Tales of Honor #2 review(s)

Posting my own here, but others are welcome to as well, to keep them together for Evergreen/Top Cow to see.

May be spoilers...


















Right... so, I got issue #2 in the mail today, and overall, I think it's very good. As usual, this is from the perspective of someone who has already read the books, so I can't say how a newbie to the Honorverse might take it. The art is just as great as in issue#1, and the story is moving along at a pretty nice clip, considering the amount of detail it needs to cover. More foreshadowing of events to come, which I hope that, taken in conjunction with the foreshadowing in issue #1, doesn't lead to *too* much of an anticlimax when the big reveal occurs.

The Dreadful Duo are introduced in this issue, but we don't get to see a lot of the fun interplay between them. Hoping to see the Harrington/Hauptman confrontation next issue (I *really* hope Top Cow doesn't drop that whole subplot throughout this and the later books).

Nimitz finally gets some dialogue: one entire word, which I'm sure no one has to work hard to figure out. Unfortunately, Nimitz still looks like something out of a nightmare by way of the DTs. This is actually addressed in the Character Bios section at the back of the comic. There's art for a furry Nimitz, and it's said that this new appearance will show up in the second arc - Tales of Honor: The Honor of the Queen. So, we still have three more issues of Nightmare Nimitz to deal with.

For the Dame Estelle Matsuko fans here, you'll be happy with this issue.

I have a few nitpicks, mostly minor.

Regarding the new Nimitz art - it's just basically the current Nimitz, with fur. He still looks pissed and constipated, still has the extra pointy-things on his head, and still has a jagged tail. But he's furry. I also don't like the shorter true hands he has. That combined with the medium true feet and long hand feet makes me wonder how he can move on all sixes.

I love the art, but I think the artist needs to darken up the black berets everyone but Honor should be wearing. Some panels make the black berets appear almost white, but in shadow, as opposed to black berets with light shining off them.

Last nitpick: I have problems with the pinnace/shuttle/cutter design in this issue. Although, I admit that this is a *very* minor nitpick, due to me possibly being a bit biased about what they *ought* to look like The biggest issue I have is that since they are atmosphere-capable, they ought to be a bit more streamlined. As it is, they look a bit clunky.

Overall, I'd rate it 8.75/10 as a fan of the Honorverse.

The berets bothered the heck out of me; I think your being generous of your description, in several panels they just plain look white. I think I actually yelled at the comic...

And it's great to see that Nimitz is getting a re-do; I little more tweaking is still needed but the proposed change is an improvement in the right direction.

Just bought the digital version.
I'm not really into comics but I felt like I should do my part. Also, I like seeing "Honorstuff" as opposed to just make it up in my mind (I'm not too good at it).

A few quick comments:

- Honor comes across as arrogant. Not a problem for me, not sure if it's intended though

- Dame Estelle Matsuko looks great. She also has almond eyes.

- Honor should have more "almondine" eyes (not as much as Matsuko)

- Alistair doesn't look like his picture on the site.

- It's very fast and dense: no idea how the Honor-ignorant will receive it

- The art is nice and pleasant.

All in all it does manage to bring a little of the universe to life, and it was NEVER going to be an easy task.

Dear people at Evergreen and TopCow, you kinda blew it with this issue.

Mind you, that's the conclusion based on only one test audience oppinion.
I found it rather good, but my younger cousin (a massive sci-fi games, and general comics geek, btw), who has no previous knowledge of honorverse, found the issue boring - to much taking, almost no real action to hold his attention. Also, he found all the characters to look to same for him to be able to differentiate.
Since he is what I imagine to be an example of target audience, I have to take his opinions as valid enough to warrant me sending them up the chain to you.

As far as my personal opinions - the furred Nimitz is still as abominable as the furless. Folks, you are not making him (and other treecats by association) badass. You are doing the complete opposite. Please, please, please, have someone in your research department (or whatever alike it you have, or if you have none, form it) go to tvtropes and read carefully fluffy the terrible and badass adorable pages and google the examples therin listed.
Second - the fact you chose to skip actually showing the faces of fan favorites is totally boggling, when you are doing something as character driven as HH.
Other than that good issue far as I'm concerned.

Thanks again to Evergreen and MWW for soliciting feedback on the comics and other works. I appreciate the opportunity to express this, even if I'm not enjoying the comic.

As I read ToH #2, right when I got to the panel where Honor is talking to Mitsuko, I came to the realization that I hate this comic.
I hate the font. I hate the art. I hate having to stare at a panel until my eyes cross to figure out what's going on.

