So it’s probably old news by now but we finally saw the release of the Resident Evil 3 remake (Capcom, 2020) recently and, to mark the occasion, I’ve been taking a look back at Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine, a five-issue comic book released by WildStorm back in 1998 to 1999. If you’ve stuck with me through it all, well done; if not, you can read up on my thoughts on issue one, two, three, and four easily enough.

Issue five, published in February 1999, would be the last issue in this series and, honestly, it probably couldn’t have come at a better time. Rather than choose to be a by the numbers adaptation of the first two videogames, WildStorm mostly opted to tell side stories, interludes, and recaps of Resident Evil (ibid, 1996) and Resident Evil 2 (ibid, 1998). While this worked to begin with and nicely fleshed out some of the Resident Evil lore, choosing to be an anthology series rather than focusing on the events of the videogames has produces more misses than hits in retrospect.

This final issue begins with “…And the Last Shall Be First” (Oprisko, et al), a story in which a teenage boy, Dexter Whitlam, pushed to the edge by schoolyard bullies, steals and injects himself with a vial of G-Virus in order to exact revenge upon his tormentors. Desperate for revenge against his bullies, Dexter stumbles across an Umbrella facility where a Tyrant is being held in stasis; it was at this point that I was hoping Dexter would release the bio-organic weapon (BOW) so that we could finally see it wreck some serious havoc as, up to this point, BOWs like the Tyrant had been given the shaft by WildStorm.

Instead, though, Dexter steals a G-Virus sample (I guess Umbrella were planning on experimenting on the Tyrant with it?) and, while he initially plans to create his own BOW, he is driven to injecting himself and transforms into a “G”-like monster. G-Dexter hunts down and kills his tormentors but is subdued by Mr. Venk, an Umbrella operative, and taken to an Umbrella facility where, inexplicably, his G-infection is apparently cured. Reverted back to normal, he is offered the chance to join Umbrella and put his intellect to their use.

It’s kind of sad that “…And the Last Shall Be First” is the only time a G-infected human is given a chance to do anything of note as, even in issue two’s direct adaptation of Resident Evil 2, “G” was taken out like a bitch. Here, we finally see what “G” is capable of as G-Dexter slashes fools up with his claws and mutilates his bullies with extreme prejudice. Unfortunately, though, it seems like a wasted effort as it’s not like this is the origin of a character we know from the videogames; had the story been tweaked and reworked slightly, it could have given us an interesting glimpse into William Birkin’s childhood but, alas, we’re left with the potential of “G” being wasted on a random original character who, honestly, isn’t all that compelling; it’s the same “nerd bullied to the brink” story you’ve seen a hundred times before…but with the G-Virus involved.

The next side story, “Emmy’s Bloody Spoon” (Adams, et al), follows another couple, Deb and Terry, who decide to take their honeymoon in Raccoon City, of all places. They make a pit stop at a diner which, wouldn’t you know it, comes under siege from a zombie attack. Despite the best efforts of the little old lady behind the counter, they’re all massacred by a lone zombie, who is interrupted by the arrival of Claire Redfield. So, what we have here is a brief prelude to the start of Claire’s story in Resident Evil 2, showing how the diner came to be infected when she rocked up in town. The story ends the moment Claire arrives, though, and therefore doesn’t really tell us anything we really needed to know at that point as WildStorm were showing us the rate of infection in Raccoon City back in issue two so, other than filling in a very small hole in the overarching Resident Evil story, this feels, again, like wasted potential as they could have used these pages to tell a short story about Claire and Sherry after Resident Evil 2, or expand upon their time in Raccoon City but, instead, we get this…

