The first one we'll be doing is Mass Effect: Evolution, a comic series that came out last year. It spans four issues. Err, but I'll be putting them in one post, so this is the quick and dirty, okay? I've left some stuff out in hopes that you'll go pick this up and give it a read on your own.
Also worth noting ... I'm really bad at reading comics. This series just about blew my little dim mind. I've read it a few times, even sitting with the wiki summary open while I read, and I still don't get some of the shit that went down. If I mess something up, just call me an idiot and move on.
So! Evolution takes place at the very fucking beginning of the Mass Effect time line. That Mars Rover that NASA just sent up? It's going to uncover some Prothean technology in a few years. (Mass Effect nerds went APE. SHIT. during the launch.) We're going to bring it back to Earth, study it, and figure out how to use mass effects in a few years. Those mass effects are going to send us hurdling face first into the closest alien race to Earth: the turians.
Humanity handled this just about as well as you'd expect.
Thus began The First Contact War, when humans and turians started fighting ... because ... um ... look, there's probably a political reason, but "space racism" is probably the real reason. This whole thing is about 30esque years before the events of Mass Effect 1.
So, as the comic opens, the Alliance (remember those guys? Shepard works for them, that's the space army dudes) has figured out that the turians have A Thing, and they can't do that, because Space Racism. The Alliance hires three mercenaries to go find The Thing.
I am just going to have to learn how to draw men's hair before this is over, that is just going to have to happen.
Anyway, from left to right, you're looking at Ben Hislop, Eva Core, and Jack Harper, the later being the hero of our story.
The team manages to infiltrate a turian camp.
They don't get the Thing, but they manage to tie up a turian general, named Desolas, and interrogate him.
So, Desolas, he's got nothing, or at least, he knows that a pigeon don't squeal. Get it? Because they're bird aliens? Holy shit, I am hilarious. Anyway, Ben, Eva and Jack come up with a plan to get the goods. They rig up a hologram, uh, somehow, that looks like Desolas, and then they use it to call Desolas' lieutenant.
No, I don't know why they had to capture Desolas to get that done. If that's going to bug you, you're going to have a headache by the end of this.
So, anyway, they call Desolas' lieutenant at her camp.
Hey, for once I didn't fuck up the art! That turian on the right there is a girl. Girl turians don't have the head fringe stuff. You never see girl turians in the games, but they crop up in the comics. She even wears a neat looking dress, I'm kind of jealous.
So anyway, Desolas' lieutenant leads everyone to the cave that holds the Thing, and then Jack, Eva and Ben storm the place again.
Seriously, do turians not ever learn? I have this theory that they're the weiners of the galaxy, since they just kind of lemming off and do whatever they're told. Go fuck with the new human guys? Sure! Go deploy the genophage? Sure! Go stand outside a cave and wait for a bunch of humans to ambush us again? Why the hell not!
So I was expecting Jack, Eva and Ben to get their ass kicked, because it's seriously like a fifteen on three fight at this point, but nope, the turians kind of roll over and let the humans tie them up.
The THREE humans which are much smaller and more breakable than the ENTIRE TROOP of turians. Sure, comic, whatever you say.
Jack and Ben decide to go into the cave and get the Thing, while Eva stays outside and guards the prisoners. I'm a little surprised the turians didn't guide Jack and Ben inside and offer them cookies while they were at it, because damn. Really, Eva probably didn't even need to guard them. They could have just handed Desolas a notepad and told him to write the name down of any turian who talks.
Inside the cave? Yeah, there's this Thing.
And then shit starts getting a little familiar.
Yeah, hey, so, Shepard called, she wants her scene back.
Then again, I guess Jack and Ben did it first, technically. You guys, Jack and Ben were getting their minds fucked with by alien relics before it was cool.
So Jack wakes up on a turian ship.
Yeah, no, it's that Saren. Wave hello!
Desolas, by the way, is Saren's brother, so Saren's kind of got a personal stake in pissing on the humans this time.
Okay, this is going to sound like I'm going off topic, but I swear I'm not. One time, I was having something done at the dentist, and they gave me nitrous oxide. Laughing gas, right? When the dentist was done, it didn't wear off correctly or something, and I walked out of the dentist's office still a little stoned. This story has become famous among my friends, as it turns out I got this overwhelming need to go to Target. You don't know, man. I had to go to Target. No. No. I had to go to Target. I HAD. to go. to. TARGET.
I came to in the middle of a Target store not quite understanding why I was looking at wallets.
That's kind of what happens at this point in the story: Jack decides that he HAS to go to Illium.
And Eva's like, "What the fuck? Why do you want to go to an asari planet?"
And Jack's like, "No, you don't get it. I HAVE. to go. to ILLIUM.
And Eva's like, "Seriously, that's in the Terminus systems! You fly a ship out there, you'll cause a war!" (Remember, that's why Shepard and Udina were fighting at the end of Mass Effect 1.)
And Jack's like, "Naw, naw. Naw. See. See, I HAVE. TO. GO. to. ILL LEE UMMMMMMMMM."