Recognize that it's been decades since I regularly collected comics, and I've been reading the Honor Harrington series almost as long, so I can't put myself in the shoes of a naive reader. It may be that this artist's style simply isn't to my taste, or that the state of the art in comic books has changed, leaving me behind. But in case my feedback can be constructive, I'll explain why.

Art choices

Some of it looks like it was pasted together in Photoshop, poorly.



In this picture, for example, it looks like the binoculars are glued to the soldier's hand. I'm not suggesting that making a comic is easy, the artist is certainly far more creative and skilled than I am, but seeing this immediately took me out of the story, thinking, "What's going on here?"


Similarly, in the second panel's image Mitsuko looks like some sort half-chair cyborg . I think it's just the perspective of that object on the table sitting in front of her. Again, trying to understand what I was seeing completely took me out of the story. If it's some sort of symbolism, I don't get it.


In this panel, I know Tremaine is speaking, but only because I've read the book. At first, I was distracted trying to figure out why the Harkness was speaking so formally.


Finally, I don't know what is happening in this scene. Whether it's a flashback to when Summervale shot that Scott guy or a flash forward to shooting Paul Tankersley, whatever are those things on the victim's eyes? Do dueling pistols shoot d20s?

I still find the spidery, scratchy font difficult to read. Instead of simply absorbing the words, I almost have to translate them and, silly as this sounds, it's uncomfortable to read. My throat tenses as though I’m about to swallow shards of candy. If the purpose is to symbolically suggest that Honor's narration from the present sounds strained, bravo, mission accomplished, but it's still distracting. I wish the artist had limited that choice to just her present speech, or at most the present speech and narration. Why would other characters' dialogues be strained in the past?

Continuity choices that differ from the novels

I won't kick the "How Nimitz looks" dead horse. On the contrary, I really liked the scene where he stalked McKeon on the elevator. I thought it was a great way to get his characterization across.


These images of berets were distracting. I'm not a uniform pedant, but I think maintaining the "White for Captain, Black for everyone else" is a worthwhile aspect of the Naval uniform. Maybe the crew's berets are supposed to be black, but the coloring makes them almost grey and barely distinguished from Honor’s white one.


(In the image with Ensign Tremaine above, his looks almost purple.)

Maybe this is a stylistic choice to imply that all characters are impure. So be it, but even with this symbolism, I would think that Honor, of all people, deserves white.

Top Cow and Evergreen, thanks for your patience and for soliciting feedback. I know I'm not a diehard comic book fan. To contrast with another modern comic, I've bought the first 4 issues of Serenity: Leaves in the Wind since they started out around the same time as ToH. I find that reading these is much more what I expect from a comic. Reading one is like eating a chocolate truffle; sweet and creamy but not substantive and quickly passing. I absorb an issue, think about what happened for a minute, and move on. In contrast, reading issue #2 of ToH was like gnawing on a jawbreaker. Not because there was a lot to think about or digest, but simply because it was grating and hard to dissolve.

Am I going to stop buying ToH? Hell no. I feel like each $3 purchase I make infinitesimally increases the chance of sustaining the Honorverse. (I vote in elections too, so maybe I'm simply an optimist.) I understand that there may be different artists drawing for future cycles, and maybe I'll enjoy their styles more, or perhaps this feedback may improve my enjoyment of the movie or other works, so here you go. Thanks again!

[Edited to improve grammar]

Before turning to the comments that have already been made, let’s address two points I raised with issue one:

Race: (The ratio of Caucasians to non-Caucasians) Count of not clearly white characters: One, one maybe, and two partial maybes ...

Matsuko is the One, although she does appear Caucasian in at least one image;
... The officer across from Honor in the briefing may be of middle-eastern extraction (or may not, it could be an effect of him sitting in a shadow in both frames);
... the merchant mariner (that Harkness seems to be addressing with what we know to be Tremaine’s lines) may or may not be a mulatto (in the first frame anyway … then again could just be the lighting, so being generous let’s call him a fractional maybe);
... and what’s up with Hiro? In the first frame his fingers (the only part of visible skin) could be Asian (or darkish Caucasian, or just in shadow), in the second & the 3rd-&-last frame, he is clearly a Caucasian (making him another fractional maybe).