The issue ends with the conclusion of the three-issue story WildStorm have been telling about Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, and Barry Burton trying to locate Umbrella’s European headquarters. “Kane & Abe” (ibid) opens by pretty much skipped over exactly how the three avoided being eaten by their attackers in the last issue’s conclusion and jumps right into Chris and Barry loading up on weapons to go find Jill. Jill stumbles upon Abe, an Umbrella scientist, and Kane, a massive Tyrant-like BOW that Jill is unable to stop with just her pistol, which is a nice change of pace considering how easily “G”, Mr. X, and a Tyrant were taken care of without any real effort in previous issues). Abe sets off the obligatory self-destruct and disappears, leaving Jill, Chris, and Barry to subdue Kane long enough to make their dramatic escape just as the castle explodes. The issue then ends with Claire and Leon S. Kennedy just happening upon the three like it was nothing, finally bringing an end to Claire’s long search for her brother.

Once again, WildStorm foreshadows Resident Evil – Code: Veronica (Capcom Production Studio 4, 2000) through the Gothic aesthetic of the German castle, European setting, and the reunion of the Redfields. The BOW the protagonists tangle with is also very similar to the Hypnos Tyrant from Resident Evil: Survivor (TOSE, 2000), of all things, and the action-orientated nature of their battle through the castle is more than reminiscent of the gameplay changes first seen in and Resident Evil 4 (Capcom Production Studio 4, 2005).

However, this was a very rushed conclusion to a three-part story; entire plot points and sequences are ignored and the story just jumps from one thing to the next with little in between to fill in the gaps. It’s almost as if WildStorm shouldn’t have wasted time in the last issue recreating the game’s laborious puzzles and, instead, focused on moving the narrative along in an interesting and action-orientated way.

In the end, Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine ended with a bit of a whimper. They didn’t do a proper adaptation of a Resident Evil videogame until issue two, didn’t start a multi-part story until issue three, and most of the stories they did tell, while interesting, were pretty forgettable and inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. I applaud their efforts to tie each story together in subtle ways, and to refer to the events of the videogames; the artwork was strikingly gory and consistently good all the way through each of the five issues and they made an effort to adapt all the different nuances of the videogames, from the characters to the story, the creatures, and even the puzzles. While some of these land better (and are more suitable) than others, at least they gave it a fair shake of the stick and tried to expand upon what was, at the time, only a two game franchise.

Reading back these issues, it almost seems as though Capcom restricted the type of stories WildStorm were allowed to tell as, rather than go into detail about what the survivors did before, between, and after Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2, the writers dance and skirt around the issue, throwing as much smoke and mirrors (or, more appropriately, blood and guts) at the reader as they can to disguise the fact that they haven’t actually expanded upon these characters much at all…possibly because they weren’t allowed to given that Capcom had a couple of sequels and spin-offs in the works.

They tried to expand upon side characters like Ada’s boyfriend John and inject William Birkin with a bit more menace but both of these efforts were pretty much ignored and retconned by Capcom in subsequent sequels. With that in mind, it seems all the more sensible to me to have used these issues to tell adaptations of the first two videogames alongside one or two interludes and side stories per issue. Show a little more of Albert Wesker’s mindset, delve deeper into Chief Irons’ corruption, maybe just do a story the follows Mr. X bludgeoning its way through the Raccoon City police station. But to waste pages and effort on telling us what happened before Claire arrived at that diner seems like a waste of time to me, especially when you’re giving the shaft to the Lickers and BOWs like “G”.

WildStorm would revisit the Resident Evil franchise a couple more times over the years; they told the story of the hitherto-unknown Special Tactics and Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S.) Charlie team in the four-issue Resident Evil: Fire & Ice series, published in 2000 and 2001. This comic featured many of the same writers and artists as Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine and even returned some of the original characters and places to the lore, like Patrick Brady from issue two and Saguaro Wells from issue four. They also published a prequel to Resident Evil 5 (Capcom, 2009) between 2009 and 2011 and, while they collected each of these different publications into trade paperbacks, they are all long out of print. Overall, Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine was a pretty enjoyable experience but it had the potential to be so much more; it could have used its artists and writers to bring the videogames to life in a new way for comic readers and given fans of the videogames a lovely piece of ancillary media to collect. Instead, it’s more of a forgettable tie-in that peaks with the second issue, though it would be nice to see the collection get a reprint at some point.

