The Metal Gear Solid comic series are weird

 Even weirder than the videogames

I love the Metal Gear franchise! I love the dark and serious tone of the topics it discusses, like nuclear war and manipulation of information in the digital age, and I also love the ridiculous moments that pokes fun at itself, like Johnny Sasaki's diarrhea and Snake's almost philosophical obsession with cardboard boxes.

I had a lot of fun with the games because there's something thrilling on having limited supplies and sneaking your way into enemy bases. Most videogames that involves guns push player to use them as much as they can; but MGS changed it by punishing the player if he/she kills even one enemy. Metal Gear is considered the grandfather of "Stealth" games. The objective is to avoid being detected at all costs, instead of going guns blazing. It's an awesome concept!

I fell in love with the franchise when my brother bought "MGS: The Twin Snakes" for Nintendo Gamecube. I played it a lot! I remember that I had a friend who had the original "MGS" for PS1 and got frustrated because of the first Sniper Wolf fight, so I helped him out. It was a wonderful time. Then, my friend lend me his bootleg copy of "MGS 2: Substance" for original Xbox and I was blown away. The new perspective on Solid Snake, the characters and their struggles, the crazy plot twist at the end, and the mindfucking speech on digital information and control. "Substance" is not my favorite MGS, but it's really close. (My favorite MGS is "Snake Eater"... Surprise!)

I never minded the long cutscenes and codec calls. I always thought they were very interesting, even though I didn't understand everything they talked about. There are very few videogames that actually tries to tell you a compelling story beyond giving you a fun gameplay, and MGS is more about the story and how every gameplay element is important to the narrative than just being a videogame.

Its story is so fundamental to itself to the point that there's a full-length in-game novel: In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth by Nastasha Romanenko, the weapon analyst for Solid Snake during the Shadow Moses Incident. In case you don't get it, the author is a fictional character who exists in the MGS universe and wrote a book about the events of the first game. It gave the whole MGS universe a new level of "credibility"! And you can bet your ass that 9-year-old Ivan fired up "MGS 2: Substance" a lot of times just to read said novel!

The way I submerged into the MGS lore made me the happiest I've ever been when it comes to enjoy videogames outside of playing them. But as new games came out and new characters were introduced, it got even more complicated to make sense out of it. The whole MGS story was retconned with each sequel in an effort to try and tell a comprehensive story. After MGS came out on PS1, Hideo Kojima tried to jump out of every new installment, but he didn't wanted anyone to tamper with his creation and the story he wanted to tell. Therefore, he always came back to direct each new project. But his story was getting weirder and weirder. He tried to fit every new character into the whole Illuminati-level conspiracy he created to the point of utterly ridiculousness... and I love it! 

I really enjoy every serious topic and ridiculous ideas Kojima throws at the player because, at the end of the day, "It's a game. It's a game just as usual".

The Official Comicbook Series

Just like every other videogame franchise, some people (author, marketing, producers, etc.) adapted the story into novels (real life novels) and, of course, comicbooks. Kris Oprisko wrote the first 12 issue series, published from September 2004 to August 2005, reimagining the events of the Shadow Moses Incident... or so it seems. Back in March 2004, Kojima launched a remake of the first MGS game for the Nintendo Gamecube: Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. This new game has the same story as the original version, but now with new graphics and MGS 2 mechanics, such as first person perspective aim, hanging mode and a few other details. 

The Twin Snakes was the very first MGS I've ever played and I loved it. Still love it today! But most of the fans hated it. The main complain was that the cutscenes were made like some kind of crazy action movie, where Snake do backflips and kicks a piece of falling debris into Gray Fox's face and jumps on top of a rocket fired from a Hind D and fires a Stinger Missile while on the air and jumps up and around an open door to avoid detection and airkicks Rex's leg for some reason and... you get the point.

The real inspiration for the comic series is actually the Twin Snakes version of the game because every crazy stunt Snake pulls in the TTS is in the comics. Also you can notice it's based on the Gamecube remake from the very beginning because Snake finds a M9 Tranquilizer Gun, which is only available in said version. Since every action scene in the game became very cinematic (and ridiculous), a lot of the comic panels feels so full of movement and adrenaline. It's a good thing that they chose to depict the GCN version.

Even though the story is pretty much the same, there are certain details that change minor things, and some other details that adds new interesting plot points. I think the biggest change is that Snake jumps from one Boss Fight directly into another. And it makes sense since it would be boring to read parts like the backtracking and sneaking behind guards. But even the boss fights have some changes.

Artist Ashley Wood brings an interesting approach to the series. His artwork tries to emulate Yoji Shinkawa's style, so the comics have the same feeling as the official art. Nonetheless, it still has its own strokes to give it a new unique identity. Certain panels seem to be rough sketches, not really finished pieces of artwork, making them a little hard to understand what's happening. Still, Wood's art style suits the story well and captures the spirit of the story. You know it's Metal Gear, but you also know it's something different.