Expanding on this, another (morphological) phenotype indicator seems to be becoming ubiquitous: In the future all females will have long narrow faces with long pointy chins and long straight noses. This issue has four named females: Honor, Santos, Ransom and Matsuko. All exhibit this phenotype.
What’s more, cute seems to map to the same, as Tremaine has the same (generic?) looks. This may explain some of those problems yannoch mentions his cousin had with keeping the characters straight. (While checking those other tvtropes references, do have a gander at Only Six Faces.)

What’s with the Tinman armor? And again: faceplates anyone? (and Norm.Bone is right: that cut-&-paste job must be embarrassing; or at least it should be).


Other issues no one seems to have mentioned:

OK, so I get that they must have faces that would be recognizable as such to the reader, but whoever is drawing the Stilties seem to insist on trying to force their entire body into bilateral symmetry: an arm in the chest, and a leg attached to look most of all like a jointed tail … of course since the artist clearly couldn’t draw arms that week (look at Matsuko’s in the “wheelchair” image), that could just have been an off week after a heavy bender (I laugh because I must not cry) ... those reflective armor plates of Nimitz’ makes him look yellow in that scene too ...


The Bios:

When you only have 95 words with which to describe Honor, why both mention that she was born “to Physician parents” AND that “both of her parents were physicians”: seems wasteful of a scarce resource, and reads like a 5-year old had written it; or someone who were panicked by a deadline to the point where their brains froze, and with no one around to give it a read-though and notice the redundancy before rushing it to the page setter.

Alistair McKeon is the first Lieutenant ... well, yes, for values of a First Officer who is a Lieutenant Commander, not a 1st Lieutenant ... the ambiguous rank is made even more glaring in its absence by the inclusion of Santos’ equal rank in her bio just after.

Ransom (yes a nit for each so far, and this is a dozy): “the public assassination of Commander Honor Harrington of the Manticoran Alliance”, what could possibly be wrong with this? Oh, let me count the ways:

1) A public hanging is not an “assassination”; it is an “execution”; an assassination is something else.
2) Honor Harrington was at this time a Commodore in the RMN, not a Commander; read e.g. Chapter One in the book being referenced in that timestream of the comic ... she is also an Admiral in the GSN, but Ransom could care less about that;
3) The whole ‘Cmmdr HH of the Manty Alliance’ is an unusually long and stilted phrasing, even for the style of this comic.

Ooh, someone lo-oves Pavel, someone lo-oves Pavel ... or maybe just villains in general. First one without blemish (and Santos’ only so in comparison with the one above hers).

Summervale: Oops, I take it back: “agreed to duel fellow royals for pay”? No, he did not kill members of the Royal Family for pay, nor is he himself a member of the Royal Family. He killed fellow Officers and Service(wo)men; those are called Marines and Naval officers/ratings, not “royals”.

Stilties: “Human interaction ... led the Stilties to develop addiction to Mekoha, ...”: no;
“... led to increased access to Mekoha, ...” or “... led to an increased problem with addiction to Mekoha, ...”: yes.

In general: lots of repeats of “Honor Harrington”, where “Harrington” would have cost less words and read less stilted. Most people in-universe are not on First-Plus-Last-Name-Basis with Honor.


Those “asides” dealt with, let’s run through the up-thread’ers replies:

I concur with MaxxQ that the new Nimitz for the second arc (‘now with fur’) has misshapened forelimbs; a hexapede must be assumed to be able to walk on all six, not ‘the aft four or the front four, pick a set’; also as yannoch comments, he still looks way off on the fluffy the terrible and badass adorable descriptors.

The white hats have too many white berets; it looks like everyone else is running around with the chrome berets the cover artists have been using for Honor, rather than black ones.

And yes, the pinnaces and cutters are glaringly non-aerodynamic too, I can see why the variable-sweep wings were dropped, they wouldn’t do anything for those things (not that I am sure what that ‘tandem canard’ layout is trying to accomplish in its place).

To elaborate on what Norm.Bone writes (and tying in with the issues with the bio section), it seems to me that the two pages after the one where Tremaine and Hiro locate the structure, the comic suddenly looks like someone had to hurriedly paste screen-caps onto those last two pages of otherwise finished and nice looking background images. Then the Summervale page follows, with a background has a half-finished appearance to me; while the characters look a bit ‘first-draft touched up to go’.

Looks to me like Top Cow didn’t want to have to accept another delay to get the last three pages and the bio section done, so they rushed the last bit of the comic.

Other than these truly minor details it is a spiffing good issue. (Can you feel the sarcasm?)