Reviews

Dead Space: Salvage by Christopher Shy, Antony Johnston

thedeightonator's review against another edition

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3.0

This book can be pretty hard to read at points. The formatting is atrocious with some sentences ending off the page (doesn’t seem intentional), spelling and grammar mistakes and while I understand the removal of speech bubbles for the atmosphere, it makes it even harder to gather who’s talking. The artwork doesn’t help in that regard either. On the other hand, the art work also is very haunting at points and adds a lot to the atmosphere. The story too is a nice little horror story that feels reminiscent of the games. As a fan of the games I did enjoy this a lot, but as a comic, it’s got a lot of room for improvement.

welther47's review against another edition

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2.0

The story is as simple as they come. It's all about: how can we get a group of people onboard a space ship to be slaughtered by Necromorphs. I guess that is fine; it's certainly what you would expect from a Dead Space media.
The themes are cosmic horror, mainly body horror, and religious fanaticism. It is based on a horror game after all, and what easier excuse is there for horror than fanaticism?

The dialog, like the story is simple and what you would expect. It's the common Hollywood action movie dialog. There seems to be a running "fuck you, Schneider" joke going on. And that is about as deep as it gets. There is a lot of meaningless banter and it makes the beginning drag a bit. Witty, dirty banter is not endearing when you don't know nor care about the characters. And they don't get any deeper than that. That is my problem; the characters feel like real people, but are like "characters"; they don't have feelings, only care about a paycheck.

The graphics: the real reason to read this. Unfortunately, this is also where I have the biggest problem with the novel. The characters and especially the uniforms, are in stark contrast to the lower detailed and less defined backgrounds. E.g. page 49.
The graphic style is a matter of opinion, but I have mixed feeling about them. The are clearly rushed. It's not just a "style". The are messy and look sloppy.
Too often it's hard to tell what is going on. The pictures don't always tell a good and clear story by themselves, and when the dialog fails to do so too, it creates unnecessary confusion. At one point I was unsure if the pages were placed out of order!
They certainly fit the universe. The color scheme is very fitting, but they look like digitized photos of current military uniforms, just with heavy filtering. The worst is when I recognize things. A phone, limbs of a squid, a WWII submarine...

I think, I would liked a deeper story better. And for once it would be nice with a group of heroes who actually like each other. The universe is interesting, but it isn't very deep or complicated.

baconeggers's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

wondawilson's review against another edition

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dark sad tense medium-paced

4.0

wendigo's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious tense fast-paced

5.0

clavietika's review against another edition

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3.0

Amazing art, writing...not so much. Still, if you're a fan of the franchise you should give this one a look.

welther's review against another edition

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2.0

The story is as simple as they come. It's all about: how can we get a group of people onboard a space ship to be slaughtered by Necromorphs. I guess that is fine; it's certainly what you would expect from a Dead Space media.
The themes are cosmic horror, mainly body horror, and religious fanaticism. It is based on a horror game after all, and what easier excuse is there for horror than fanaticism?

The dialog, like the story is simple and what you would expect. It's the common Hollywood action movie dialog. There seems to be a running "fuck you, Schneider" joke going on. And that is about as deep as it gets. There is a lot of meaningless banter and it makes the beginning drag a bit. Witty, dirty banter is not endearing when you don't know nor care about the characters. And they don't get any deeper than that. That is my problem; the characters feel like real people, but are like "characters"; they don't have feelings, only care about a paycheck.

The graphics: the real reason to read this. Unfortunately, this is also where I have the biggest problem with the novel. The characters and especially the uniforms, are in stark contrast to the lower detailed and less defined backgrounds. E.g. page 49.
The graphic style is a matter of opinion, but I have mixed feeling about them. The are clearly rushed. It's not just a "style". The are messy and look sloppy.
Too often it's hard to tell what is going on. The pictures don't always tell a good and clear story by themselves, and when the dialog fails to do so too, it creates unnecessary confusion. At one point I was unsure if the pages were placed out of order!
They certainly fit the universe. The color scheme is very fitting, but they look like digitized photos of current military uniforms, just with heavy filtering. The worst is when I recognize things. A phone, limbs of a squid, a WWII submarine...

I think, I would liked a deeper story better. And for once it would be nice with a group of heroes who actually like each other. The universe is interesting, but it isn't very deep or complicated.

rmgebhardt's review

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2.0

I really liked the first Dead Space graphic novel, but this one just didn't engage me. Maybe it's because I never finished the game and this takes place after the events of the game, but as it is, I found the overall story boring and it didn't add anything to the Dead Space universe other than being a bridge between games one and two.

The only upside was the art. It was stellar, like the first volume. It's just too bad the story held no interest for me.
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