Metal Gear Solid Omnibus (Metal Gear Solid, #1-4) by Kris Oprisko

Metal Gear Solid Omnibus (Metal Gear Solid, #1-4) Reviews

• 
  Ann D-Vine

  I'm lukewarm on this Metal Gear Solid omnibus... but not for the reasons you might expect.
  
  Ashley Wood is a fantastic artist, let's get that out of the way. His erratic, sketchy style embodies the best of modernist pop art, a crude mixture of hyper-realism and abstract minimalism. It's absolutely striking in its simplicity and elegance, and, where Metal Gear Solid's comic adaptions fail as comic books, they succeed as art books. Fantastic, inspiring work, and if you're on the fence about whether or not a comic adaptation of a pair of videogames you've already played are worth reading, let Ashley Wood's art kick you to the "yes" side.
  
  Sadly, as I said, it does so often fail as a comic book. In particular in the first adaptation. It follows Metal Gear Solid's plot to the letter: special agent Solid Snake, a bizarre mix of Hollywood tropes and icons from Snake Pliskin to James Bond, infiltrates the island facility Shadow Moses. The videogames, for those who don't know, are stealth games; sneaking missions, where avoiding conflict and combat are key to survival, as Snake, while skilled in firearms and CQC, is as weak as... well, a man.
  
  But that's not what the games are, actually. What they really are is a demented loveletter to American filmmaking and Japanese quasi-sci-fi. Hideo Kojima, designer and writer of the Metal Gear series, is a crazy person who doesn't understand the meaning of the phrase "coherent plot". Part of the joy of Metal Gear Solid is seeing all the crazy, stupid, insane things that happen with a bleak pseudo-seriousness. The games hinge on a illogical madness that is intrinsically fascinating, with extended cutscenes that, in later games, last literally hours at a time.
  
  So Metal Gear Solid's comic retains a lot of what makes, to many fans, Metal Gear Solid so damn twisted and special. It has all the same bizarre, stupid plot nosedives, reveals and set-pieces. It still retains a team of madly designed enemy characters which engage in "boss battles" as Snake tries to exploit a clearly telegraphed weakness. And it's still got the prose of a writer who is in desperate need of a thesaurus, or a dictionary, or a backspace key. This sheer amount of non-stop, babbling crazy, combined with Ashley Wood's frenetic artwork which absolutely fails to provide a clear sequential narrative, makes this first Metal Gear Solid story a ton of fun, even if it is consistently confusing, bordering on outright unreadable.
  
  That's not why I'm lukewarm on this omnibus, though. No, I'm lukewarm on it because of the adaptation Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.
  
  Metal Gear Solid 2 was one of the most anticipated videogame sequels of all time. Sony stood behind it as a launch game for their new console, the PlayStation 2. It was Konami's first blockbuster, a huge deal for everyone involved. But the game wasn't a rousing follow-up to a classic action game. It wasn't more explosive, bigger, badder and better. Instead it was... Metal Gear Solid, again, but slightly worse. And this was absolutely intentional.
  
  With a one-word prompt, "memes," Kojima had designed a game that meticulously mocks and criticizes the idea of videogame sequels. It offered near-identical circumstances and scenarios, but worse. Instead of sneaking around a base and feeling like an awesome soldier, players were greeted with walking around as some blonde kid who wasn't Snake, defusing bombs with bug spray and escorting very slow girls around the giant facility. Plot contrivances, reveal upon reveal upon reveal resulting in what could well be the most dense finale to any piece of media created by a person - it was a sheer metatextual nightmare that seemed to have been birthed by a demented, cackling goon who held his fans in utter disregard.
  
  And it's one of my favourite games ever.
  
  You see, I love Metal Gear Solid 2 for being such an obvious, hamfisted "piece". So when I read a Metal Gear Solid 2 comic adaptation, I expect to find a comic that is identical to the Metal Gear Solid adaptation but slightly worse. What I don't expect to find is an adaptation that improves on plot details of the game. An adaptation that cements over tiny holes, one in which Ashley Wood's art is improved thanks to layouts by Rufus Dayglo; an adaptation that is a marked improvement on both its predecessor and its source material. It is a great comic adventure; tense, exciting, well-paced and interesting to both look at and read. And I consider it a failure for it.
  
