“A bit much for an unpaid parking ticket.”
Mirror’s Edge #0 Convention Exclusive
WildStorm (July, 2008)
WRITER: Rhianna Pratchett
ARTIST: Matthew Dow Smith
COLORIST: Jim Charalampids
LETTERER: Wes Abbott
EDITORS: Ben Abernathy & Hank Kanalz
I’m not sure if this shouldn’t be a Free Comic Inside, but it was given away at conventions to promote the comic based on the video game. There is technically a story here but not much. We just see Faith, one of this city’s “Runners”. Unlike the ones we usually talk about, the Runners here are couriers rather than smugglers, who travel the top of the city buildings to avoid the cameras and police, what Faith calls the “mirror’s edge”, possibly due to all the mirrored windows in the skyscrapers. She’s running a package to another Runner to finish the delivery. We also meet her contact person, Merc, but only over the comlink. The package is delivered, the other Runner continues the delivery, and the story ends.
The artwork is beautiful right down to the coloring. Faith looks like she does in the promotional art, though since you play through her eyes in a game I haven’t played that’s all I can tell you about that. The problem is that if you don’t already know the concept of the game, all you get are snippets of the plot for the franchise. (This was not just promoting the game but a six issue limited series by WildStorm based on it.) We don’t get a good scale of just how corrupt this visually utopian world is outside of mention of “the blues” and one group seeming to really want to bust someone open. We don’t even get a real sense of Faith’s parkour/freerunning moves and move-planning skills, the central game mechanic.
In the end it’s beautiful artwork but even for 6 pages doesn’t give more than the smallest of overviews of the series. Unless that delivery plays a role in the game or comic’s storyline it’s not something to really track down unless you want to be completist.
BW Media Spotlight 