And Eva's like, "Fuck it, I'm out of expositionary statements about Illium, let's go to fucking Illium."
So they go to Illium, because, uh. Um. It probably has to do something with that relic that Jack and Ben got all touchey feeley with, but seriously? It read just like my voyage de la Target.
While Jack's there, he decides he has to drive a space car. (In the Mass Effect universe, they have flying cars in the cities.) So he chats up an asari to figure out where one is.
Add this to the list of things that bothers me about this comic: it's a BIG DAMN THING that Jack can suddenly speak Asari, because the asari don't speak human languages because they're aliens. But the turians and the humans? Flawless English communication. Hell, Shepard had more trouble with Mr. Fly In The Ointment. So, what, was the universal translator discovered, made, tested, and 100% functioning in this teeny little time span just so humans and turians could slap fight each other during the first contact war? And if that's all it took, why the hell couldn't they just throw in whatever language it is that asari speak? It obviously can't pick up asari, because Eva can't understand the conversation, yet she can understand the turians.
The BEST I can come up with is that the universal translator was invented on Earth first to deal with all the Earth languages, giving them a head start in development, so that all they had to do was decode and add in Turian once they got out into space, but even then, that's giving a lot of people a lot of credit.
And this capitalization thing is driving me nuts, just as an aside. If it's an alien, their race isn't capitalized: asari, turian, human. (Prothean is always capitalized in game, if you were wondering what the hell I was doing with that.) But then, I guess if we're using the word as a language, we do capitalize it: he is speaking Turian? Would it not make more sense to just name the language after their home planet, as in Thessian, Palavenian, Sur'Kesheese? But then I guess you run into Earthien. Do all turians speak Turian/Palavenian then?
AUGH THINKING TOO HARD NERD QUOTIENT REACHING A BOILING POINT
fuggit let's fly a car
that is a good flying car
So, once they land the flying car, guess who pops up?
Damn! Wonder how that happened!
Saren's got this plan, see? He's going to drag Jack, Eva and Ben back to Palaven (the turian home world). And then? AND THEN? And then I'm like, YAAAY~~! because Palaven is, err, spoiler alert, like the one home planet we don't get to see in the games. Seriously, we get Earth, Tuchanka (Krogan), Thessia (Asari), Sur'Kesh (Salarian), Rannoch (Quarian), we get to see the Geth fleet, but legit? We got punked out of Palaven.
This is probably because Palaven isn't very hospitable to other species. As you can see from my beautifully rendered drawings of turians, they're covered in these big ass metalic scales because the planet has a huge gravity field. Anything that isn't turian has to wear an environmental suit to visit.
But YAY PALAVEN CAN'T WAIT LET'S SEE WHAT'S ON --
Wait, Jack's just STANDING THERE without an environmental suit? But! But! He can't live longer than like five minutes without one! What in the ever loving hell?
I am going to have a seizure when we get to Mass Effect: Deception. That book was so bad Bioware declared it non-canonical.
Meanwhile, Desolas has got all these turian husks -- fun fact, the technical term is a marauder -- and he's going to let them into a Palavenian temple that no one's been in for a thousand bazillian years. Seems legit. They're even going to move the relic thing in there, so they can make more marauders! God damn, you all, great ideas are everywhere!
I don't remember them ever going in to why Desolas wants to turn all of Palaven into marauders. I guess he thinks they're better soldiers somehow?
Anyway, Jack and Desolas have that standard good guy bad guy argument:
Desolas throws Jack in the cavernous dungeons below the temple, where the only thing Jack has to do all day is try and decipher the runes on the walls.
I think only the hardest of core nerds are going to be able to read that. Yes, it's a real code. Yes, from a real sci fi work. Yes, it really says something. Yes, I actually do lead a sad little nerdy life.
The runes in the comic books don't actually say anything, leaving the reader to figure out what they might mean.
close enough
So anyway, Eva tries to spring Jack from jail, and while they're running, SURPRISE SAREN.
Turns out the marauders dug one up while Jack was cooling his heels. Oh, and Jack can read the runes! The turians, a long time ago, had these "valluvian priests", also known as marauders. It makes me think of the valarians on Mystery Science Theater 3000. PS, if you haven't seen the entirety of the episode of MST3K I just linked, watch it, because we WILL be referring to it at a later date.
Meanwhile. The monoliths, surprise! They make valluvians or valarians or marauders or whatever you like, really, but it does so at the cost of making the host brain dead. Shit. That's a little bit of a thing.
So, the three of them run upstairs where Desolas is trying to chuck turians into the other monolith that they found at the beginning of the comic, and buddy boy howdy, it is a TOTAL battle royalle.
I thought about maybe keeping the ending a secret, but then it dawned on me that you could probably figure out that Desolas gets his ass kicked, since there are turians that aren't marauders running around during the time of Mass Effect 1. So, ta da, good guys win.
The last scene is Jack reflecting on all that he's learned.
Hmm. But I'm sure that won't come up again.
NEXT TIME: I read something I actually like.
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