Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones, announced way back in 2017, is beginning to feel like a folktale, the sort of mocking ghost story game journalists tell each other. The subject of a cycle of promotions and push-backs, it’s a game without a whole lot of narrative for waiting fans to latch on to (most recently, we’ve been asked to get excited about the game’s apparently rich furniture systems).
This makes the idea of a promotional tie-in comic seem a bit of a fool’s errand: crafting a story where none exists in order to drum up sales for a game that won’t release for another year, long after Skull and Bones: Savage Storm fades from eager reader’s minds. The comic is just another victim of the game’s endless procession of timing mishaps.
The sad truth about the first issue of Savage Storm, out this week, is that it’s unlikely to catch much attention without the support system of its parent property. Sure, writers John Jackson Miller and James Mishler, alongside artist Christian Rosado, put forward a lot of effort; there isn’t anything wrong here from a craft perspective. It’s scripted well, it’s illustrated with a compelling wood-cut thickness. It presents the implication of a pirate society, introducing readers to dreaded captains and a plucky hero. It’s an okay pirate comic book.
The problem is that pirates aren’t exactly key to the modern zeitgeist. There isn’t a drive, by creator or reader, to drive the medium of pirate fiction forward; as such, Skull and Bones: Savage Storm doesn’t seem to make an effort to do so. It presents no novel experiences: a cannon battle, a shipwreck, crew against crew. No compelling twists or unique inventions. Without the excitement of promised gameplay—without readers being able to jump from this book to run their own crews—the book doesn’t do much to stoke the flames of readership.
All of this is a shame, of course, because these creators didn’t set out to create a mediocre book. Rather, they were contracted to hit a few marks, to work within the boundaries of a larger narrative that we cannot see. Are we meant to feel for these characters? We do not. Are we meant to want to play these characters? Again, we do not. Is there anything here that dives the reader to pre-order the elusive game? Not so much.
Flat and unexciting, Skull and Bones: Savage Storm #1 suffers from the missteps made an entire industry away. It fails to achieve either of its potential goals: to be a great comic or to be a great promotion.
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