My Rating:

Could Be Better

Did you ever read any of the Resident Evil comics published by WildStorm? Would you be interested in the series receiving a reprint as the collection is currently out of print? Do you have a favourite piece of ancillary Resident Evil media? Drop a comment down below and stay in touch for more content and articles.

The release of the Resident Evil 3 remake (Capcom, 2020) is still a big enough news item for me to continue my retrospective on Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine, a comic book released by WildStorm back in 1998 to 1999 that ran for five issues and covered events between, during, and after Resident Evil (ibid, 1996) and Resident Evil 2 (ibid, 1998).

Issue one recapped and filled in events from the first game, while issue two focused entirely on covering the events of the second. The third issue oddly introduced supernatural elements to the lore and began a three-issue arc that would continue in issue four, released in December 1998.

The issue’s first story, “Night Stalkers” (Oprisko, et al), revolves around giant, man-bat creatures created by Umbrella’s G-Virus attacking and small Nevada town. Their bite infects a young boy, turning him into a zombie, but their true purpose is to spirit townsfolk away to a hidden Umbrella lab, where the lunatic scientist Dr Callos, can turn them into more bat-men. Luckily, Leon S. Kennedy rocks up to investigate and, after a brief scuffle, is captured by the man-bats and taken to Dr Callos’ laboratory. Leon manages to overload the machine Callos has been using to control the man-bats and they turn on their creator, ripping him to shreds while Leon makes his escape and the air force move in to eradicate the lab.

This was a slightly better attempt at mixing the supernatural with Resident Evil as, unlike last issue’s “Wolf Hunt” (Adams, et al), “Night Stalkers” shows these vampire-like creatures to be products of Umbrella’s G-Virus rather than anything mythical. Once again, the comic oddly foreshadows Resident Evil Zero (Capcom, 2002), which featured a giant infected bat as a boss battle, though that was noticeably less humanoid than the man-bats featured here.

Without really knowing it, this story also provides a bit of a glimpse into Leon’s life between Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4 (Capcom Production Studio 4, 2005); Leon even arrives in a small town using a little jeep, very much like the opening of Resident Evil 4, and is both decidedly more capable and written as more of an action hero as in that game . It’s not really revealed who he’s working for here; he wears a modified version of his riot gear but, judging from his rescuers, appears to work for the United States government.

“Special Delivery” (Mostman, et al) makes a minor attempt to address a concern I had with issue two’s adaptation of Resident Evil 2 as it follows two Umbrella helicopter pilots as the fly around delivering Umbrella’s bio-organic weapons (BOWs) to specific areas. Their first drop-off is Mr. X, whom they dump right on top of the Raccoon City police station; though this is the only time he is featured in the story, it’s interesting to see behind the scenes of his delivery as, in the game, he just comes crashing in with a bang.

The pilots then drop off a massive man-eating plant, similar to Plant 42, at a chemical warehouse and a Tyrant at a mineshaft working to synthesise anti-viral agents. Just as they’re about to make their last delivery, though, Umbrella’s deceitful nature kicks in and a canister activates, releasing a squid-like BOW on the chopper that promptly kills them in brutal fashion. Side stories like this are a great use of this comic as it allows us to see a version of events we’re normally not privy to in the videogames; Resident Evil, especially the earlier titles, was always ore about reacting to the events and trying to survive through them rather than worry about the hows and the whys. That came through the files and notes and was generally revealed the deeper you got into the games but, around this time, all we really had to go on about Umbrella were documents found strewn around the game’s environments, biased third-party information, and the drudgery that was Resident Evil: Survivor (TOSE, 2000).

