I guess the skills learned from my comic class is coming in handy?
Unless fan reviews come in raving about how good the script is and how enjoyable the film is, I have absolutely no intention of ever seeing The Last Airbender. If you don't understand why, I'd recommend glancing through this commentary on the casting, noting especially the second image. I try to avoid any of the merchandise like the plague too, but then Nina Matsumoto, author of Saturnalia, drew the art for a prequel "manga." (I put that in quotations because, while the book refers to itself as such, that makes about as much sense as calling it an "illustré.") I have a hard time not supporting a webcomic artist, so I caved and bought The Last Airbender Prequel: Zuko's Story.
The first thing I noticed was that, despite the fact it's a movie tie-in, this is more closely related to the original show. The visuals follow the film designs, but beyond that it's written like it's aimed at viewers of the show, not newcomers curious about the movie. What little movie canon was integrated made it suffer: A candle or lantern conveniently being placed wherever firebending is needed is eyeroll worthy to the extreme.
The story is... basically what you'd expect and nothing more. Zuko gets banished, goes on about the Avatar and honor a bit, then deals with it. There's no ongoing plot, nothing terribly surprising is introduced (though a few cameos of characters from the series caught me off-guard), and there might have even been a little too much development for Zuko. This is purely character-driven stuff, which makes for a few great moments, but it doesn't carry a book. Zuko can't undergo a very big change in his prequel, because Zuko is still a bitter, angry young man at the start of the series, so constraining him to a character-driven prequel isn't wise. A plot-driven comic could have had a satisfying conclusion without much character growth.
The authors clearly loved the original series and I think they loved writing for it, because that was one thing about the writing that came across strongly for the positive. It's hard not to enjoy someone else enjoying themselves. I can only hope the movie is fortunate enough to have similar scriptwriters. The dialogue is really accurate, to the point I started hearing Mako's voice whenever Iroh spoke. The narration, on the other hand, is corny. I've seen worse, but I really wish some editor had said, "Hey, let's check what this page looks like without thought balloons and see if the panels convey the meaning on their own!" before it went to print. Narration in visual media is a crutch. Besides breaking "show, don't tell," going into a character's thoughts can make them a lot less interesting, because it takes away any mystery to them and we readers don't get to assign our own interpretations to their actions -- and if you're good at your visuals and dialogue, we won't be far off the mark.
With visuals by Nina "Space Coyote" Matsumoto, there's no excuse for going into the character's head to explain things. Her expressions are very telling and make the narration that much more redundant. Style is, of course, up to taste, but I found her black and white art did not clash with my memories of the characters from the series. I like her rendition of Zuko better than screenshots of Dev Patel, though there's no saving Iroh and his dreadlocks, even if the body language coupled with the script helped. The characters not yet introduced in the movie default to TV series designs, which is a pleasant surprise -- see if you can spot Mai and Ty Lee in the background of a shot.
The comic is around 100 pages, with forty pages of script and sketches afterward, which is fun to people who like behind-the-scenes stuff or are inspiring comic script writers, but probably filler to most readers. For reference, most manga tankouban tend to be a little under two hundred pages long, so Zuko's Story falls a little short, which I wouldn't necessarily point out except it's also a dollar more than most manga, too. Backwards much?
In terms of presentation, the cover imagery is nice on back and front, but the font is appalling. It looks like an amateur pasted text in from PhotoShop. There are three different (slightly mismatched) fonts in the title alone ("The Last Airbender" logo, "prequel," and "Zuko's Story") and the color scheme is wonky. That's forgivable, but the summary text on the back is just plain unreadable. It looks like some relation to Courier New in white with a shadow effect on top of a light and very textured background.
I don't know why they didn't go the mainstream movie tie-in route and make this a comic book mini-series. If nothing else, that would have forced some suspense into a rather tepid plot, to entice readers to pick up the next issue. I don't regret supporting Matsumoto, but she's pretty much the only reason I'd recommend this. The comic is pretty and for the most part well executed, but I finished it mostly thinking, "What was the point?"
The first thing I noticed was that, despite the fact it's a movie tie-in, this is more closely related to the original show. The visuals follow the film designs, but beyond that it's written like it's aimed at viewers of the show, not newcomers curious about the movie. What little movie canon was integrated made it suffer: A candle or lantern conveniently being placed wherever firebending is needed is eyeroll worthy to the extreme.
The story is... basically what you'd expect and nothing more. Zuko gets banished, goes on about the Avatar and honor a bit, then deals with it. There's no ongoing plot, nothing terribly surprising is introduced (though a few cameos of characters from the series caught me off-guard), and there might have even been a little too much development for Zuko. This is purely character-driven stuff, which makes for a few great moments, but it doesn't carry a book. Zuko can't undergo a very big change in his prequel, because Zuko is still a bitter, angry young man at the start of the series, so constraining him to a character-driven prequel isn't wise. A plot-driven comic could have had a satisfying conclusion without much character growth.
The authors clearly loved the original series and I think they loved writing for it, because that was one thing about the writing that came across strongly for the positive. It's hard not to enjoy someone else enjoying themselves. I can only hope the movie is fortunate enough to have similar scriptwriters. The dialogue is really accurate, to the point I started hearing Mako's voice whenever Iroh spoke. The narration, on the other hand, is corny. I've seen worse, but I really wish some editor had said, "Hey, let's check what this page looks like without thought balloons and see if the panels convey the meaning on their own!" before it went to print. Narration in visual media is a crutch. Besides breaking "show, don't tell," going into a character's thoughts can make them a lot less interesting, because it takes away any mystery to them and we readers don't get to assign our own interpretations to their actions -- and if you're good at your visuals and dialogue, we won't be far off the mark.
With visuals by Nina "Space Coyote" Matsumoto, there's no excuse for going into the character's head to explain things. Her expressions are very telling and make the narration that much more redundant. Style is, of course, up to taste, but I found her black and white art did not clash with my memories of the characters from the series. I like her rendition of Zuko better than screenshots of Dev Patel, though there's no saving Iroh and his dreadlocks, even if the body language coupled with the script helped. The characters not yet introduced in the movie default to TV series designs, which is a pleasant surprise -- see if you can spot Mai and Ty Lee in the background of a shot.
The comic is around 100 pages, with forty pages of script and sketches afterward, which is fun to people who like behind-the-scenes stuff or are inspiring comic script writers, but probably filler to most readers. For reference, most manga tankouban tend to be a little under two hundred pages long, so Zuko's Story falls a little short, which I wouldn't necessarily point out except it's also a dollar more than most manga, too. Backwards much?
In terms of presentation, the cover imagery is nice on back and front, but the font is appalling. It looks like an amateur pasted text in from PhotoShop. There are three different (slightly mismatched) fonts in the title alone ("The Last Airbender" logo, "prequel," and "Zuko's Story") and the color scheme is wonky. That's forgivable, but the summary text on the back is just plain unreadable. It looks like some relation to Courier New in white with a shadow effect on top of a light and very textured background.
I don't know why they didn't go the mainstream movie tie-in route and make this a comic book mini-series. If nothing else, that would have forced some suspense into a rather tepid plot, to entice readers to pick up the next issue. I don't regret supporting Matsumoto, but she's pretty much the only reason I'd recommend this. The comic is pretty and for the most part well executed, but I finished it mostly thinking, "What was the point?"