  Indeed, a Metal Gear Sold 2 comic shouldn't be allowed to be so good. So I'm lukewarm on this omnibus because it doesn't do for Metal Gear Solid 2 what I'd've hoped. I love it as a comic, I think it provides all the thrills and suspense that you would expect from a high-class videogame tie-in. The art is stellar as usual, with Wood's proficiency in sequential art markedly improving, and the script is tightened up from the game it's based on. And this is exactly the problem: it is a fantastic comic adaptation... just not of Metal Gear Solid 2.
  
  So, this omnibus is actually quite great. Fantastic art and a comprehensive retelling of Metal Gear Solid's first two entries. It's just that the sequel isn't bad enough for me to consider it worthy of sharing Metal Gear Solid 2's name.
• 
  Aaron

  I understand that these adaptations are for fans of the first two Metal Gear Solid games. But, as a huge fan of the games myself, I have to wonder why. If I wanted to see a straight reenactment of the game, I'd play the game again.
  
  The book starts with essentially a play-by-play of the first game, complete with recycled dialogue and boring sections where Snake scrounges for ammo. The art is completely horrendous. It seems to be striving for some sort of abstraction, which makes it nearly impossible to tell many characters apart, and completely impossible to tell WHERE anything is happening.
  
  Eventually the dialogue ceases to be pulled directly from the game, but somehow is actually worse. Flat, wooden, and laden with cliches, it's like reading a parody of comic book villain tropes. Characters are barely addressed. Several times a character is introduced on one page and killed off a few pages later, and we're meant to actually care that this stranger is dead. Doesn't work.
  
  I read this because I wanted to see how the comics medium dealt with the complex story of the MGS games, but I learned that it failed miserably. Maybe in the hands of a different writer/artist team it could've been a fun read, but even the Matt Fraction-penned 5-page bonus story could've been written by a blind dog. Nothing redeeming here. Skip it.
• 
  Nigel_s

  Ashley Wood art is fantastic in this volume,
• 
  Artemis

  Gorgeous art, fun revisiting of the story, questionable characterization choices. I was IMMENSELY impressed with how the author managed to restructure MGS2 so that it actually worked in a graphic novel medium, but honestly with the actual straightforward functional storytelling, something of the beautiful powerful pointed mess of the original gets lost. I'm also going to track down the authors and fistfight them for Otacon and Raiden's honor. Why are straight dude MGS fans so dismissive and derisive of Otacon and Raiden (I know why) (it's because it's impossible to pretend they're Cool Macho Manly Action Hero Dudes) (there really needs to be a mandatory test before anyone writes a Metal Gear adaptation to prove they understand things like "themes" and "emotions" and "character depth" and "people who are not Cool Macho Manly Action Hero Dudes are still important") (And for that matter: when is any MGS adaptation going to acknowledge that Solid Snake has feelings and is so much more interesting than the bland Cool Macho Manly Action Hero Dude depicted here?)
  
  In any case, it was a fun experience and I enjoyed it, and let's be real here, this review is not gonna change anyone's mind. If you're a Metal Gear fan you're probably gonna read this if you get the chance anyway, and if you're not this isn't really going to appeal to you anyway.
• 
  Quentin Wallace

  The first adaptation in the volume was very good, following the storyline of the first game. The second adaptation had a mess of a storyline, but the storyline of the second game was pretty much a mess too so it's fairly accurate.
  
  The art was interesting, and it was cool to see just how close the story followed the first game, to the point of even picking up certain items at the same time you'd pick them up when playing the game. Sons of Liberty had a near unfathomable storyline, and that didn't change much here.
  
  The Ashley Wood art is good but I can see how some may be turned off by it as his style sometimes changes from page to page and it's not a very "clean" style of artwork regardless.
  
  I am currently reading the old Marvel GI Joe series and it's funny how some of the characters in Metal Gear could easily have been characters in GI Joe, as there is a similar theme with the far out but interesting characters.
  