The issue ends with a continuation of last issue’s “Dead Air” (Adams, et al), “Zombies Abroad” (ibid), which begins by solving the pesky problem of safely landing the zombie-infested plane that Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, and Barry Burton are in. Luckily, Chris is able to do this without any real issue and the rest of the zombies are subdued (thanks to Barry using a make-shift flamethrower, which seems incredibly dangerous in a pressurised aircraft…) before they can infect other passengers).

After landing, the three do a whistle-stop tour of some of England’s most iconic landmarks in search of Umbrella’s European headquarters and find nothing but zombies. The story then just jump cuts to France and becomes an action-packed montage of the three blowing zombies away outside the Eiffel Tower, in the Louvre, and in the Netherlands until they reach a castle in Germany.

Here, the story slows way down and pulls inspiration from the investigatory and puzzle-solving elements of the videogames; Jill finds a mysterious photograph, Chris discovers a hidden passageway after fiddling with a suit of armour, and Barry finds a hidden note after playing an organ in a near-exact recreation of many of the arbitrary puzzles of the first videogame.

The story ends on another cliffhanger, with each of our three heroes left in a face of jeopardy. I’m at odds with this one; on the one hand, it’s fun to see these three working together and blowing away zombies but, on the other, there’s a few questions raised. Like, when did the Tyrant-Virus (T-Virus) spread to Europe? Up until this point, it’s only infected small, mid-western towns and areas in America. When was the T-Virus released? If Umbrella’s headquarters weren’t in any of the places the three visited, it’s a bit weird that they’d encounter so many zombies.

Also, while it’s nice to see the comic really go all-in with adapting the game’s puzzles, I’m not entirely sure if it works for a comic book. Comic books are generally all about frenetic action and, so far, these Resident Evil comics have always had a good balance between gory fire fights and nods to the game’s slower mechanics. I kind of feel like they could have used an entire issue to tell a slow story where we follow a lone character investigating their surroundings, finding clues and maybe solving some puzzles while building threat and looming tension as we see zombies or BOWs closing in on them but suddenly juxtaposing seven pages of zombies getting their heads blown off with elaborate puzzles in a Gothic setting just feels a bit odd here.

Other than a few additional pieces of artwork from Carlos D’Anda, that’s about it for this issue. At this point, the formula is starting to wear a little thin; it really does feel like WildStorm would have been better off doing maybe three full issues adapting the first game, then three more focusing on the second game, with one side story or interlude in each to help flesh out the Resident Evil lore. They seem, instead, to have been aiming for an anthology-based title but I’m not sure it’s really paying off as we’re only four issues in and they already seem to be struggling for content and story ideas. As there wasn’t much to go on at this point apart from the characterisations and documents we see in the videogames, it might have been smarter to stick to being a straight-up adaptation rather than try and cobble together new content out of, effectively, nothing.

My Rating:

Could Be Better

Did you ever read the Resident Evil comics published by WildStorm? Would you be interested in the series receiving a reprint as the collection is currently out of print? Do you have a favourite piece of ancillary Resident Evil media? Drop a comment below and come back next Tuesday for my rundown of issue five.

I’m still riding the coat-tails of the Resident Evil 3 remake (Capcom, 2020) with my retrospective on Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine, a five-issue comic book released by WildStorm back in 1998 to 1999 that filled in events between, during, and after Resident Evil (ibid, 1996) and Resident Evil 2 (ibid, 1998) to flesh out the Resident Evil lore outside of the videogames.

We’ve already seen how issue one used four stories to tell a recap of Resident Evil and interludes between that game and its sequel, and how issue two reduced the stories within to three while expanding the page count and revolving entirely around the events of the sequel. Issue three, released in September 1998, keeps the three-story format but also reverts to telling interludes and side stories to the main series videogames.

