Dead Space: Salvage [Paperback]

I don't know where to start because this book has so much positive worth to it. The story is great; it has a great continuing of the Dead Space game, preparing you for what to expect in Dead Space 2. The characters are unique. You don't know who will survive till the end of this book, if anyone at all. The story has many twist I didn't see coming. The visual art in this book is great, setting a great feel of dread, darkness and terror. For Dead Space fans who want to expand their knowledge of the Dead Space universe, those new to the series will not want to pass this up and those who just enjoy a great horror read - this is the book to buy.

I'm a huge Dead Space fanboy, so I picked this up from my local comic shop yesterday for 50% off. I really wanted to like it, and there's a few things that really drag it down.

The art is pretty polarizing. On the one hand it's very interesting stylistically and I think it conveys the dark atmosphere of the Dead Space franchise very well. The tone is right and the monsters look sufficiently horrific and disturbing. On its own, independent of all other factors, the art is really cool and consistently interesting to look at.
However, the art really doesn't do the storytelling any favors. Even with the "cast of characters" on the first page I could barely tell which characters were which, or what was going on half the time. I couldn't always tell if characters were getting killed, or what they were supposed to be doing, and sometimes the art transitions were really abrupt to the point that it killed some of the impact of what was supposed to be happening. To use an analogy, it would be like showing a character being confronted by a bad guy with a gun, and then the immediately next panel is the character dead on the ground of an apparent gunshot wound but with no panel showing that the gun went off. It's a little awkward and breaks up the flow of the story.

Speaking of the story, the other major problem with Salvage is that the plot is largely inconsequential. By the end of the story you realize that nothing actually happened and no new revelations were made. The initial setup is compelling enough, but by the end all that's actually happened is that most of the characters are dead. The remaining characters haven't really learned or done anything that impacts the overarching Dead Space story (especially when compared to other recent tie-in merchandise like Aftermath, Ignition, and the Dead Space ipod/iphone game).

Edit-- I re-read it today, and while some things were somewhat easier to follow, they got negated by some oversights on the part of the author or artist (not sure which). As difficult as it is to tell the characters apart sometimes, they do have distinguishing characteristics (one has a bandana, one has this blue eye-tattoo around his right eye, etc), so it doesn't do the story any favors when some of the characters are very obviously mixed up. The character "Schneider" has his name associated with no less than 3 distinctly different characters, and it happens with a couple other characters on occasion, too. I'm not sure if there was a miscommunication between the artist and the author or what, or if the artist just drew the wrong character or the letterer wrote in the wrong name, but it makes things hard to follow.
Re-reading it, I did like some of the references to the other tie-in media, though. There's a reference to the recent Dead Space: Aftermath, and there's also a reference to the Dead Space flash website's story from before the first game came out.

If you can get it for cheap I'd say give it a spin just for the interesting artwork, but don't expect anything nearly as interesting as the first Dead Space prequel comics that came out when the first game was released.

This is without a doubt one of the best stories I've read in years. I was thrilled! The dialogue was excellent. Antony Johnston is truly a great writer. One of the best in the business. And Christopher Shy's artwork just knocked me out. I like the Dead Space franchise, but this is a great story in it's own right. A genuine creepfest if ever there was one. Whether you like Dead Space or not, you should check this out. This was a thrill ride from start to finish. Bravo!

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