they've got a working nuclear bomb ready to launch. Our hero, Solid Snake, is inserted near the base, and has to sneak in, see if they are capable of a nuclear launch, and prevent said launch.

And while the stealth is conveyed quite well in the video game (because you have to wait for soldiers to pass and sneak by them with some ability), there's no such thing as stealth in this graphic novel. Solid Snake is briefed on the first page, rushes in, finds weapons by the fourth page, and then starts shooting all the villians and blowing up maniacs driving military tanks. There's no pausing to wait for guards to pass by, or to sneak around cameras and crawl through ventilation ducts. This is supposed to be a stealth mission, but if the opening page didn't say it, I would think that Solid Snake is actually Rambo in disguise.

And while the story of the video game was quite intriguing, the rapid pace in which the story progresses her makes the SF-style touches to the plot all seem quite silly.

The drawing and colouring don't even do the storyline justice. I don't know how to describe it, except to say it is a mess. Pictures are unclear, poorly coloured, poorly lined, pretty much poorly everything. Yuk, yuk, yuk.

It is certainly an intriguing idea to have a graphic novel about a soldier seeking to manoeuvre past enemies by steath, but the concept is not delivered at all. The skill with which the story was told in the video game is not conveyed at all here, and the artwork is complete rubbish. show less

Ashley Wood’s illustrations are poignant and emphatic. The author has a wide ranging storytelling that carries the mythos of Tank Girl across the gamit of post-apocalyptic travel and end of days. In the quest to quell the testament or throes of harrowing past-life memories we see our heroine put to the test in this timely graphic novel.