  Overall a good read for fans of the game, but if you aren't familiar with the game I'm not sure if this would be for you unless you are just a fan of the artwork.
• 
  H

  The art is absolutely awful. Having played the entire series throughout my life starting in my formative years, this was a big disappointment. The story still retains its convoluted nature although it becomes slightly easier to follow once you remove the interactive parts of what made the games transcend traditional story-telling and therefore so much fun to experience. Having played the games and spent a lot of time thinking and talking about them, my mind was able to fill in the blanks of what was lacking, mostly a clear visual element which is complete and utter shit here. None of the character designs stand out and the entire book reads like a SparkNotes transcript with a high schooler's rough sketches attempting to illustrate the action. Even if I didn't have such a strong connection to the source material, this is an exhibition of poor panel layout, plotting, penciling and everything else that composes an enjoyable graphic novel.
• 
  Robert Hultman

  If you are interested in this series, I’d recommend grabbing this omnibus. Don’t expect the story to be wholly unique or new and unless you don’t care for the art style, you will appreciate the book. It is a somewhat recycled tale, but that is the point, I think, as it tells the early story without deviating or reinventing things. If you want a Metal Gear book that rewrites the old story like the Spider-Man movies, this isn’t for you. If you want to read the story as told by the first couple games, then this book ought to make you reasonably happy.
• 
  Paul

  Охуительно
• 
  Jonathan

  You need to know the plot of of MGS 1 and 2 already to follow the plot. The art style can be hard to track at times. Still, this is the only MGS comic we’re gonna get right?
• 
  Nicolaj

  I've been playing the Metal Gear games again (they are still great), so I thought to revisit the graphic novels based on MGS1 & 2, and while they are generally pretty entertaining, my gripes with them haven't changed.
  
  The section covering MGS1 stays too true to the game and the small additions here and there doesn't really add much. The MGS2 part on the other hand is more liberal with the source material and flows a lot better, but it downplays most of the game's message about censorship, existentialism, freedom of thought and social control, plus it feels a bit like the revenge of the fanboy when it gives an increased focus on Snake, his absence of which was supposed to tie into the aforementioned themes, but whatever.
  
  I wouldn't necessarily recommend these to anyone unfamiliar with the games. They are a fun read for the converted and the Ashley Wood's artwork is really good, but they are lesser adaptations. The games are good at playing with its format to tell its story (or freak the player out), but these graphic novels makes them seem so standard in comparison.
• 
  Charles

  Yeah, it was OK. Now with an opener like that, why would I have read this book? Well, for starters I'm quite an MGS fan and really enjoy Ashley Wood's work after picking up World War Robot a few years back. Having said that though, I knew the story going in as it's a retelling of the first two games. So why bother reading it at all? Mostly to see Wood's take on the MGS world. Also, for me, considering how cooky and muddled the MGS universe can get, it's nice to have an omnibus lay out the story for me, without having to go through the entire games and lengthy cutscenes to get the details. So, in the end it's just okay and probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't at least have a moderate interest in the MGS games.
• 
  Ryan

  The art on this was pretty great but it was, at times, hard to see what was going on. The writing was ok. There were a few moments when it was "I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling..." That's actually said. The characters seemed pretty interesting but the story felt long and drawn out most of the time and really rushed at certain points. I liked the Metal Gear Solid game when it originally came out so it was fun to revisit those characters. I feel like if I had no prior knowledge of the series I would have been totally lost most of the time though.
• 
  Fredrik

  This is a must read for every Metal Gear Fan out there! The artwork is mind blowing!
  
  The Metal Gear Solid adaption was far better than Sons of Liberty (in which I had some problems with the way they portrayed some of the characters. Why the F*** did they make such fools of them?) but overall this was a GREAT read.
  
  And the best part is that this is the kind of book you can read over and over again!
  
  
• 
  Dean Olson

  I hated the art when I first read this when it was published but I have grown to enjoy it. Metal Gear Solid is my favorite game series ever and I wished they would adapt the entire saga. Including Metal Gear Solid 3 & 4, the PSP games, and the original NES games.
  
  But the added dialogue is really bad. Like cliche action movie bad.
  
  New writer. Get Matt Fraction.
• 
  Michael Liggett

  I purely bought this for Ashley Wood's art. The stories are essentially the stories of the games themselves. If I gave a crap about that kind of stuff and picked this up before playing the game I would have been bummed because it's a massive spoiler. I don't, however, and picked this up years after the games were old news so it's cool.
• 
  Rakan

  رواية مصورة لملحمية ميتل غير سوليد.
  الرسوم رائعة جداً.
  القصة هي قصة الجزء الأول والثاني للعبة مع بعض التغيرات الطفيفة.
  
• 
  Silvio Carrera

  I like the art overall but in some parts it's just hard to understand what's happening. Also the translation to portuguese felt a bit sloppy.
• 
  Matt

  The art is incredible but some things are lost in translation from game to comic.