Mind Games

In issue 7, the fight against Psycho Mantis gets super crazy. At the beginning, Meryl starts acting weird and Snake knocks her out, just like in the game. But as soon as the real fight against Mantis starts, Master Miller appears out of nowhere and shoots Mantis, killing him immediately. He then guides Snake through some corridos until they face against Vulcan Raven, who is using some kind of "shaman magic" to attack them. However, Raven is quickly defeated by Gray Fox, who then covers Snake and Miller so they can proceed to the Rex's Hangar.

Once they are in front of the activation console, Liquid Snake and Revolver Ocelot appears holding a hostage: Naomi Hunter. Miller is not willing to participate in their Mexican standoff, so he orders Snake to hand over the detonation keys to the terrorists. And that's when Snake snaps. Snake points his gun to Miller and screams "This isn't happening". Mantis had Snake in a "Psychic Dissimulation" the whole time!

I love this issue because it really tricks the reader into believing Mantis' dissimulation. In the game, his boss fight is one of the coolest ever because the player needs to change his controller to port 2 in the PS1 and to port 4 in the GCN; if you don't, Mantis will "read your every move" and you won't be able to hit him. They had to make something as impressive for the comics and they pulled it off! 

We're Not Tools of the Government

Another cool change is when Snake is captured and tortured after fighting Sniper Wolf for the first time. While Ocelot is electrocuting and questioning Snake, Wolf forces Meryl to watch it through the CCTV. Wolf is ready to terminate Meryl as soon as Snake gives up. However, Gray Fox sneaks his way into the torture room and frees Snake. Ocelot flees and Wolf heads to the room, but she finds Otacon on her way there, giving Snake enough time to get out of there. The comics also show a little bit more about the relationship between Otacon and Wolf.

The final fight also has a big difference. In the game, you need to use three PAL keys to "deactivate" Metal Gear Rex, which are actually one PAL key that changes depending on the temperature. On the original PS1 version, this task is completed by boringly backtracking to two specific rooms, one cold and one hot, and going back to the activation console. Nonetheless, in the TTS version, there are two pipes in the same room Rex is. One pipe has liquid nitrogen and the other one has steam. You can equip the PAL key and shoot each pipe to change the key's temperature instead of backtracking. The same pipes appear in the comic series. Snake explains that President Baker hid the secret behind the PAL key(s) in plain sight by putting those pipes near the activation console.

Once Rex is activated (Snake was tricked into thinking the keys would deactivate Rex), Liquid boards it and the fight against the new Bipedal Weapon starts. In the games, the player needs to use the Stinger to damage Rex's "radome" to end the first phase. After that, Gray Fox appears to help Snake. Fox uses his superhuman skills to avoid Rex's gunfire and finally destroy the radome with his sword and handcannon. However, Rex gains the upper hand and kills Gray Fox.

The comicbook series changes a little detail: Snake is the one who kills Gray Fox. Once the radome is busted, Liquid opens the cabin and traps Fox between the wall and Rex's "chin". Liquid starts monologuing and Fox orders Snake to fire the Stinger. In the games, this scene jumps to a semi-playable cutscene where Snake is looking at Liquid and Fox through the Stinger's scope but you can't pull the trigger, if you try it, Snake says "It's not good. I can't do it". But in the comic, Snakes fires a Stinger missile, destroying Rex and Gray Fox. After that, the story proceeds to the fist fight versus Liquid on top of Rex's head. And everything continues as it does in the games. 

This one is a weird change because it makes Snake look like a cold blood killer, or maybe like a man willing to do anything to complete his mission. Depends on your point of view. 

Sons of Liberty

The next comicbook series was based on the second game of the series: Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. This game is hated by many people, mainly because of the new protagonist, Raiden. Nonetheless, it's an awesome game that further develops the story behind The Patriots, shines a different light on Solid Snake and gets even nuttier than the first game.

Unlike the first comic series, SOL took several liberties (pardon the pun) with the story portrayed on the game. Alex Garner took over Oprisko and wrote the new 12 issue series. This different interpretation of the events of the Death of Solid Snake and The Big Shell Incident manage to tell the same story we know even with all the changes sprinkled in. Far from showing a different perspective of the events, this comic series tries to make sense out of all the mind-blowing conspiracy Raiden discovers.