The first story, “Wolf Hunt” (Adams, et al) takes place before the events of Resident Evil and revolves around Jill Valentine going undercover at Racoon City College after some particularly gruesome murders take place there. Barry Burton accompanies her as back-up and she is soon attacked by a wolf-like creature. She immediately kills it and the story ends with the strong implication that it was actually a werewolf.

This was basically a nothing story and really didn’t add much to Jill or Barry’s backstories or personalities beyond showing them working together before resident Evil. It s interesting to see Albert Wesker giving them orders and showing life in the Special Tactics and Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S.) before the Tyrant-Virus (T-Virus) outbreak but, ultimately, it could have just been any story and supernatural elements shouldn’t really be involved with Resident Evil.

WildStorm finally introduce the Licker in the second story, “Danger Island” (Oprisko, et al), in which a couple find their island vacation ruined when a capsule containing the creatures breaks open on the island, releasing both them and the G-Virus upon the populace. Stan and Leslie (the aforementioned couple) soon find themselves beset upon by all manner of gigantic mutated creatures mutated by the G-Virus, in particular a massive eel that ensures that the Lickers don’t get a chance to actually do anything.

Stan is eventually able to kill the eel and, though he and Leslie are injured, they survive (using herbs to ease their wounds) and manage to call for help, only for William Birkin to show up and (it’s strongly implied) execute them to keep Umbrella’s secrets. This story focused more on the variety of mutated bio-organic weapons (BOWs) players can encounter in the Resident Evil videogames. There’s only one zombie, shown very briefly, ensuring that the story can focus entirely on the G-eel that relentlessly pursues Stan and Leslie. It’s a shame that the Lickers weren’t given more focus as the story could easily have been about them hunting prey using the island’s forestry as camouflage but it did provide a bit of a look at Birkin’s despicable character (even if he wasn’t really much of a hands-on kinda guy in the videogames).

The issue ends with “Dead Air” (Adams, et al) which is not only the first in a multi-part story (a first for the comic) but also a direct sequel to side stories seen in the last two issues. This story sees Chris Redfield, Barry Burton, and Jill (looking a lot like Chris’s sister, Claire, for some reason), travel to London after the events of the first game. This is interesting as, while other stories and the videogames had eluded to Chris travelling to Europe to investigate Umbrella further, I don’t believe it was ever stated that he went with his old partners, at least not before Resident Evil 5 (Capcom, 2009).

As you might expect, a T-Virus outbreak occurs once they’re in the air, forcing the characters to have to battle them without their usual weapons. Amidst the outbreak and the desperate situation, Jill realises that she’s beaten the infected pilot into mush, leaving the plane hurtling through the air in a downward spiral.

This story opts for the more close-quarters combat players can come to expect from Resident Evil’s claustrophobic environments but we’ve yet to actually battle an outbreak on a plane before; there was that outbreak on the narrow cabins of the train in Resident Evil Zero (Capcom, 2002) but the closest the series has come to exploring an airborne outbreak was in the opening scenes of Resident Evil: Degeneration (Kamiya, 2008), which is a bit surprising really.

After issue two only included a brief artist’s gallery, issue three features another interview with Resident Evil producer Shinji Mikami, though it’s decidedly less interesting as the last one as he mainly dodges questions about Resident Evil sequels and talks about his childhood. In the end, issue three is a lot weaker than issue two but, between “Danger Island” and “Dead Air”, there’s some decent action/horror to experience here. Starting a multi-part story on issue three rather and issue one was an…interesting idea as, usually, continuous stores are used by comics to entice readers into buying the next issue. I guess the strength of the Resident Evil brand was enough that WildStorm felt they could wait a few issues before trying to do sequential stories.

My Rating:

Pretty Good

Did you ever read the Resident Evil comics published by WildStorm? Would you be interested in the series receiving a reprint as the collection is currently out of print? Do you have a favourite piece of ancillary Resident Evil media? Drop a comment below and come back next Tuesday for my rundown of issue four.

