Warning: Spoilers abound for both “The Last Of Us: American Dreams,” and “The Last Of Us” video game.
“The Last Of Us” was the only video game I’ve ever played that inspired such extreme feelings of both love and hate. The world was so fully realized, and the game knew what it wanted to say from the very first scene. It turned all of your expectations upside down, and had an ending that was so realistic and true to the characters that even though I felt incredibly disappointed in their choices, I will always look back on the game with fond memories. So needless to say, I was very much looking forward to a comic book that inspired those same feelings.
I didn’t get that. “The Last Of Us: American Dreams” is a serviceable tie-in to a wonderful game. The four-issue story lays out a portion of Ellie’s life before she met Joel, and how she came to know her best friend Riley and the rebel group known as the Fireflies. Most of the comic doesn’t live up to the world it takes place in, though it’s very good at scratching the surface: there are soldiers, a destroyed city, brief mentions of life in the quarantine, and an infected or two, but they all happen so fast that the feelings of hopelessness and despair so often brought out in the game aren’t present, and as a result all the moments of normal everyday banter, like when Ellie and Riley discover a run-down arcade in a mall, don’t have any weight to them. They don’t feel earned.
Everything up until Issue #4 feels like the writers were just going down a large checklist of everything Ellie mentions to Joel during the game. Riley? Check. Arcade game? Check. Horse? Check. The entire story as a whole feels very much like a prequel, and if it seems like I’m bringing up the game a lot it’s because this story absolutely could not have stood on its own. When the last page comes up it might be expected because it’s just a tie-in, but the ending obviously a placeholder until Ellie appears in the video game. Which is a shame, because they could have done so much more. This comic had a perfect way it could have ended. An ending that would have captured the spirit of this world beautifully, showed readers what it’s like for the characters that inhabit it, and really have a lasting impact. How do I know this? Because Ellie talks about it in the game. She recounts the story of how she got bitten, and what happened between her and Riley at the end of their relationship. It’s absolutely haunting, and I would have loved to see it captured in the comic book. But for whatever reason, a more lackluster ending was chosen, although the few character insights you come across are built up in just the right way, with enough teasing over the course of four issues to make the reveals worthwhile, so there are a few good things to come out of the book. Fans of the game will enjoy jumping back into the world for a couple hours, even if the trip is a little bumpy.
The trade paperback for “The Last Of Us: American Dreams” is published by Dark Horse comics, written by Faith Erin Hicks and Neil Druckmann, and releases October 30th for $16.99.