A Distinct Lack of Comics and Love

I LOVE the TF2 comics. I really do. They, and by extension all the other non-game media we get for TF2, are all absolutely amazing, bringing a new dimension to what is otherwise just a cartoony first person shooter. Valve have said it themselves, comics and videos are a third way to actually give TF2 some sort of story, even if it is absolutely batshit crazy. But although I can understand delays in these things, sometimes there’s something… missing.

Part of the reason why I’m writing this article is because Jay Dorris hasn’t finished his article. Jay Dorris is a person of incredibly fine taste. He has very high standards, possibly stupidly high standards, and he’s the sort of person who will stick to his guns for ever and ever. And ever.  Also forever. I’ve listened to him rant on, and he does bring up some valid points, most of which I’ll let him use in his own article, assuming he ever finishes it, and doesn’t doom it forever like his 5000th post.

Anyway, back to the comics. We’ve been waiting an incredibly long time for the TF2 comic series, an actual series, to release its last two issues. Issue 5 took forever to come out, and although things certainly did happen, I wonder if they went a bit too… all over the place. The one antagonist we’ve had since the MvM update is suddenly killed off for no real reason, and the capturing of our favourite mercs is done behind closed doors. The two genuinely surprising things – Medic working for the other team and Sniper being dead are both other relatively quickly. And then there’s the whole anti-deus ex machina that is the horde of blood-sucking robots that look like nothing ever seen or used or even heard of in the TF2 universe.

Thing is, previous issues have been the same. We never see the kerfuffle between Sniper and Demoman when they wander into Sniper’s house for example. One of the most off-putting parts is how we don’t see Demoman and Soldier trying to help Spy and Scout escape or anything, Soldier just shouts objection, knocks Spy over and boom, they’re all nearly hanging from gallows. I get these are comics and we can’t have anything, but there’s a very distinct lack of any actual fighting, it’s all done off-screen. For a comic about a bunch of mercs who shoot each other, there’s a distinct lack of actual shooting and stuff.

Another, smaller issue I have is how many loose ends we have floating around. What is the Administrator doing? Why is Engineer 1. wearing blue and 2. helping her? Why was Pyro running a company? How did Soldier lose his home? Where is Olivia from and where did she go in later issues? Why did Sniper’s parents die? Why were his real parents such bastards? Why did they send Heavy and Scout off on their own? Where are they going? Why haven’t we seen them in issue 5 yet? Where’s the TFC Medic? Why is TF2 Medic so maniacal? Why is TFC Heavy suddenly a power-hungry jerk? Why didn’t Gray have an army of robots protecting him? Why did they bother killing him? And so on and so forth. I doubt any of those will really be answered.

That being said, most of their normal update comics are great. Always are. I’ve always felt that the comics do best when they’ve got a small theme and finish in one go. But like most things in TF2, I wonder if the loose ends will actually be tied up?

I’m not going to complain about how long the comics are taking to come out though. I’ve already done that a lot. Yes, they are taking forever, nothing we can do about it. Just have to be patient and hope we don’t die before issue 7 comes out.

Medic

Medic, also known as Phovos (or occasionally Dr Retvik Von Scribblesalot), writes 50% of all the articles on the Daily SPUF since she doesn't have anything better to do. A dedicated Medic main in Team Fortress 2 and an avid speedster in Warframe, Phovos has the unique skill of writing 500 words about very little in a very short space of time.

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