Going in to this review I had no idea what to expect apart from the few preview pages and the fact that I haven’t really played an Angry Birds game in a couple of years I was worried I would have no idea what was going on. It didn’t matter, whether you are familiar with the characters or not this issue is just a fun read and actually wants to make me play the game and maybe even check out the TV show.
We are treated to three stories in this one issue, two of them are written by Jeff Parker, and the other one is written by Paul Tobin. The book was seamless in its transition from one story to the next and each story offered not only great dialogue between the characters but a amusing storyline that made me laugh out loud at some points.
The first story sees the character Bomb have hiccups and can’t stop himself from exploding, he tries every measure but to no avail. The cut sequences between the pigs and the birds were great and the reaction to the explosions on the bird island from the pigs made me chuckle a few times. I won’t ruin the outcome of this story but it was my favourite of the three on offer.
The next story is told from the perspective of the pigs which is quite novel as we see them finding items which have been washed up on their island from the storm. The biggest prize of the storm is a big box with an apparent ready-made building. Those of you that are familiar with the game will know that the pigs will use buildings to block themselves from the birds killing them. So this was a fun sequence seeing the pigs try and build something from instructions which is the size of a phone book. They finally build the correct structure, which would be pretty perfect for the war with the birds, but I won’t ruin what happens at the tail end of this story either.
The last story is pure espionage fun, in short, the birds are relaxing when they receive bundles of candy and propaganda, this distracts them from the pigs plans to do something. However, at the end of the story we have a nice panel which shows that one of the propaganda messages may perhaps be true in fact, and I am really hoping that this is picked up in future issues as it would be a great ongoing underlying story and it would be a shame if they don’t use this in the upcoming issues.
The look of the book was always going to be important especially being a licensed comic, and there was no let down here, all three artists did solid jobs and the three colourists did too. I am really impressed with the look of the book especially as there were three different art teams. We see many a time in the Big Two that when one book has many artists the quality of the book suffers, this book despite three different stories and three different artistic teams there was no lack of quality in any of the sections and I wouldn’t have been able to tell on first that they were don’t by different people and that is a testament to the whole team that worked on the book.
I don’t know if I am the target audience or who the target audience is, but I certainly had fun reading this and will definitely be checking out the next issue. If you go into this book and expect an epic about birds vs pigs that will span the length of time and will be an ongoing narrative, then you will be extremely disappointed, however if you grab this book with no expectations than to have fun, read some humour about characters from an addictive game on you handheld device, then you will be extremely satisfied.