This month is all about the Resident Evil 3 remake (Capcom, 2020) and, as such, I’m taking a look back at the official Resident Evil comic released by WildStorm back in 1998 to 1999. The five-issue Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine mostly filled in events between, during, and after Resident Evil (ibid, 1996) and Resident Evil 2 (ibid, 1998) to flesh out the Resident Evil lore outside of the videogames.

Issue two, released in June 1998, features only three stories compared to the four of issue one but has more pages devoted to each one). From this issue, the comics also start to use the God-awful American variant of the classic Resident Evil title font, most likely as this issue is more focused on events surrounding the second videogame.

Another major change is that this issue actually includes a straight-up adaptation of Resident Evil 2, including dialogue lifted straight from the videogame. Whereas the closest issue one got was a recap on the first game, “A New Chapter of Evil” (Adams, et al) details pretty much the entirety of Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield’s stories, picking up with them being separated on the streets of Raccoon City and following both on their journey through the Raccoon City police station and the Umbrella facility beneath the city streets.

As in the game, the story jumps back and forth between the two but, ostensibly, the plot remains the same just without any Lickers: Leon makes it to the police station, where he meets and is eventually attacked by Marvin. After catching up with Claire, he bumps into Ada Wong and is shot by Annette Birkin after having a run-in with a G monster. Patched up by Ada, Leon dispatches of a giant mutated alligator and they descend into the Umbrella facility. Ada betrays Leon and falls to her death while trying to steal the G-Virus, leaving him with little time to escape the facility.

As all this is going on, Claire (who begins the story packing a lot more heat than her videogame counterpart) has an extremely brief and uneventful run-in with Mr. X. seriously, she takes him out with just “five rounds”, off panel, and he never appears again. It’s like the writers only played snippets of Claire’s story.

Anyway, Claire meets Annette’s daughter, Sherry, and they witness the corrupt Police Chief Irons be killed by Sherry’s father, William, who has mutated into “G”. Claire dispatches “G” (once again with laughable ease) and comforts Sherry after her mother is killed. They hook back up with Leon and, after finally doing away with “G”’s final form, they escape the facility just as it self-destructs.

As an adaptation of Resident Evil 2, “A New Chapter of Evil” is both extensive and rushed; loads of Claire’s story is skipped entirely, with Mr. X practically being a non-player, and the threat posed by “G” is almost completely non-existent as the characters defeat it while barely breaking a sweat. Hell, it takes Leon more effort to kill the alligator than “G”! Yet, as a quick run through of the game’s major story events, this is serviceable enough, though it feels as though the issue would have benefitted greatly from devoting its entire page count to their adaptation rather than twenty-odd pages. “Mutant Menagerie” (Oprisko, et al) briefly shows how Birkin was driven to infect himself with the G-Virus after being gunned down for his research samples. Mutating into “G”, all he can think of is to infect as many hosts as possible, which leads him to the Raccoon City Zoo.

This is bad news for the on-shift security guard Patrick Brady, who soon finds himself fighting to survive with limited ammunition and resources against infected tigers, pandas, snakes, apes, and prairie dogs. After he realises that he’s all alone, he fights through the zoo and its infected creatures to overload the zoo’s power generator and keep the animals from escaping. Though seemingly successful, he passes out from fatigue while one last prairie dog looms in for a snack.

This story does a pretty good job of relating the desperation that accompanies Resident Evil videogames; Patrick doesn’t have a lot at his disposal and is up against the odds, much like the player often is. He also is forced to battle through hordes of enemies to reach an elaborate objective, which is pretty much par for the course of all Resident Evil titles. Interestingly enough, one of the scenarios in Resident Evil Outbreak: File #2 (Capcom, 2004) saw characters dealing with a wide variety of infected creatures at the Racoon City zoo, though I would be surprised if that game took any inspiration from this particular story.

