People tend to believe that there is a specific kind of readers usually buying and reading comic books, the same kind of readers that have to go through a pretty hard time of acne in high school, listen to music genres that would make their parents’ ears bleed and play video games all night long. Well, there are of course exceptions but let’s face it, people tend to be right. That is precisely why most widely known comics’ publishers choose stories and series with subjects that would be familiar to their potential reader, like mini series about famous serial killers from horror movies (God only knows how many Jason, Freddie and Chucky comics we had), cliché stories about your usual misunderstood teenager whose skills are revealed in 10-75 issues (depending on the sales) and, why not, adaptations of video games. How long did you think it would take them to make an ongoing series about the most played game in the world?
There have been a few tries to adapt the versatile and unique universe of World of Warcraft in many different ways but most of them lead to disappointing, at least, results. There was the Sunwell Trilogy, a manga about a dragon and those trying to kill or help him, I read it about a year ago but wasn’t impressed at all, black and white, not much of a story and female characters with big boobs (I really have no idea if they published the other two parts of the trilogy). There are also some soft cover books with stories based on the WoW mythology but still, none of the really big names in the comic industry had shown actual interest in the potential of a huge world with an immense storyline that keeps about 8 million people occupied in the biggest massive multiplayer role playing game ever made. That’s not the case anymore.
Starting this November Wildstorm will try to fit WoW in a monthly ongoing series and although available information are extremely limited it seems like pretty serious work. The first story arc will be about a human (warrior by the looks of the cover) found on the shores of Kalimdor with no memory of his past whatsoever. He is soon captured and enslaved by an Orc Shaman and finds himself fighting both Horde and
For those of you that are familiar with WoW it seems like a pretty standard rpg story, a man starting from nothing, creating a party with different characters and fighting everything in his way. Will the main character change after the first 6-issue story? Will it cover the known WoW mythology or expand and create new stories and heroes (that might also appear in the new upcoming expansion for the game)? Will it be good for Warcraft fans and other comic book readers or just another rip-off of a successful series of video games? We’ll know pretty soon!
(I have to admit I was desperately trying not to quote Illidan “You are not prepared”, darn I knew I wouldn’t make it to the end…)
