Books like Metal Gear Solid Omnibus

I'm lukewarm on this Metal Gear Solid omnibus... but not for the reasons you might expect.Ashley Wood is a fantastic artist, let's get that out of the way. His erratic, sketchy style embodies the best of modernist pop art, a crude mixture of hyper-realism and abstract minimalism. It's absolutely striking in its simplicity and elegance, and, where Metal Gear Solid's comic adaptions fail as comic books, they succeed as art books. Fantastic, inspiring work, and if you're on the fence about whether or not a comic adaptation of a pair of videogames you've already played are worth reading, let Ashley Wood's art kick you to the "yes" side.Sadly, as I said, it does so often fail as a comic book. In particular in the first adaptation. It follows Metal Gear Solid's plot to the letter: special agent Solid Snake, a bizarre mix of Hollywood tropes and icons from Snake Pliskin to James Bond, infiltrates the island facility Shadow Moses. The videogames, for those who don't know, are stealth games; sneaking missions, where avoiding conflict and combat are key to survival, as Snake, while skilled in firearms and CQC, is as weak as... well, a man.But that's not what the games are, actually. What they really are is a demented loveletter to American filmmaking and Japanese quasi-sci-fi. Hideo Kojima, designer and writer of the Metal Gear series, is a crazy person who doesn't understand the meaning of the phrase "coherent plot". Part of the joy of Metal Gear Solid is seeing all the crazy, stupid, insane things that happen with a bleak pseudo-seriousness. The games hinge on a illogical madness that is intrinsically fascinating, with extended cutscenes that, in later games, last literally hours at a time. So Metal Gear Solid's comic retains a lot of what makes, to many fans, Metal Gear Solid so damn twisted and special. It has all the same bizarre, stupid plot nosedives, reveals and set-pieces. It still retains a team of madly designed enemy characters which engage in "boss battles" as Snake tries to exploit a clearly telegraphed weakness. And it's still got the prose of a writer who is in desperate need of a thesaurus, or a dictionary, or a backspace key. This sheer amount of non-stop, babbling crazy, combined with Ashley Wood's frenetic artwork which absolutely fails to provide a clear sequential narrative, makes this first Metal Gear Solid story a ton of fun, even if it is consistently confusing, bordering on outright unreadable. That's not why I'm lukewarm on this omnibus, though. No, I'm lukewarm on it because of the adaptation Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.Metal Gear Solid 2 was one of the most anticipated videogame sequels of all time. Sony stood behind it as a launch game for their new console, the PlayStation 2. It was Konami's first blockbuster, a huge deal for everyone involved. But the game wasn't a rousing follow-up to a classic action game. It wasn't more explosive, bigger, badder and better. Instead it was... Metal Gear Solid, again, but slightly worse. And this was absolutely intentional.With a one-word prompt, "memes," Kojima had designed a game that meticulously mocks and criticizes the idea of videogame sequels. It offered near-identical circumstances and scenarios, but worse. Instead of sneaking around a base and feeling like an awesome soldier, players were greeted with walking around as some blonde kid who wasn't Snake, defusing bombs with bug spray and escorting very slow girls around the giant facility. Plot contrivances, reveal upon reveal upon reveal resulting in what could well be the most dense finale to any piece of media created by a person - it was a sheer metatextual nightmare that seemed to have been birthed by a demented, cackling goon who held his fans in utter disregard. And it's one of my favourite games ever.You see, I love Metal Gear Solid 2 for being such an obvious, hamfisted "piece". So when I read a Metal Gear Solid 2 comic adaptation, I expect to find a comic that is identical to the Metal Gear Solid adaptation but slightly worse. What I don't expect to find is an adaptation that improves on plot details of the game. An adaptation that cements over tiny holes, one in which Ashley Wood's art is improved thanks to layouts by Rufus Dayglo; an adaptation that is a marked improvement on both its predecessor and its source material. It is a great comic adventure; tense, exciting, well-paced and interesting to both look at and read. And I consider it a failure for it.Indeed, a Metal Gear Sold 2 comic shouldn't be allowed to be so good. So I'm lukewarm on this omnibus because it doesn't do for Metal Gear Solid 2 what I'd've hoped. I love it as a comic, I think it provides all the thrills and suspense that you would expect from a high-class videogame tie-in. The art is stellar as usual, with Wood's proficiency in sequential art markedly improving, and the script is tightened up from the game it's based on. And this is exactly the problem: it is a fantastic comic adaptation... just not of Metal Gear Solid 2.So, this omnibus is actually quite great. Fantastic art and a comprehensive retelling of Metal Gear Solid's first two entries. It's just that the sequel isn't bad enough for me to consider it worthy of sharing Metal Gear Solid 2's name.