The final story, “Lock Down” (Oprisko, et al) follows Barry Burton about a week after the events of Resident Evil; traumatised by what he experienced, Barry opts to visit a psychiatrist but, wouldn’t you know it, the building is suddenly infested with zombies! Swiping an access key, Barry is handed a map and instructions by a dying guard and is forced to battle his way through not only zombies but a Tyrant in order to piece together a bomb that will destroy the building. Funnily enough, Barry struggles more with giant mutant cockroaches than the Tyrant and he is able to leap to safety as the building explodes.

If the first story was an adaptation of Resident Evil 2’s plot, the second adapted the survival/horror gameplay, this last story goes all-in with representing the arduous side missions and tasks players must complete while battling mutated creatures and monsters. Barry must search the building using a map to find the three bomb parts, even blasting a zombie apart to get a key to open a locker for one piece, and then assemble the bomb before escaping to safety.

It’s interesting how the first issue was basically an anthology comic of side stories and companion pieces to the first two Resident Evil videogames and it isn’t until the second that WildStorm produced a more traditional adaptation of the source material. That being said, while “Lock Down” does wonders for fleshing out Barry’s personality (he has a snarky, gritty action-hero attitude that wouldn’t really be seen for some time), the clear standout of this issue is “A New Chapter of Evil”. A lot of this is due to my personal bias for Resident Evil 2 but I feel it’s a stronger statement to feature an adaptation of the videogame alongside smaller side stories rather than just filling the pages with recaps or interludes.

My Rating:

Great Stuff

Did you ever read the Resident Evil comics published by WildStorm? Would you be interested in the series receiving a reprint as the collection is currently out of print? Do you have a favourite piece of ancillary Resident Evil media? Drop a comment below and come back next Tuesday for my rundown of issue three.

To continue to milk the release of the Resident Evil 3 remake (Capcom, 2020), I figured I’d spend the next few weeks taking a look back at the official comic book magazine released by WildStorm between 1998 and 1999.

Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine ran for five issues and mostly featured stories that filled in events between, during, and after Resident Evil (ibid, 1996) and Resident Evil 2 (ibid, 1998). Many of these stories and events, and the characterisations of familiar Resident Evil characters, may have since been rendered non-canon by subsequent sequels and reboots but, nevertheless, these comics do a great job of fleshing out the Resident Evil lore outside of the videogames.

Issue one released in March 1998 and featured cover art by the always-fantastic Jim Lee and four full-length stories. The first, “S.T.A.R.S. Files” (Adams, et al), is a minor prelude to Resident Evil in which Albert Wesker is charged by his mysterious superior officer to form two teams to investigate a series of murders in Raccoon City.

Wesker compiles a report (how very Resident Evil) in which he runs down each member of the Bravo team and his Alpha team, their abilities, a bit of their backstory, and how much of a threat they pose. He talks about his willingness to blackmail Barry Burton into being his second-in-command, criticises both Rebecca Chambers and Brad Vickers, and gives a little bit of background to Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine. The story ends with the Bravo team heading out to Raccoon Forest and Wesker promising that the team won’t find out anything. Obviously, this story was written long before Resident Evil Zero (Capcom, 2002), so the Bravo team exists simply to be written off but this story, while brief, does provide some insight into Wesker’s motivations and mindset at a time when he was still a one-note, clichéd villain rather than a superpowered mastermind.

The second story, “Who Are These Guys?” (Adams, et al), sheds a bit of light into how all of those files and notes you pick up in Resident Evil titles are created by showing the story, and degeneration, of Ada Wong’s boyfriend, here called John Fay. It turns out that John was the scientist responsible for experimenting with the Tyrant-Virus (T-Virus) on animals, such as dogs and sharks, thus creating some of Resident Evil’s most memorable bio-organic weapons (BOWs).

In the course of his research, and the story, John contracts the T-Virus and begins degenerating into a zombie; he just about manages to scrawl out passwords and codes for Ada before being blown to pieces by Jill. This was an interesting story, fleshing out a character I don’t think we’ve ever seen in the videogames and visually detailing the degenerative process the T-Virus has on a human. It’s quite fun to see how John’s note was written out, and how all he amounts to is being just another zombie to be dispatched during the game.

