An Assortment of Things I Hate in the Team Fortress 2 Comic Series

So, the other day, I was discussing Team Fortress 2 lore with a friend. Together, we thought about lots of cool ideas. In fact, at some point, we are considering working together to re-write our own version of the Team Fortress 7-part series. But while we chatted, a lot of things came to my mind. While I do love the TF2 comics, there are a handful of things that really piss me off.

In this article, I am not going to use spoilers. The last issue of the TF2 comic series came out over 4 years ago.

Why did TFC just kill Gray?

What I really, really don’t get is the fact that the TFC team flat out murder Gray. That makes no sense at all, especially since Gray was paying them money and knew how Australium worked. Sure, this is a massive twist in the plot, but it’s not one that makes sense. Not only did super-genius Gray not realize he’d be betrayed, but it doesn’t match TFC’s end goal. They were just doing it for the money, and probably would have managed to escape alive had they not killed Gray and let him work on his life-extending tech.

A much more interesting plot point should have been TFC Heavy slowly discovering what Gray Mann is doing and plotting against him in secret. Not only would this make sense, but TFC Heavy and his team would get way more out of the whole thing.

As a random aside, not even the name Team Fortress Classic makes any sense. When they are beaten by the Team Fortress 2 team, they exclaim “but how?” After all, they handily defeated Teams Echelon and Citadel, and Fortress seemed like the last of the bunch. But the TFC team calls themselves Team Fortress Classic. It’s all a bit weird.

No TFC Medic

Alright, sure, the story was going to have some sort of betrayal. But the fact that the TFC Medic never appeared at all makes no sense. We don’t even have a throwaway line saying that TFC Medic is dead or something. So where is TFC Medic? We have no idea and probably won’t ever find out.

It’s actually a genuine shame. We could have seen two Medics take very different approaches to the same problems. Heck, we could have had the TFC Medic work as a spy in Team Fortress’s squad or something. But no, we don’t get TFC Medic at all. Not even a hint.

The only hint that TFC Medic even exists is a single line spouted by TFC Heavy: “You are going to teach my guy how to do this.” TFC Heavy ys talking about Gray’s life-extending Australium pack that he ripped out of Gray Mann. But “my guy” is very vague. Does he mean the TFC Medic is still alive? Or is TFC Heavy referring to TFC Engineer? After all, TFC Engineer seems like he built all of TFC’s upgrades anyway.

Scout dying

Honestly? Scout dying was super pointless. Somehow Sniper and Spy both run into Scout, somehow already dying, as he was attacked off-screen. We don’t know how or why this happened. The whole thing though is just a lame excuse for Spy to give up and tell Spy the truth. It’s not even a truth that makes sense, since Scout is in his late 20s and Spy doesn’t seem THAT old.

In the mean time, we have Medic’s death, which break’s Heavy’s heart and actually shows a bit of sacrifice. We get the sheer anger from Heavy as he beats up his TFC counterpart. This is way more interesting than the weird unknown corridor where Scout is for some damn reason.

But what Scout’s death really does is completely detract from Medic’s death. We actually see the conflict between the two Heavies. Scout dying on the other hand not only is completely random, but it makes no sense either.

We’re probably never going to get a part 7

The saddest thing of all though is the massive cliffhanger at the end of issue 6. Sure, we get most of Team Fortress getting back together but Engineer is still missing and the only thing that has been accomplished is that the TFC team are dead.

Funnily enough though, had they not added the end part of the Administrator taking all the Australium, ending with the Team Fortress splash of everyone being together would have been fine. It would still lack a conclusion, but anything is frankly better than an unfulfilled cliffhanger ending.

Frankly, I’ve lost all hope that we’ll ever see the end of this comic. Such a shame really because it does have a lot of good stuff mixed in with the bad. Oh well…