By Dustin Cabeal

If you make a Tekken comic book, I’m going to read it. I have read every Tekken comic that has been made, and one thing is always completely clear to me upon finishing them: There is no reason Tekken should be a comic book.

Tekken is a great fighting video game. The story, like all fighting video games, is mostly shit. Tekken has always managed to find some way of adding a special something to the story that makes you want to play it. The story is good in the format it comes from, but when you try to take all these moving pieces and inconsistencies and shove them into a comic book… well, you get this comic book.

I applaud Titan Comics’ effort. They probably chased this license and had a somewhat decent track record with video game stories translated into comics. Unfortunately, this latest Tekken comic is exactly like all the others, completely pointless to read.

You might be wondering, why the hell does this guy read all these goddamn Tekken comics if he doesn’t like any of them. It started with an anime. One of the first anime’s that I was excited to watch a Tekken anime, and it completely sucked and ignored most of the story from the video game. Every character got one big scene to showcase their fighting style and moves, and for whatever reason, that was good enough for me. I had hoped the comics would do the same so when I reached adulthood, started making money on my own and wasting it on comics, I was always excited to see a Tekken comic. The first I ever read was published at Image. It had great covers. To answer the question, I always hope they’ll be good. That they won’t focus on the narrowed aspect of the video games story and instead dive into what makes these characters tick. They never do.

The story this time around is that everyone is looking for Jin… I’m rusty on my Tekken storylines, but I’m fairly certain that this is either taking place between the 6th and 7th game or is roughly part of the story for 7. Either way, it’s about Jin, his daddy, and his daddy’s daddy. Of, fucking, course. None of the characters are given any depth, the captions, not the narration, but the captions do most of the work in establishing their personalities, and the fighting is reduced to a few panels here and there.

It doesn’t look like Tekken either. The style isn’t a good match. There are too many extra lines, none of the people look attractive compared to their video game counterparts, and the coloring is flat and muted. Tekken is a game that constantly looks like it has some water effect over the people. They’re shiny as fuck and yet the coloring isn’t vibrant, glossy or sharp. It’s safe, and that’s the worst type of art.

I will read the second issue, but I won’t review it. I don’t see how it can get any better having already been completed and sitting, waiting to be printed. Once again, a Tekken comic has failed to do anything worthwhile with their abundance of characters.

Score: 3/5

Writer: Cavan Scott
Artist: Andie Tong
Colorist: Marcio Menyz
Letterer: Jimmy Betancourt