Dragon Age #1

Dragon Age is a great game. This is not a great comic. I'm starting to see a pattern here.

Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston do their best to recapture the feel of the Dragon Age world, even though all of the story is limited to the Circle Tower. The main conflict is the templars and their volatile relationship with the Circle mages. It's tough, because I can appreciate that they were trying to set a story in this world but leave out all the characters we like so much, but I really think that more crossover from the actual game would help. There are no familiar faces to rely on, instead we get a forbidden romance between a templar and a mage, and the eventual child of that tryst. The templars are quick to judge and angry, and the mages are fairly cowering. There is a blood mage, but he gets taken out very quickly, so quickly that I can't imagine it is ever a fair matchup for a caster to take on a templar. There is a nice appearance by a hurlock (think orcs from Lord of the Rings) but he's possessed by a more powerful foe, so it isn't really the swarming feeling that you got from those baddies in the game.
What it boils down to is this: it seems to be extremely difficult to make a good comic out of a video game.

Mark Robinson has a very Humberto Ramos-y style, not exactly reminiscent of the game for me. This looks more like it is based on a cartoon than a fairly realistic looking video game. The character designs don't hold closely enough to the look of the game for me.

Average