“Dangerous Secrets” (Oprisko, et al) mixes things up a bit by telling a story about the survivors of Resident Evil as it literally takes place two days after the end of the game. The story is, basically, a recap of the events of the first game, recreating the team’s first encounter with a zombie, the infected crows, the fight against Yawn and Enrico’s assassination, their battles with the Hunters, Wesker’s betrayal and death, and the destruction of both the Tyrant and the mansion itself.

Tying in with the previous story a little bit, “Dangerous Secrets” also shows the characters actually using the files and notes they found in the mansion and Umbrella’s laboratory to their advantage to piece together what happened, how the T-Virus was created, and what it does to those infected. There’s also a really amusing part where Chris and Rebecca both reference how Jill was captured and imprisoned in a cell but Jill remembers the events slightly differently, believing that it was Chris that was imprisoned. This is a great reference to the contradictory story parts the player encounters when playing Resident Evil and good way of pasting over those continuity errors before the production of the Resident Evil remake (Capcom Production Studio 4, 2002) and other sequels; the idea being that each scenario is as valid as the other as it’s simply from that character’s perspective (it’s also slightly implied, through Jill’s thought bubble, that Chris is intentionally lying because he’s ashamed of being captured).

This story is also where Barry’s betrayal is revealed to Chris, explaining in detail how Wesker threatened Barry’s family to get him to go along with his plot to release the Tyrant. The story comes to an end with Chris planning on investigating Umbrella further and Leon S. Kennedy arriving in Raccoon City, effectively bridging the gap between Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 and (although unintentionally) Resident Evil – Code: Veronica (ibid, 2000).

Speaking of Resident Evil 2, the comic’s final story, “Raccoon City – R.I.P.” (Adams, Oprisko, et al), details Ada’s arrival in Racoon City to confront William Birkin (who looks a little…different to how he appears in Resident Evil 2) just as the first zombies begin to crop up around the city (which is a bit of a continuity error as zombies weren’t supposed to appear until after Birkin is killed).

Their conversation is overheard by an unidentified third party, who then visits a bar that is promptly trashed by zombies. He heads to Gun Shop Kendo to grab a shotgun before being attacked by a zombie at a petrol station, which explodes in the fracas, killing him and his attackers.

A trucker witnesses the explosion and is immediately set upon by zombies, who are taken out by a duel-wielding Leon, thus filling in a few blanks between Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2. Despite casting a bit more focus on Ada and her characterisation and detailing how quickly the T-Virus spread to Raccoon City, “Raccoon City – R.I.P.” is easily the weakest of this issue’s four stories; it’s got a lot more continuity errors, puts far less emphasis on recognisable characters, and the art isn’t as good.

Issue one also features a really insightful interview with Resident Evil producer Shinji Mikami, who details some of the production and design influences on the game and series, directly referencing the impact Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968) had on the game’s production. He also talks about how the version of Resident Evil released in the United States is actually harder than the Japanese version so that they could make more money of repeated game rentals (remember when those were a thing?) and some cut characters, including an original version of Barry who more resembles Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the end, this is a decent first issue; it’s more of an anthology and companion piece to the videogames rather than a by the numbers adaptation, with only “Dangerous Secrets” directly reinterpreting the videogame into comic book form. However, it has to be said that this story is easily the best this issue has to offer as it features all the characters and events you remember from the first game recreated with some stunning (and gory) art by Carlos D’Anda.

My Rating:

Great Stuff

Did you ever read the Resident Evil comics published by WildStorm? Would you be interested in the series receiving a reprint as the collection is currently out of print? Do you have a favourite piece of ancillary Resident Evil media? Drop a comment below and come back next Tuesday for my rundown of issue two.