Swoon.
The dictionary describes swooning as; to enter a state of hysterical rapture or ecstasy. I guess that’s a bit much, but Nonplayer is incredible. It’s set in a future where the world is exactly the same as it is now, except with better technology. Where a young girl with a crap job retreats into a very cool MMO called Jarvath, which allows players to experience more of life than they ever would in the real world. It’s a familiar concept, but don’t think you’ve seen it all before, you’ve never seen anything quite as beautiful as Nonplayer.
Creator Nate Simpson is the writer and artist on the book, and both disciplines are handled extremely well, though the art is particularly breathtaking. The style is so delicate and precise, every person and every creature appears alive. The scenery sometimes goes on for miles into the distance, Simpson has a background in video games and it comes across. Sometimes you feel that there is much more beyond what is shown on the page. I think there’s something incredibly cool about a video games developer developing a computer game in a comic book world, but he could do whatever he wanted really, as long as he kept on drawing stuff this pretty.
For a newcomer, I was also impressed in how effective Simpson is at setting up Nonplayer, Johnathan Ross took ages setting up Turf. Some #1′s feel way too short, others can be really wordy and full of exposition. This introduces the characters, the premise, and gives you everything you need to know very succinctly, which could be down to incredibly good writing, but the world is so familiar to our own I guess there doesn’t need to be too much explanation. There’s a dialogue between a mother and daughter that reads as if it were recorded in real life and then transcribed for the comic, I don’t think there’s ever been a fantasy before this true to real life. I like it A LOT.
Nonplayer is released on 6th April 2011. Buy it.
Check out our preview HERE
Joe Innes.
