It’s well-known at this point that much of the lore in Blizzard games doesn’t come from the games themselves. Instead, the developers employ a variety of surrounding materials, including short stories, art, and comics, to tell the tale of their characters and the worlds they live in. Heroes of the Storm is no different: the game we all grudgingly tolerate love received a series of four short comics during the first Dark Nexus event a few years ago that coincided with Orphea’s release as a playable character and the expansion of Nexus-specific lore. The idea was to employ a variety of artists and creators in and around Blizzard to make the comics, so they all have a slightly different style. They’re comparable to Overwatch’s comics and short stories in that they expanded upon lore that isn’t really available during normal gameplay.
How were the comics received? Pretty poorly, actually. Many balked at the idea of expanding upon the game’s original characters. The initial idea behind Heroes was to bring together many of Blizzard’s well-known characters, and there were a lot of deserving characters that hadn’t yet been tapped. (The Deathwing memes were flowing fast and strong around this time.) Players said that they weren’t interested in the game’s lore and that Blizzard should focus on bringing in more existing characters and balancing the ones that were already there. The downside of making a story-rich multiplayer game is that it can be difficult to include meaningful and expansive lore within the game itself, especially when the characters come from different worlds.
People didn’t like the comics because they focused on an area of the game that they didn’t care about, but do these mini stories actually hold up under analysis? The answer is no, not really. The comics fell pretty flat. Player perception and interest had something to do with it, but I think their struggle is also indicative of something deeper and more structural. Let’s take a brief look at each individual comic and discuss what they’re doing from an art, writing, and sequential perspective.
(Snippy writer’s note: I’m qualified to talk about this because my degree is in English and I took several classes on comics and sequential art in college. I wrote a final paper on the Overwatch comics anthology and got a 98. @ me at your own risk.)
Comic 1: Rise of the Raven Lord
This first comic sets up the rest of the series and the in-game event. In my opinion, it’s the most interesting and has the most potential of the four. Over the course of a few pages, the Raven Lord spies a threat to his kingdom but realizes that he doesn’t have the power to hold it off. He searches for Orphea, his daughter, and captures the power of the Dark Nexus to conquer other realms—but at great personal cost to himself and those around him.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if I got something wrong in that mini summary. The plot and writing are very unclear. I had to read the first couple of pages more than once to understand what was happening. My best guess for this lack of clarity is that in the game itself, we aren’t given a lot of lore about the Raven Lord; all we know is that he’s vaguely evil and he’s in a fight with the Grave Keeper (whose realm was permanently conquered when Haunted Mines was removed, RIP). This comic has to give players a lot of background in a limited amount of space, and there’s only so much the art and writing can do without making it feel like an exposition dump. We’re warned of a bigger threat to the Nexus than the Raven Lord, but it’s never revealed what that threat is, and the Raven Lord is painted as the big bad guy, which I think is either bad plotting or symptomatic of a change in story direction later on in the comics (more on that later).
Some of the story beats just don’t make sense: if this sequence is taking place within the Raven Lord’s castle in his own realm, why does his home contain a chamber with guards that will kill him if he tries to pass them? It’s safe to assume everything in his castle is loyal to him, or at least pretends to be. It just feels weird, okay? The best part of the comic is the wordless sequence right before the end. The flow between panels is clear, as the Raven Lord is the point of reference in each one, and the art is excellent. Otherwise, this comic is a big struggle—yet it’s still the one with the most potential.
The character I want to know more about is Neeve, the Raven Lord’s advisor. Her narrative purpose is to tell us more about the Raven Lord indirectly and provide a hesitant foil to him, which she does quite well. She has ties to Orphea’s and the Raven Lord’s past, and she could be a source of compelling lore. I think she’s more interesting than any of the action that happens in this comic, which again, mostly just ties to the event; I wish we could have seen more of the Raven Lord’s kingdom. This is still the most successful of the comics because it at least tries to establish some background…which is about to become even more muddled.
Comic 2: Secrets of the Storm
Hey, it’s Deckard! Finally, we see an existing Blizzard character in this universe made for…existing Blizzard characters. Are there any more? We’ll find out in just a moment. In terms of other positives, the visual comparison on the first page where Deckard is introduced is really good. The day/night and light/darkness contrasts are pretty, and they’re a good visual metaphor for Deckard’s and Orphea’s situations. I do wish the reading direction was a little more obvious.
