Written by: Alex Irvine
Art by: John Aggs
Publisher: Titan Comics
When I saw that there was a Deus Ex comic coming out, I wasn’t quite sure what to think. The franchise is no stranger to the world of comics, but the last outing, a tie-in to 2011’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution, failed to impress. But hey, I like the Deus Ex franchise, and I like comics, so if this ended up being good, it would be worth getting excited about. Plus, I rather enjoyed Daredevil Noir, which writer Alex Irvine also worked on. So here I am.
The first issue of Children’s Crusade is actually pretty good. It didn’t exactly blow me away – the plot is fairly thin, and there wasn’t a ton of character development. In fact, it really relies on the reader being familiar with at least Human Revolution to really keep up with what’s going on. That’s not exactly a strike against it; it is a tie-in comic after all, but if you were interested and haven’t played Human Revolution, I wouldn’t bother.
If you did, then there’s no real reason to avoid this comic. Of course, the comic should be evaluated on its own merits, but I can’t help the fact that I’m already invested in Adam Jensen. Irvine writes his character well here, capturing the character from the games quite well. It doesn’t really add much to the character, barring putting him in a new situation, but this is only the first issue. What is here is good enough to be engaging.
The bulk of the issue is actually just an extended action sequence, and this is where the art becomes super important. The action is incredibly realized, and captures the visceral action of the video game. There are times when I really wish that Irvine would have backed off, actually. There’s a lot of long-winded, somewhat unneeded narration that interferes with the work that John Aggs is doing. Some of the narration is fine, in fact, I really enjoyed the stuff coming from the newscaster.
That being said, it kind of felt out of place, and definitely put a damper on the effectiveness of the action. There are parts where the art isn’t as strong, and perhaps the narration would have fit better here. I don’t want to call it lazy, because that’s not really accurate – in fact that would be a lazy shortcut for me as a writer. The quieter moments of the book simply don’t see Aggs at his best. He excels at the action, which is most of the book, but the rest just doesn’t look quite as good.
Deus Ex: The Children’s Crusade #1 is a decent comic. Like I said, if you haven’t played the games, you should skip it. Otherwise, it’s the start of what could potentially be a very interesting story, with decent characters. There’s a lot of room to work with going forward, so I could see a world where this issue is the worst of the bunch and the rest simply improve upon. For the time being, however, it suffers from a severe lack of substance.
