Interesting and entertaining visual revisit to Ender's Game. It's been a while since I last read the book and the comic, by necessity (?), gives short shrift to the many secondary characters. This made it difficult for me to recognize who was who and what was at stake. The art, especially some renders of Ender, did not always work for me. But I still enjoyed the book and will read the one that follows: Command School. ( )

Nice adaptation of part of the novel. It covers the period when Ender arrives at Battle School until he is about to get command of a group. If you have read the novel, you will probably appreciate this a bit more. Marvel does take some liberties here and there, but you do get the feel of the original. I will try to find the next volume in the series. May be time to reread the original novel. Overall, it was ok, and a nice quick read. ( )

The art direction in this book is great. Each scene had its own color scheme which really gave you the feel that the environment changes from scene to scene. The most exciting part is seeing the scenes you remember from the novel. Some of the more dramatic pieces of art come out when showing the giant in the game. This was one scene that I could was better than my imagination. A small issue I had with the art was that sometimes they would leave characters eye's completely undrawn. I think the effect was to make it look like the eye is in shadow, but it's just disconcerting to see the character without an eye in one scene and with an eye in the next.
The dialogue is short and to the point, but so much is left out. The comic heavily summarizes the novel, which is understandable. What I couldn't understand is some of the choices that were made on what to leave out. For one, Dragon army and Enders time in it is completely left out. Other scenes that provide context for Enders connection to the other characters are left out. Petra shows up for a few pages and then is gone and there is no mention of Bean. This is a collection of 5 shorter comics, but I think they should have came out with another one just to cover Enders time in Dragon army as that was crucial to his development.
I would have given this 3 stars instead of 4, but the nostalgia factor weighed heavily. It's great to see the characters and scenes drawn out. But, if you haven't read the novel this is not something you should pick up first unless you just want the cliff notes. ( )

The art direction in this book is great. Each scene had its own color scheme which really gave you the feel that the environment changes from scene to scene. The most exciting part is seeing the scenes you remember from the novel. Some of the more dramatic pieces of art come out when showing the giant in the game. This was one scene that I could was better than my imagination. A small issue I had with the art was that sometimes they would leave characters eye's completely undrawn. I think the effect was to make it look like the eye is in shadow, but it's just disconcerting to see the character without an eye in one scene and with an eye in the next.
The dialogue is short and to the point, but so much is left out. The comic heavily summarizes the novel, which is understandable. What I couldn't understand is some of the choices that were made on what to leave out. For one, Dragon army and Enders time in it is completely left out. Other scenes that provide context for Enders connection to the other characters are left out. Petra shows up for a few pages and then is gone and there is no mention of Bean. This is a collection of 5 shorter comics, but I think they should have came out with another one just to cover Enders time in Dragon army as that was crucial to his development.
I would have given this 3 stars instead of 4, but the nostalgia factor weighed heavily. It's great to see the characters and scenes drawn out. But, if you haven't read the novel this is not something you should pick up first unless you just want the cliff notes. ( )

Excellent rendition.

Having read "Ender's Game" in it's full glory I found myself more than a little hesitant to approach the graphic novel. I don't know about you, but frequently I've found that the graphic versions of popular works do adequately with the artwork, but entirely miss the tone of the originals. In this case I was afraid the the tone would be childish and the dialog boxy.

Surprisingly, that wasn't the case. "Battle School" was serious and carried the sense of intrigue and adventure/danger that Card put in the original. And I was entirely drawn into the story again.

Now the artwork, I must say, took some getting used to. The stylized shadowing I found a little odd, but soon I found that I was making the transition and really got into the dark backgrounds and striking images. (The inside artwork, by the way, doesn't look like the coverart. It's much better. And much darker in tone.)

All-in-all I really enjoyed re-reading Andrew's story.

Pam T~
mom/blogger ( )