Atop the Level Up: Freedom Force #1

Welcome to atop the Level Up, where bad video game based comics burn.

Do you guys remember about a little over a year ago, when I reviewed the game Freedom Force for my birthday? It was a part RPG, part RTS computer game heavily based on comic books. It featured superheroes that were quite comparable to real ones already on shelves across comic book stores everywhere, but were original creations for the game. Naturally, sometime around the time the sequel would be released, someone decided that releasing an actual comic based on the game would be good promotional material, and so a 6 comic miniseries was published. Well, this could be alright, I mean, it’s already heavily comic book inspired so the transition should be pretty easy. Oh wait; it’s published by Image Comics… *sigh* Let’s just dig into Freedom Force number 1.

*Theme song mashup plays*

The cover, for me, is made even worse by the fact that this is the first issue: the true first impression (other then the game) hoping to catch the reader’s attention so he keeps on reading and maybe play the game as is the case with licensed comics like this… but it’s just bad. The characters are all crowded and are in a general “leaping pose” towards the bad guy smooshed at the bottom left corner. Each hero though seems to be looking in a different direction and I think El Diablo’s neck snapped out of place. I also assume that they were going for the look of X-men number one (Magneto defending himself, the other’s attacking, etc…) but it just fails due to the oddly placed characters.

We open the comic to Frank Stiles sitting on park ben- Wait, this is the Domain Empire. Really? You couldn’t follow the game for ONE PAGE? Well, technically, this is chronologically what happened first, so I won’t bash the comic too much for. But one thing I did notice within the first few pages is the odd spacing of the panels (and you know its really weird when you notice it this much). You know how in some comics, the panel locations change, sometime over lap, take interesting shapes, have colors between the panels, etc…? Well this is very… formatted: the panels are always square or rectangular, there’s always the same amount of space between them and it’s always white on the page. Seems cheap to me, especially since this is image comics and not an indie producer.

Anyways, the plot is basically the same as in the video game: Lord Dominion only has Earth left to conquer to be the ruler of the entire universe, so he decides to have some fun with this last planet and give Energy X to only the most corrupt humans. *Thus the powerpuff girls were born* Energy X, not chemical X. Anyways, an underling calling himself the Mentor decides to fight against Lord Dominion by taking the Energy X and giving it to heroic individuals. However, a blast to the cargo of his ship randomly distributes the Energy X, leaving it all in the hands of luck. We see one of the cans open up and hit a statue with its energy, with Frank Stiles nearby.

The awesome bit of narrative exposition from the game is missing, so instead we have Frank clumsily mention his own name in his thought bubble along with how he noticed O’Connor, an accused spy who worked with him on the Manhattan project (that’s important by the way). Frank spies on O’Connor talking with another individual, but trips. O’Connor then takes out a gun and shoots him… before he hits the ground. Seriously, you never see Frank hit the ground, nor is there a “thud” sound made. Plus there are 5 word balloons before the shot. Man, either they talk fast and O’Connor is a great shot, or Frank Stiles is full of helium.

Also, get this; the panel where O’Connor fires his gun implies that Frank was shot point blank in the eye, with the image of his glasses centimeters away from the barrel and the glass shattering. However, next panel we see that he has actually shot in the heart several feet away. Smooth. Frank Stiles then notices the statue of the Minute Man and how it’s glowing, so he- wait, when we first saw Frank sitting on the bench, he was pretty far from the statue, and moved away from it to spy on O’Connor. Plus, we saw the park was crowded earlier, was there no one there to help the old bleeding guy, so much so that he crossed a bridge to go to a glowing statue? And that’s another thing; no one else noticed the glowing statue and decided to touch it? We see playful kids chasing birds earlier; they didn’t think to go any closer? Apparently it was an interesting bird… “Hey Cindy look, the Minute Man statue is glowing again” “That’s nothing, the fountain talks on tuesdays!” The game didn’t have any of these problems because we don’t see the statue or any other people before Frank is shot.

Anyways, Frank touches the statue which transforms him into a Super hero. “Energy flowing into my body! Chanding me, making me younger… Stronger! Feels like I could lift a thousand pounds!” And yes ladies and gentlemen, that is the only explanation we get for his powers: he is super strong. However, we don’t see this in the comic: he never lifts a car or anything (which did in the game), he just knocks out a few guys and jump from ruff to ruff, so new readers could just as easily assume that he was just regenerated and is in a decent shape, if it weren’t for that “thousand pounds” line. Good thing he didn’t say “I feel as fit as a horse” or else the readers would assume his ability would be running fast and eating carrots.

We cut to three days later. This is one of the few changes from the game that I approve of: in the game, Minute Man was in the park fully in costume right after transforming. This gives him three days to make his costume, test his abilities and track O’Connor. Why we don’t see any of this is anyone’s guess, but it means fewer pages, so I’m not complaining. Also, we get no indication that the man in costume is Frank Stiles except that they have the same walking stick. Was there really no room for a narration box with the “dawning a costume” line from the game?

Anyways, Minute Man shakes down O’Connor to get information about the person he was meeting with; Sukhov, who he believes is… uh… very suspicious and Russian and in 1960’s America that was enough. Minute Man sneaks onto the warehouse grounds, but we have Mentor in the shadows expositing how it’s a trap. *General Akbar* How they knew how Minute Man was coming is anybody’s guess though. Minute Man confronts Sukhov, which he recognizes… by his hat? (seriously, earlier his face was always in the shadows) Sukhov then calls out a group of thugs to gang up on Minute Man.

