Day Ninety-Nine: Solid Artwork
When I first started this blog, my intentions were to segue neatly from Al Kennedy's comics theme into me talking about a game that had made the transition to the sequential art medium. Unfortunately, the book that I ordered on Amazon to write about turned out to be out of stock for about two months. It eventually came, in the middle of my epic blog adventure, but by that time I was off on another tangent. So why not leave it to the end, I thought, and sure enough I did. Here it is, then: a few words on the comic adaptation of Metal Gear Solid.
I don't know how familiar you are with the artist, Ashley Wood. If you are, you've definitely decided if you either admire him or loathe his stupid style and wish he'd never been born. Wood's art is very distinctive - his pictures are produced using a combination of broad-stroke painting and rough sketching that sacrifices detail for expression. You can't expect focus in his work, instead he draws a blurred, low-colour view of the world, where backgrounds are hazy or non-existent and ill-defined faces are never the same way twice. It's like peering through a fog and it's often difficult to work out what's going on sometimes. Indeed, it takes a little while to get used to. Once you develop the knack however, it's easier to appreciate. His style's saving grace is the way the lack of clarity allows your eyes to flow easily between panels, picking apart the shapes tointerpret your own vision of events. If you don't fall for that, though, I can see why he might be considered horrible.
Certainly, it's probably safe to say that he's been brought in as illustrator due to his similarities with the original Metal Gear Solid concept artist, Yoji Shinkawa, a factor highly evidenced by Wood's signing on for the art job on the PSP's Portable Ops spin-off. To that end, it's not a million miles away from replicating MGS's secondary visual style. At least not if compared to if they'd got someone of the the spandex-covered biceps and busts oeuvre to do the job. Imagine that.
Anyway, it's been five years or more since I
played through the original Metal Gear Solid. Reading through the
comic, I'd completely forgotten how much there is to it. It's just
set-piece after set-piece, really, as Snake forgets the stealth part of
his mission and blunders from one encounter to the next. Perfect for
the comic, too. Even better, there's no lengthy Codec conversations to interrupt the flow. Writer, Chris Oprisko's job is to boil that down into essential dialogue that tells the story in the best possible way.
It hasn't forgotten its gaming roots, either. It's difficult to think of Snake's extended episode running around collecting weapons and avoiding guards as anything but a homage to the time spent doing so in the game. Likewise the endless nonsense about key cards and moving to the basement level of the maintenance base or whatever is largely redundant, but they've seen fit to stay true. By staying faithful, it brings back all those fond, old memories of playing through first time without having to listen to everyone drone on about war and philosophy.
Metal Gear Solid, for all its pretentious posturing and overdone dialogue is a flagship series for the PlayStation. Sink into it and it's OTT narrative can't help but drag you along effortlessly. The book does the same, and even though it doesn't offer anything in addition, it's a worthwhile companion piece.
And remember that it's also on the PSP as an animated graphic novel. Having never seen that particular version, I can't comment, but it does look even more lush according to this trailer here. Meanwhile, Oprisko and Wood are just finishing up their version of the MGS sequel, Sons of Liberty. I'm even more eager to pick that one up, if only to see how they handle that game's bonkers ending. Where Wood is concerned, I'd expect nothing less than indistinguishable insanity.
Finally, I did try to buy this in the shops at first, but I didn't know how much it cost. I spent ages looking for the price to no avail until I gave up in frustration and went home. I later found out it was on the back of the book all along! [Insert parping trombone punchline noise here.]