We see only one existing character in this story, which is obviously Deckard; there’s two if you count Orphea, who was still fairly new when this came out. You can pick out a few others in the background later on in the comic—Auriel, Lunara, Yrel, and Faltstad can all be seen, among others (aligning Dragon Shire with the Alliance)—but they don’t play a part in the actual story. When comic 1 was released, a lot of players were hoping that it would focus on the reason behind why all of these different characters were in the same universe together. While these images prove that yes, they are all in the same universe together, it makes no attempt to explain why. I can imagine that this makes it somewhat unsatisfying for those who play Heroes because they like to see the mashup of universes. (As someone who is pretty unfamiliar with Blizzard lore outside of Overwatch, I originally assumed that the non-Diablo and Starcraft maps were all from Warcraft.)
The exposition continues in this comic, but from a different perspective. What happens here presumably frames the in-game event—if you read the comics then look at the event changes to some maps and voice lines, you’d get to see the whole thing in action. The Nexus iconography is very strong here, almost to the point of being a crutch: you can see the shape in the singularity shell that Deckard finds and in the stone behind the Lady of Thorns’ throne. Though it gives visual unity across pages, I think original emblems for each realm or kingdom would have done a lot to make the world feel more unique and exist outside of what’s seen in the game.
The biggest problem with this comic is that the Big Bad Guy is now the Raven Lord instead of the power he foresaw that’s threatening his and/or other realms. Let me get this straight: the Raven Lord’s realm is being threatened, so he unleashes a powerful evil force to…take over other realms to force them to fight for him? Because he has a lust for power? To try and find Orphea to further his own evil ends? When Deckard tells the Lady of Thorns that her kingdom is in trouble, he mentions the Raven Lord, not the ultimate power that the Raven Lord foresaw. If the Raven Lord is actually trying to do something good by gathering power in these kingdoms, why is he attacking travelers in King’s Crest, as Deckard says? This plot is extremely confusing, asking readers to first imagine then ignore an evil greater than the Raven Lord, as the Raven Lord is the more immediate and well-known threat. The Raven Lord’s motivation and his resulting actions are very unclear beyond “bad guy does bad things”. Am I thinking too hard about this?
Comic 3: Fall of King’s Crest
Well, if you weren’t sure what was going to happen in this comic, the title definitely gives it away. The cover is absolutely beautiful, which provides a sort of shield against the horrible font on the first page. Blizzard, if you want me to keep playing your games, you can’t destroy my eyes like that.
We get a few more appearances from existing characters here, but they’re still very cursory. The characters (and their event-skin counterparts) are either allied with King’s Crest or the Raven Lord, which is really just a recolored Alliance-Horde conflict. More could have been done here to make this battle feel unique, like examining each character’s reasons for siding the way they did. At the same time, the Alliance-Horde conflict is very well known and doesn’t have to be explained much, which works well in a medium like short comics where space is at a premium.
The plot continues to kill me here. The Lady of Thorns claims that a curse turned the king to stone and is turning her to stone, too. However, in this comic, her children are able to revive him, however briefly, to fight. This isn’t an unexpected event: it’s clear from the kids’ dialogue that they know how to revive him and possibly have done it before. They can at least keep him animated “until [their] strength fades”. Why couldn’t they animate him when needed—like they are now—and discuss the state of the kingdom with him prior to the start of the fight? This is a tiny little contradiction, but it still bothers me.
The Raven Lord gets painted as the Big Bad Guy again here, even when he has a chance to explain himself. The Lady of Thorns asks him directly why he waged war on her people, and he says simply, “Because you dared stand in my way.” If the story was about the stronger invading force that the Raven Lord was trying to stop by invading other kingdoms—which is already weird—this is where he could have explained that, which would likely make for a much more interesting story. Alas, he’s very plainly evil here, which is emphasized even more by the art: he’s consistently drawn in shadow in the last few pages, while the Lady of Thorns is always in light. It’s obvious who’s good and who’s evil.
Speaking of obvious things, Orphea’s inclusion in the last two pages feels so forced. Her behavior doesn’t match what’s been established of her character so far. If she swore to fight the Raven Lord and/or “the coming darkness”, you’d think she would have been on the front lines during the battle, especially considering the powers she used to fight off the guards when she first met Deckard. Her characterization repeatedly tells us that she’s not the kind of person who stands on the sidelines…so why was she standing on the sidelines during this fight? Because the Raven Lord was present? That comes off as very flimsy. It smacks of the creators thinking, “Oh right, we have to put this character in here because this is supposed to be about her”. This comic would have held up fine without her inclusion.
Despite these problems, the last few pages set up what’s sure to be a long, drawn-out fight with impossible odds, right? One that will surely span several more comics?
Nope.
