On the Paper Trail: Halo Uprising (Graphic Novel)

Welcome back everyone we are on the Paper Trail once again as I take a brief turn of the plotted course to bring you this book. First off a story: I tend to stop by and check out libraries when I am in the close area of one on my travels. Today marks the 50th anniversary at the library and they had many events taking place. From a videogame truck, a full mini golf course in the building, a book sale, cupcakes, Elmo was even there at the bowling alley they made. There was fun to be had all around and more libraries should use this as some ideas on how to make their building a community center.

Naturally while looking on the shelves I came across their graphic novel section, sure it was not the greatest selection I have seen but it was WELL more then I have seen at many libraries in the area. I picked up this book, sat down in a chair and read it in full. This book took all of the positive vibes out of a festive atmosphere and just made me pissed off.

Oh where do I begin...

First although you see Master Chief on the cover on the book and is the first person you do see in the book, the book IS NOT ABOUT HIM. I can some up his cameos in a simple phrase "Michael Baysplosions can't take down Mr. Invincible." Now I often am harsh on story that just stick to the characters of the cannon and do nothing outside of the construct of the story, so you would think I would praise this direction.

However a good story this is not.

Our "hero" is a hotel attendant who in circumstance gets caught up in a firefight between the Marines and the Coven. An alien woman asks him where she can get a gun since she wants to fight with the Marines, and sure enough a solider dies and they pick up his weapons and fight along side them. Now during the course of this the hero does nothing more then help run away while the woman simply kills any threat they come across, there is a scene were she questions killing the aliens only to be swept away for a forced romance.

As you can imagine in comic book fashion they get caught soon after and ask to be taken to a key that no one knows about, except our hero and his brother. The brother is about to be killed and was tortured before giving away information that only his brother knows about and tells them to not destroy his last location of Cleveland. Yes, the key of Cleveland is not Lebron James' jump shot but a tie they used while playing Tolkien when they were younger.

Now I know I mentioned that Master Chief is not in the story as I am taking, but we see a lot of him kicking ass in between scenes for no other reason as to remind us that we want to see Master Chief and not an art major and an alien trying to fight the incoming threat. Sadly most of the "action" sequences take place here leaving all the characters in the real story standing around or running away.

Since I don't care about spoilers here we go. The hero finally does tell a Marine about the key and he is taken to a base in the sewers and tells us the story again. Well after a lengthy exposition he decides to use himself as bait to get to the mother ship by claiming he is the key. Before that however we have another forced romance scene where our alien woman tells us that he saved her life.

BULL SHIT!

The prior 30 pages just had him driving away from aliens while YOU WERE SHOOTING THEM! He did not save your life you saved his several times over, and outside of being a guy you chose at random to find guns at the beginning has no real value to you except owning a drivers license and having sight to find a vehicle.

Well then as you can guess the hero does get taken, tell them to kiss his ass, as a weapons destroys the ship, while Master Chief is looking on giving the proverbial thumbs up at his choice. We end however with the brother that explained that they wasted all this time trying to figure out something he made up and lost great causalities due to this as proof that Man will always survive and they will win the day. He then dies off panel.

This novel is just horrible. The main person you are selling to us has a cameo just to prove he is a bad ass, the main story is told with little to no character development, our female lead depends on a man when clearly she can go and take care of herself, the reach of events to take place to prove a point, and the end result to go and sympathize with our hero who simply plays a pawn at his brother's bluff is insulting at best.

Who the hell would think this is a good idea to get people interested in Halo?

Editor in Chief: Joe Quesada

This must be what Linkara and the Last Angry Geek felt like after they read One More Day. I need to take a break, see you back on the trail with a better book (I hope).

On the Paper Trail: Halo Encyclopedia

Welcome back to the paper trail, and in this installment we are going to look at something a tad fanboyish. Halo Encyclopedia is a over sized book on everything in the Halo universe, if one would not assume otherwise. This is going to appeal to many people who are fans of the series, however in a unique twist I am not a big fan of Halo, this series had game play that simply didn't appeal to me and I can not consider myself a fan, therefore this review is going to come from an unbiased opinion as one could get.

So the book is going to talk about the Halo universe, and it will go into detail about it. However many books like this often cater towards what we call "Gandalf Girthers." Originating in the Lord of the Ring series and has collectively carried over to any other sorts of fan base, the process of justifying various details using logic and facts presented in the works that may or may not be vital to the plot.

For example if you ever attempted to figure out how fast a speeder bike was on Endor by attempting to calculate the speed it would take to crack the average stormtrooper's helmet; have postulated the terminal velocity of a "little pony" as Rarity falls towards the Earth to determine how high cloudsdale was above the surface; or have ever attempted to calculate who would win in a race around the world between Superman and the Flash, then you have practiced the art of Gandalf Girthing.

Now the good news is that this book does not cater itself solely to these fans, there is information that one would need to answer various questions in the Halo universe, however the bulk of this book is told in a sudo-narritive as a historical tome that would be used as a reference for the UNMC historians. It goes into great detail into the story line describing various quotes from the game, what each mission was in the campaign and how it relates to the overall war, and separates itself between the various games without outright telling which vehicle came from which game.

Now you might be asking yourself that this is all fine and dandy, a look on halopedia can get me any bit of information that I would need to have on the series so what is the real motivation on me getting this book to place on my coffee table? Well the answer to that is simple, the artwork displayed is absolutely amazing.

I am serious you would think they would go with the graphics of the various games for the majority of the book, however I can say you have a mix of sketch work, full color paintings, computer graphics, and original art. For the vast majority of the time with this title I kept being bewildered at the various art in the background looking for the attention to detail the artist took to recreate the graphics of the game with various moods they were trying to emulate.

This book has all the information fans would like and brings enough to the table that a non fans can grab towards. Not a must own in my book, but worth seeking out to at least look at the amazing artwork and get a solid history of the Halo campaign without have any of the 4th wall being broken as you go and read it. Until next time finish the fight or at least that chapter in the next book.