City of Heroes (Blue King)

(Blue King, 2004-2005)
™ and ©2004 NCsoft Corporation and Cryptic Studios, Inc.

Based on the new online role-playing game of the same name, the City of Heroes comic book is a natural follow-up to the hit game by NCsoft. The first two issues comprise the “Undead in the Big City” storyline and follows heroes Apex, War Witch, and Horus as they scour Paragon City to discover who’s behind the infestation of a kind of “zombie robots.”

Their investigation follows the mostly standard formula of battles, clue-hunting, and more battles. In other words, there’s nothing spectacular or different here, but the story’s drawn and paced competently, with enough backstory written in that people who are unfamiliar with the online game can follow along. Players should recognize several elements from the game, such as the heroes’ archetypes and power sets and their adversaries.

Make no mistake—the series is an ad for the game, with an FAQ and other basic City of Heroes information at the end of each issue. Still, there have certainly been worse attempts to use comics to market other products.

— Jason Winter

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