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A review by sparklemaia
Orphan Black #1 by Mat Lopes, Szymon Kudranski, Jody Houser, Neil Uyetake, Graeme Manson, John Fawcett
1.0
(No spoilers in this review.) I had high hopes for this comic because I love the Orphan Black tv series so much, but I was pretty disappointed with this first installment. I know comics have to do a certain amount of recapping for audiences who have not seen the show, while also introducing new material for readers who (like me) have seen the show more times than is publicly acceptable to admit, but I felt like this did not really do a good job of either task. The writing and storyline in the first issue of this comic is choppy, disjointed, and confusing, and had I not seen the show I would have had a very difficult time making sense of it. At the same time, it was almost entirely comprised of scenes and word-for-word dialogue yanked straight from the show, making it a frustratingly stale read for Orphan Black fans hoping for side stories and back stories of the characters we already know so well. Basically all this issue did was take key scenes from the first three or four episodes of Season 1 and overlay them with Sarah's internal dialogue, which just didn't add enough of a new angle or new insights (it was mostly Sarah thinking "shite shite shite" to herself) to make it worth the time to read it. Since the show ALREADY basically revolves around Sarah, retelling the beginning of Season 1 from *her* perspective really didn't add much.
Also, I tend to be fairly forgiving about art style in comic books, but the art in this just didn't really impress me. Many of the panels were basically just drawings of screencaps from the show. The one art detail that actually ticked me off was that the twins' birth mother in the show is Black and in the comic she has fairly light skin and could pretty easily be interpreted as White. Since the Orphan Black world has so few characters of color to begin with, it was annoying that one of the few named women of color in the OB universe was whitewashed in the comic book version of the story.
Not sure I'll be buying future issues, unless the writers ACTUALLY start telling new stories within the Orphan Black world, rather than just retelling the existing show from slightly different angles.
Also, I tend to be fairly forgiving about art style in comic books, but the art in this just didn't really impress me. Many of the panels were basically just drawings of screencaps from the show. The one art detail that actually ticked me off was that the twins' birth mother in the show is Black and in the comic she has fairly light skin and could pretty easily be interpreted as White. Since the Orphan Black world has so few characters of color to begin with, it was annoying that one of the few named women of color in the OB universe was whitewashed in the comic book version of the story.
Not sure I'll be buying future issues, unless the writers ACTUALLY start telling new stories within the Orphan Black world, rather than just retelling the existing show from slightly different angles.