Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Dark Horse Comics, Opinion | Tagged: , , ,


Cyberpunk 2077: Your Voice: A Familiar But Welcome Story

Dark Horse Comics sent over a .pdf of Cyberpunk 2077: Your Voice, and I closed the 80-ish page book impressed. Here are my guesses why:

Cyberpunk 2077: Your Voice cover courtesy Dark Horse Comics
Cyberpunk 2077: Your Voice Cover Courtesy Dark Horse Comics

Cyberpunk 2077: Your Voice is the second of CD Projekt Red and Dark Horse's Cyberpunk 2077 tie-in comics. Their first tie-in, …Trauma Team, surprised me with a great paring of Cullen Bunn and Miguel Valderrama. …Trauma Team told a direct, short story well.

Tie-in number two, …Your Voice, has significantly less convincing to do. Why? They had me at Danijel Žeželj draws cyberpunk. The first time I noticed Žeželj's style was when he filled in on DMZ way way back, and I always hoped he'd do something in the cyberpunk genre, and this apparently is it.

Žeželj's stark work, powered by very heavy blacks, feels unique (at least to me), and the end result is exactly what I hoped for when I heard the news that he'd draw or paint a Cyberpunk 2077 tie-in. It's all in the early pages, the sprawling future city, the one man looking up at a billboard or commuting from one grimy district to another. There's a mood to Žeželj's (and colorist Krzysztof Ostrowski's) pages that suffuses the entire comic.

Cyberpunk 2077: Your Voice Image Courtesy Dark Horse Comics
Cyberpunk 2077: Your Voice Image Courtesy Dark Horse Comics

As for the story: It's a short crime story. Treachery and half-truths abound. Writer Aleksandra Motyka wrote a Witcher comic series, and the other writer, Marcin Blacha, is a story director at CDPR. They wisely don't add a lot of dialogue to Ostrowski and Žeželj's art. Props also to Aniela Pramik & Jared Dye for packing as much into the little space for the translation they were given.

Maybe it's the format. Four issues give the team enough space to wander for a panel or two but not lose the plot. Whatever it is, the team executes the concept well. …Trauma Team and …Your Voice impressed me because of their great art and focused story.

Dark Horse and CDPR announced at least two more of these tie-ins, one of them an OGN with Giannis Milonogiannis, another great illustrator known for work in the genre.

I think the tl;dr on Cyberpunk 2077: Your Voice is Great artists, short stories, no need for in-universe knowledge.


Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!

James HepplewhiteAbout James Hepplewhite

twitter
Comments will load 20 seconds after page. Click here to load them now.