“Yesterday’s” Comic> Tales Of Honor #1

“I’d still rather be at the beach.”

Tales Of Honor #1

Image Comics/Top Cow (March, 2014)

“On Basilisk Station”

based on the Honorverse novel series by David Weber

WRITER: Matt Hawkins

ARTIST: Jung-Geun Yoon

LETTERER: Troy Peteri

EDITOR: Betsy Gonia

Held prisoner for some unexplained war crime, Honor Harrington is strapped to a wall awaiting her execution. While there, she remembers events of her life…and how she got screwed over a lot. A cadet of royal origins who tried to rape her, an admiral who wants to play with her shiny new toys even when the old tech worked as well or better, another admiral who was upset at losing a war game, and who knows what role her executive officer did seeing as he wanted to be captain of her ship. We still don’t know what happened on Basilisk Station, but we return to present day, where her cybernetics are about to be shut down…with a drill.

What they got right: I’m not usually a fan of the painted art or 3D model comic styles, because especially with humans they don’t get a good range of emotion. While still not as good I’ve seen it done worse in sequential art and the designs of the characters, ships, and station are quite good.

What they got wrong: The writer of the comic explains that the reason he started in the seventh book for the framing of going through the first book was to make a better comic adaptation. I don’t agree. Not having read the books, it’s one of those situations where I really want to know what’s happening in present day, while the story keeps hopping around Honor’s career to set up events. They should have just adapted the first novel, then the second, and so on.

What I think overall: At the time of this comic’s creation the first novel, which is the title of this issue, was available for free on Kindle, and that’s still the case as of this writing. It might be a better idea to go there, and maybe start the comic when you’ve caught up with the novels. While this means your comic read will be retreading old ground until events catch up, I lost interest when reading the comic because of all the jumping around and the fact that Honor and her “treecat” she’s mentally bonded to were the only characters I didn’t hate, if I cared about them at all. Someday I may read the novel for Chapter By Chapter.