At the beginning, the game puts you in the shoes of Solid Snake, a "hero" who founded the NGO Philanthropy, alongside Otacon, to track and destroy every and all Metal Gear created after Ocelot sold Rex's data in the black market. Snake infiltrates a tanker transporting the new Metal Gear Ray, a secret project developed by the US Marine Corp. But, as Snake gets on the Tanker, Russian mercenaries, lead by Sergei Gurlukovich, kills the marines patrols and takes over the ship. Most of the Marines are stationed in the cargo bays, so they are unaware of the invasion. Snake has to sneak through the Tanker to pinpoint the location of Ray and take pictures of it to expose the Marine's secret project. 

The comics jumps from Snake getting into the Tanker to the moment Ocelot discovers Snake in front of Ray and takes pictures to frame him of the destruction of the ship. The rest of the details of Snake's mission, such as his fight against Olga, are told by Snake throughout the other issues. We then move forward to two years later, when Raiden is assigned to the mission on the Big Shell. And this is when some details change.

Jack, also known as Raiden, is presented as a formidable soldier with extensive VR training, yet still a rookie. He receives a call from an anonymous person, who wants him to join his new plot to destroy The Patriots. Jack doesn't know who this person is and why he keeps calling him "ripper". Jack loses his temper while Rose, his girlfriend and mission analyst,  approaches him. But Rose slaps Jack back to normal and informs him of a terrorist hostage situation in the Big Shell, a decontamination plant near the Hudson Bay. Raiden is assigned to infiltrate the facility, rescue president Johnson and the other hostages, and stop the terrorist from launching a nuclear bomb.

Just like in the games, the leader of the terrorist group is said to be Solid Snake, who is also blamed for the sinking of the tanker and a bombing attack that killed the president George Sears. But we know the truth. Raiden infiltrates the Big Shell through a hole in the oil fence at the bottom of strut A. From here up to his confrontation with Vamp and Pliskin, the comics follow the game's line.

The Seal Team is sent to the Big Shell with Peter Stillman, a bomb expert who has the mission of diffusing Fatman's bombs, but they are ambushed by Vamp and Fortune, members of Dead Cell. Stillman makes a run to the next strut, covered by the remaining soldiers of the Seal Team. Once he's in the strut C, Raiden finds him and begins to scort him throughout the Big Shell to disarm the bombs. In the game, Stillman is disabled, he doesn't have a leg (or so he says) so it's impossible for him to move around easily. Stillman gives you a coolant that you have to use to freeze the bombs. And that's when a tedious objective starts: You have to go through every strut looking for the bombs and freezing them while avoiding detection.

In the comics, Raiden and Stillman stick together to defuse every bomb in the Big Shell, until they face off against Fortune, who thinks Raiden is Solid Snake, her father's murderer. Raiden can't hurt her with his bullets, so he gets close to her and kicks her in the face! The fight goes on for a while and Vamp shows up. Raiden grabs his gun and shoots, but Fortune uses her powers to deflect the bullets, one of which hits Vamp in the head. While Fortune cries the "death" of Vamp, Raiden and Stillman flees the scene with a new objective: Fatman is waiting for Raiden in the heliport, threatening to blow the whole Big Shell if the Foxhound's Operative doesn't show up.

As you can see, this comics chain one boss fight to another just like the first series did. And like I said before, it makes sense to do it because, in the games, there's a lot of gameplay in between each fight, that is fun to play but it would be boring to read. Also, the game had some budget limitations, so some cutscenes were changed to codec calls to save money in the motion capture and animation. With the comicbook, they didn't have said limitation and a lot of those calls turned into cool action scenes.

The story diverts again when Raiden fights again Fatman. In the games, the player has to freeze the C4 that Fatman plants in the area during the fight while trying to shoot him down. In the comics, this fight is a little more interesting. Fatman is presented (in the games and comics) as a narcissist and a maniac who wants to blow everything up because he feels superior to everyone. That's it.

While Raiden dodges the explosions from the C4 planted in different parts of the heliport, Stillman plans a psychological attack on Fatman. Stillman throws a bomb at Fatman challenging him to defuse before the timer runs out. In his narcissistic mind, Fatman can't refuse such challenge and focus on defusing the bomb and insulting Stillman. Raiden takes this opportunity to hit Fatman in the head with a crowbar, but the villain is not going out that easy. Fatman activates a new bomb that will blow the Big Shell up. Raiden acts by instinct al shoots the mad bomber in the head. Stillman finds the bomb in Fatman's suit and defuses it.

Throughout the comics, Raiden gets a very discreet development of his character that originates from his childhood. After Raiden shoots Fatman, Stillman just says "Pretty cold, Raiden, I didn't think you had it in you". Raiden "had it" in him the whole time. Later in the story, Raiden's childhood is revealed. He was a child soldier during the Liberian Civil War in the eighties. Solidus Snake, the real boss of the terrorist group behind the Big Shell Incident, was Raiden's "father". He commanded Raiden and other child soldiers to kill everyone he pointed at... and Raiden was the best killer of them all. The child soldier prodigy earned several nicknames ranging from "White Devil" to "Jack The Ripper". Years later, Raiden was kidnapped by The Patriots, who brainwashed and trained him to become a Foxhound member, one who would surpass Solid Snake. 

