Dark Horse recently released a preview of the Mass Effect: Redemption comic book, born from the creative minds and hands of Bioware’s Mac Walters along with John Jackson Miller and artist Omar Francia. Pixels will turn to sweet comic goodness with a story that precursors Mass Effect 2. But Mass Effect isn’t the only video game on the line-up for translation into hilarious sound effects of the huge and dramatic variety. Sci-fi writer Orson Scott Card’s (you know, that guy who did Ender’s Game in 1985, and some other stuff) adaptation of Dragon Age: Origins will hit stands this January from IDW Publishing.

Video games are being laid out on the 2D page more and more these days. Good or bad, everything from Army of Two, Halo, and Dark Space to Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and Perfect Dark, and Super Mario Brothers to Sonic the Hedghog have graced or splattered on the page in triumph or a messy pile of pretty-colored gore. Lately I’ve found myself exploring the lovechild of the two mediums with strange and perhaps voyeuristic intrigue. Sometimes it works—Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers comics have always been fun, and they’re everywhere from American comics to manga, which almost always makes our “detailed” pencil work look like the product of an Etch a Sketch. But Metroid Prime, Super Mario Bros., Legend of Zelda, and even Starfox were recurring features of ye old Nintendo Power issues, and thus a beloved highlight of my childhood. Actually, more my sisters’ childhoods that I relocated and piled together from the depths of that musky and frigid place we called our basement.

Tomb Raider was actually one of the first comics I ever discovered—on Free Comic Book Day, no less. Published by Top Cow, those folk know how to make a good book.

But other video game-inspired comics that I’ve read, like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, read like a zombie running on beer instead of brains (those damn zombcoholics). They try too hard to mimic the medium they originated from; after all, what connects us more closely to video games than the assurance of immersion and interactivity? We love to jump into a lush, throbbing world brimming with detail and real world and rag doll physics; we become frustrated and bored as soon as some game mechanic flaw or dumb escort mission comes between us and the game we want so badly to love. Taking a video game and cutting it up into paper pieces automatically adds a level of separation; when the comic in question fails to capture the true essence of the game, and instead endeavors to fool you into thinking you’re playing it with your eyes, it’s not going to make it past the first boss. Or maybe it just kept getting stuck on that rock over there. Stupid Lara.

Et tu? Do you eat up video game comics like Pac-Man to cherries and little white dots, or do you avoid them like the zombie plague?

Preview pages for Mass Effect: Redemption are available here.

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