Comic 4: Orphea
This was the comic where most people noticed the art shift, and for good reason: that cover is struggling. All of this comic’s art is significantly different than the others’. Stories that act as surrounding lore to creative properties often take on a variety of styles and tones, but since the previous three in the sequence were in the same style, it was expected that this one would be the same or similar. It really threw me off when I started reading it.
Despite the more painterly faces, page 4 has a really beautiful sequence and layout. It manages to tell Orphea’s backstory in one page with few words, which, again, is very important in a medium where space is at a premium. It mixes past and present lore with dynamic movement and metaphor (her descending the stairs is a parallel to the descent of her family and the Raven Lord). It makes me want to know more about her history and her mom (who looks like Bean from Disenchantment on Netflix).
Neeve comes back, yay! What bothers me is that her demeanor is significantly different here than it is when she’s talking with the Raven Lord in the first comic, though. She has more of a sneer to her here, and though it’s obvious that she cares about Orphea, she’s more prone to scolding than she was in the first comic. You could chalk this up to her being afraid of the Raven Lord, but it looks more like inconsistent characterization to me. (Then again, do three brief comic appearances contain enough time for any sort of characterization?) One more tiny quibble with Neeve is that there’s obviously a time skip between when Orphea talks to her and when Orphea confronts the Raven Lord, but there’s no box that says “A few hours later” or anything like that. Including that would probably throw off the dramatic effect that they’re going for with the confrontation, but a clarification would have been nice. How long was Orphea able to hang out in her dad’s castle before he realized she was there?
As the comic moves into its climax, the writing gets a little better. The plot zooms in a fair amount to show that this is really just unresolved family drama between the Raven Lord and Orphea. This is meant to humanize the Raven Lord, but it rings a tad hollow when the creators have spent the last three comics de-humanizing him.
The writing stands up better than the art, which takes a nosedive. For a series that has had very clear action sequences up to this point, this final battle really stands out as unclear. The comic jams a ton of distinct movement and action into about three pages. I read it several times and I’m still not really sure what’s happening. I think Orphea manages to both destroy his singularity or source of power and seal him away, which of course leaves plot room for him to come back at some point…though we know now that we probably won’t be getting any more comics. This sequence should have been spread out over several more pages and interspersed with dialogue so that the reader has a clearer picture of what’s going on.
Let’s reverse course and talk about how the overall plot is handled here. Despite the third comic implying a huge war and upcoming fight, the last page ties up the whole thing with a bow as neat as the one on Orphea’s dress. Neeve foreshadows more to come, leaving the door open for future action (which again, will likely never happen), but this large and messy arc is somehow tied up because…Orphea learned the power of family? It’s just a little too clean for my liking. My guess is that these were originally meant to be a longer series of comics, but when production on the game was greatly scaled down, extra bits of lore like this were among the first things to be cut. (Fun fact—Oscar Vega, one of the consulting artists on all of these comics and a character designer on Orphea, is now at Riot.)
If that’s the case, this last comic had to do the extra plot work of resolving the arcs of both Orphea and the overall story. The pacing here is much different than in the other comics, probably for the same reason. The other ones take their time and establish a much larger conflict over the course of three mini stories, implying that there will be consequences for all of the existing Blizzard characters in the game as well as the Nexus-specific ones. The final comic speeds the whole thing up dramatically and attempts to fix everything—at least temporarily—within the span of a few pages. They did miss a few people, though: we still don’t know what happened to Deckard, the people of King’s Crest, or any of the actual characters in the game on both sides of the “war”. This really is Orphea’s story rather than the story of why so many disparate characters are all fighting each other in the Nexus, and that’s not the story people were interested in.
Let’s go back to our initial question: why did these comics struggle? The short answer is that the art is inconsistent, the arcs are unclear, the pacing tugs forward and backward in weird spots, and the writing and characterization aren’t great. The more complicated answer is that Blizzard struggled to create original characters and a universe that people were interested in, which usually isn’t an issue for them. Trying to fit original characters into a space specifically developed for existing ones will do that to you, though. I’m happy that Heroes got supplemental materials at all, as it’s not a game that gets a lot of outside lore or additional media, let alone attention at all. I really, really wanted these comics to be good. I enjoyed them, don’t get me wrong—seeing the cast in a different format is a nice change of pace, and I’ve always been interested in the game’s announcers and lands. I can’t help but wish that the story these comics tell was spread out over a larger amount of issues and written and designed just a little better. That’s only my take, though; you might feel completely differently. Come yell at me and tell me why I’m wrong in Discord!