Now seems like a good time to talk about the artwork in this comic. I bring it up now because Sukhov’s face changes between panels. In the first one he seems fine, like a regular human being, but on the next panel he looks like a corps, with skin so loose it’s hanging off his face and veins all over it. Later on, he has another face: that of a deranged homeless person. By the way, this isn’t my only problem with the art in this comic: generally, if a panel was in a cut scene in the game, it looks fine, but whenever the story calls for a pose that wasn’t directly seen in the game, the art is a little… off. I don’t have enough time to point out all of them, but I will talk about Minute Man’s wobbly hat: each time you see it, it seems slanted or rotated oddly or in some chases change shape and size all together. Maybe it’s a side effect to the energy X : “I have the ability to compact cars with my hands: but my one weakness is my inability to balance my hat… truly I have been cursed…” According to the inside cover, the artist’s name is Tom Scioli. I looked up his stuff online and he seems to be inspired by the Jack Kirby style, so I can understand why they would give him this task, but he just did a poor job with this project.

Anyways, as the group of thugs are ready to attack minute man, Mentor (now in a human shape) comes out and uses a mind suppression move on all of them, so they are easily taken out. While the two heroes are distracted, Sukhov tries to get away, but Minute man fires a minute missile at him (a move he learns in the game that is never really explained). But then suddenly… boom? I don’t quite know what happened. In the video game, Sukhov was near liquid nitrogen containers when Minute man missed and hit the containers instead, causing an explosion to freeze Sukhov (who Mentor says was previously exposed to Energy X). In the comic, he seems to step on the canister of Energy X, causing the explosion, which makes the minute missile detail pointless (I suggest this, because the missile is clearly right behind Sukhov and on track the panel before the explosion). Whatever. Sukhov is then frozen solid, but Mentor confirms he’s been exposed to the energy and is not dead. Suddenly, the ice shakes and Sukhov bursts out, now calling himself Nuclear Winter. “So it is TRUE what they say—revenge is a dish best served cold!” “I would have broken out of the ice sooner, but I needed to think of that line. WAIT, break the ice, why didn’t I go with that? Man, how does Arnold do it?” He proceeds to freeze our two heroes.

The next page shows a hero named El Diablo flying above the city when he hears the explosion. He flies down and sees the two frozen heroes and proceeds to unfreeze them. Question: WHERE DID NUCLEAR WINTER GO? Since El Diablo heard the explosion, and immediately rushed down, he should still be there. We also didn’t get any narrative text saying time has passed and Nuclear Winter should have seen some sort of light in the sky coming towards him (since El Diablo makes a half circle when he hears something). Putting that aside; MAN, what is with the pacing of this comic? Here’s what happened in the 4 last pages: Minute Man meets up with Mentor, Sukhov is frozen in an explosion but turns into Nuclear Winter and freezes our heroes instead but El Diablo unfreezes them and joins the team. Seriously, there is no time for tension to build; we get two new heroes and a main villain in the span of 4 pages, which originally in the game, happened on THREE different levels!

Man, we’re only a little half way through the comic and already I’m sick of saying “It’s different in the game”, along with the comic in general…

So, Minute Man, El Diablo and Mentor follow Nuclear Winter’s frozen path of destruction to an aircraft carrier (which isn’t heavily guarded like in the game) where they discover Man-Bot (which isn’t where they found him either; are they trying for a quota or something here?). And Yes, this ANOTHER new team mate that joins up. He says that he was following Nuclear Winter when he was frozen and he heard that they have a nuclear missile. This is enough to give El Diablo a stroke since he then makes the weirdest looking face in the comic; one half of his face has his eye wide open and mouth closed, with the other side doing it the other way around. I know this is an audio podcast and it was stupid of me to review a visual medium for this, but you try striking that face. … Go ahead… Feel pretty stupid, don’t you? This is of course followed directly with the second stupidest picture in the book (still, that’s saying something): a close up of Mentor’s face in a trance expression looking at his hand. “We have to stop Nuclear Winter from destroy- WHOA, have human hands always had THIS many lines on them?”

So the four find Nuclear Winter on the pier, but while loading the missile, the chain breaks, giving our heroes to chance to stop his plan. Mentor single handedly takes care of all FOUR guards (where’s the army he had in the game), while Man-Bot and El Diablo rush to pummel Nuclear Winter. Before a final knockout blow, Nuclear Winter arms the bomb. Luckily, Minute Man once worked on the Manhattan project (which is an important detail I emphasized more than the comic did) and knows how to work the bomb. He then shouts “GOT IT!” with his hands in the air, just as the cops and blues brothers arrive. *Music from blues brother’s plays for a few bars* (Seriously, the dudes in suits look like them). Minute Man tells an officer they’re calling themselves the Freedom Force before everyone shouts out “FOR FREEDOM” together.

End of the comic right? Nope. We have one of those pages where the editor or a character normally answers viewer questions. … Except this is the first issue, so there are none, and this is the demand for people to send in questions. “The deadline for this issue is only 7 days away and we’re crunching to get everything ready so it can print” NO! REALLY? YOU RUSHED SOMETHING HERE?

This comic sucks! The things changed from the game are not only pointless, but create plot holes the game didn’t have. The pacing of the whole thing is far too rushed; people are added with no introduction, big events and details are only glazed upon and tension never has the chance to build. And finally the artwork is sub-par to say the very least. Not only do I think that no one except hard core fans of the game would have read another issue, but it also shames me to think that someone might have passed on the game because of this dribble. Just play the game and stay away from this comic. *slams comic down violently*