3 out of 5

I can’t stop calling him Rennie-bot.  Does that make me a bad person?  Does that impact this review in any significant way?  Are you calling my reviewerly impartiality into question?  Will such challenges to credibility affect this review in any significant way?

No, Sir, they will not.  And yes, bribes – ahem, donations – still go to the same address.

Rennie-bot does the near-impossible (ah, but not for Rennie) of making a franchise tie-in engaging and accessible for those who haven’t experienced the related media, while – I think, as I maybe don’t remember all of the Dishonored narrative – giving followers points of interest to tickle their fan-cies.  Is it a Dishonored 2 lead-in?  An opening to a comic-book splinter off the universe?  It could be either.  ‘The Wyrmwood Deceit’ features a helpfully condensed summary that sets this after the events of game 1, and we jump into the fray with court protector / resident scary man Corvo Attano, kicking his fellow protectors’ arses in search of that one special one who might function as his successor…

But maybe this is one of those “check out the game!” elements that’s responsible for the mini’s main short coming of feeling like it heads off on related subplots that somehow never actually feel related.  This is seeming like a confusing place to go after praising Rennie, but it is to his credit that you don’t really think much of this as the story is going on; he makes it feel like much more is happening, as Corvo pursues an odd tie-in to his past while his intended protege tracks down some smugglers, and occasionally parallels his two threads with matching panels and whatnot, but the four issues don’t take us all too far from where we started.  This is where 2000 AD compression skills come in handy: Create a world and characters within a few pages.  “That’s comics,” ya say, and yet the balance of story and character is forever precarious.

Artwise, although Andrea Olimpieri’s work is very raw – reminiscent of early Stefano Gaudiano – and there are maybe a few too many statted panels, I have to commend the match to the Dishonored world.  Rennie smartly kept any excessive one-liners or jokeyness out of the text, which makes the super-serious world of steam-punk assassins tolerably grounded (this is, I should add, inherent in the game, so kudos to the devs for the sethp and to Rennie for properly adapting it); Olimpieri’s shadow and grimace heavy world is fitting, then, and his excessively hatched linework makes Corvos’s mask look particularly frightening.  The colors (Marcelo Maiolo) support this surprisingly well; a world full of blacks and browns is tough to make into an interesting looking page, and given Olimpieri’s many shadows, I can suspect the urge to go starker with the palette for contrast, but there’s instead an earthliness blended with the coldness of the colors that works.

Although that’s a three rating, I’m giving this book my support.  Its got more nuance than most AAA action titles, and though its not brain-rattling or a revolutionary story, is intelligently written and opens the door to already-available universe extras via the game if you’re so inclined.