Raiden is a killer. His story develops further in games like MGS 4: Guns of the Patriots and in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Raiden grows up and becomes a different kind of hero, away from the shadow of Solid Snake. A hero that I love and admire. 

"You never asked"

At some point in the games, Snake becomes just another contact in your codec who provides Raiden just the information he needs at a time. Snake knows everything about Arsenal Gear, The Patriots, the army of Metal Gear Rays and everything else... but why didn't he tell Raiden about all of it? "You never asked", he answers.

The comics give Snake a more active role in the Big Shell Incident. Maybe way more active than it should. While Raiden's main mission objective is to save the president, Snake's mission is to destroy Arsenal Gear. But both of them need to deal with the terrorist threat.

Raiden crawls into the president's holding cell while Snake goes for Emma Emmerich. In the comics, Snake is the one who has to swim through the flooded levels of the Shell 2 Core in order to reach Emma. This leads him into a fight against Vamp. In the mean time, Raiden finds the president, but Ocelot manages to kill him right in front of Raiden. Snake defeats Vamp and takes Emma out of the Shell 2 Core, but Vamps returns and stabs Emma in the back. Raiden arrives just in time to shoot Vamp with a sniper rifle from the strut E. Vamp pulls the knife out of Emma as he falls into the ocean, opening her wound. The three of them rush to the control room in the Shell 1 Core, hoping to stop Arsenal Gear launch.

Kojima's purpose behind the creation of Raiden was to see Snake under a different light. Raiden is suppose to be the player who admires Snake after playing the previous games, but most of the fans was not happy playing as this young Foxhound agent. They wanted to play as Snake again. There are a lot of tales behind the development of MGS 2, some of them says Kojima didn't want to do another MGS game, but he was forced to. He chose to tell something similar to the first game but with a new perspective.

As the story progresses, Snake is presented as a powerful ally, a resourceful soldier and the one who is well informed on all the crazy conspiracy. He is an awesome character we all look up to. But they took the fanservice way to far in the last issues of the comic series.

At the end of the game, Raiden (the player) fights Solidus on top of Federal Hall. An intense swordfight that ends with Raiden slicing Solidus' back and thowing him down to the street. After that, Snake appears to tell Raiden about forging his own destiny outside the system The Patriots tried to keep him in. 

In the comics, Solidus manages to knock out Raiden, yet Snake jumps in to save the day. Snake grabs Raiden's (or Olga's) sword and fights Solidus. Snake kills his "brother" using his sword skills... because it turns out Snake has them for some reason.

Also, throughout the story, we see how Ocelot is slowly losing his mind thanks to Liquid Snake's ghost. After the events of Shadow Moses, Ocelot transplants Liquid's right hand to his body. Since then, Ocelot suffers from split personality, believing himself to be Liquid from time to time, with Solid Snake being the main trigger. In the games, it was told that Liquid's "superior" genes lived through that arm... which it was pretty dumb.

In MGS 3, we meet the Cobra Unit, a group of soldiers with supernatural abilities led by The Boss. Every member has different powers that defy every and any type of logic. Just like every boss in the Metal Gear franchise. One of the Cobra Unit members, The Sorrow, was a medium, a soldier who could communicate with the dead. Powers he inheritated to the child he had with The Boss: Revolver Ocelot.

Ocelot sees Liquid's ghost because he is a medium, like his father before. This new aspect of Ocelot's psychological struggle against Liquid is an awesome new addition. At one point, Vamp refers to Ocelot as "Crazy Ivan", but with this new development, he can see that Ocelot is not completely crazy. He's actually talking to the dead. Not just Liquid but also his father, The Sorrow.

To be continued?

This comics became digital graphic novels in the MGS Legacy Collection. The voice actors from the games return to act in a kind of animated movie version of the comic series. These videos tell the story as portrayed in the comics, with every change and crazy stunt. This type of narrative prove to be popular enough to make Kojima use the same style for the cutscenes in Peace Walker. An interesting and very cool choice.

These digital graphic novels are like if some big budget Hollywood movie studio tried to do a MGS movie. Even if they are really entertaining, I hope the actual movie they are doing doesn't follow the same story lines. I want to watch a new point of view or a new way to tell this crazy MGS story.

As you can see, there are a lot of cool new changes and a lot of lame fanservice. My favorite way to consume stories is through comicbook format, and reading one of my favorite stories in this format fills me with joy and awe.