Mortal Kombat X (Comic) Kritique

as with injustice mortal kombat x received a prequel comic produced by dc comics however rather than serving as a central pillar of the franchise and detailing a large gap of time that the game left unexplored this 12-issue digital first series told a stand-alone story that has nothing to do with mkx beyond character choices and designs despite them having a full 20 25 year time gap to fill with various stories so let's finally talk about it and yes i know what dominic cianciolo said recently regarding this comic he said it's not canon then he backpedaled and said it's canon as far as a game writers decide it is well yeah that's how multimedia works canon comes in tears with the primary medium getting priority star wars comics and games are canon but if they contradict the movies the movies take precedence really he didn't need to specify any of this because it's so obvious then again this is the mk fanbase we're talking about so our writer his name is dominic chiancholo i think he knows the mortal kombat lore maybe better than anyone um basically everything in the comic is canon unless it's contradicted by the games and a fair amount of it is so let's begin there are two other major similarities to injustice with this comic first is the unavoidable feeling that things were intentionally left out of the game to make people read the comic in hopes of getting answers most prominently why goro is relegated to dlc and arcade sub boss on the disc but isn't actually anywhere to be seen in the story mode the second similarity on a somewhat related notes is the tendency to kill off established characters for no reason and to contradict the games in various ways we see the first of these play out in the first scene of issue 1. kenshi and his young son are being pursued by red dragon members using bows instead of guns for some reason led by sue howe from deadly alliance now i may be wrong about this but i do believe suhao is the single least popular character in the entire franchise no one liked him so he was dropped after one game and only came back in armageddon because everyone did suho claims kenji betrayed the red dragon setting up some backstory for later on unfortunately being digital first means the page layouts are very uniform since two pages from that format are put together into one page of the a4 comic format it means there are no full or double page spreads to emphasize key moments it also affects story flow as these comics release in three chapters per issue meaning there needs to be two crescendos in the middle of a story and it can even jump to a completely separate story in the middle of the issue it turns out kenshi came here for a reason as this is shared idu land scorpion then appears and punches through sue house head while screaming get out of here i have two problems with this first is how bad the whole get out of here thing is yes it was amusing in the mk movie when scorpion said get down here a take on his catchphrase but this is just silly here and it's not the only time they do this sprinkled throughout the comic are various characters throwing out classic phrases from the series and much like smoke spouting toasty every five panels in the malibu comics it's very rare that any of it feels natural i know the feeling scorpion second is the very abrupt death of sue howe i don't like him all that much either but here's the thing curtis striker was never a popular character he debuted in mk3 as a cop who just shot people fans didn't take to him so he was ignored until they brought everyone back for armageddon midway used this opportunity with the characters that hadn't returned in deadly alliance or deception to reinvent them in certain ways striker was given kind of a secret agent type jumpsuit as his default costume and a swat uniform as his ultimate again he didn't leave much of an impression since mk 2011 was retelling one to three they again brought him back this time they went for a more straight-laced badass cop approach and fans responded quite well to him this time to the point where there are fans who actually miss him in mk11 it took 16 years but we finally had a striker we could get behind suhar was also dropped until armageddon but since that game reused character models from deadly alliance and deception suhar remained unchanged he didn't return for 2011 and finally returned here solely to die in the opening scene to wet fanboy pants they never gave suhau a second chance while they gave striker 3. and this is my biggest problem with the comic never mind the inconsistencies cringy dialogue or fairly bad plot the decision to kill off unpopular characters without giving them a second chance like they did for the guy who was the least popular character from 1995 to 2002 shows an astounding laziness on the part of the creators that or a bias against anything from the 3d era since even the 3d era characters that are generally liked by the fan base and appeared in mkx barely do anything in this comic you know like this is an alternate timeline you could change sue howe a lot and people would accept it not only because it's trying something different to try and make it more appealing but also because it's an alternate timeline things could be different here for whatever reason you know the black dragon didn't fall apart after the invasion like they did in the original timeline so that could be used to justify sue hall being a different position maybe he got [ __ ] up more became more of a cyborg or whatever but they didn't even try striker was salvaged by refining his core concept but since this is a comic and not a game set in a new timeline they could have tried something more radical look at street fighter 5 and seth seth was sf4's final boss and he really didn't leave much of an impression so they decided to put him in a new female body belonging to the mysterious doll zero gave him some new moves and presto he's won fans over netherrealm had the opportunity and ability to do this they pulled it off once but it was evidently too much work so they just gave up on the rest and let them be killed off the sheer contempt they show for aspects of their own franchise remains utterly astounding to me now moving on you may notice that scorpion actually does use his default costume from the game here unlike in the game's story mode i'm not sure why they did it this way but i guess they had to make the costume canonical somewhere likewise kenshi's in his mk 2011 costume which is another odd aesthetic choice since he's already switched to his deadly alliance style costume in the game's prologue by now none of this is a contradiction like with injustice just an oddity that's worth noting the revived shared ideo is elaborated on scorpion took in those who lost their families in the war with chinook it's not clear how kenshi's cover was blown for the red dragon to go after his son like this but they did and kenshi arrived too late unfortunately the flashback depicting her death is difficult to take seriously thanks to the edgy you the [ __ ] with kenshi's bastard line and su chin's own cringe-worthy response and the [ __ ] with a blade right before she gets shot fortunately this is followed up by a nice little idea where hanzo calls takada another survivor it's a nice detail that he sees himself in the boy and that's part of why he takes him on as his star pupil it's also a small bit of foreshadowing for the direction the story takes towards the end i do wish there was a bit more emphasis placed on the idea after this point though i'm also surprised there's no point where scorpion is reminded of his own son when he looks at takada that could have made for a nice moment takada is uneasy around hanzo but kenshi claims that hanzo conquered scorpion years ago a set up for a later plot point that really doesn't add up kenshi immediately leaves the traumatized bar in the care of the murderous ninja to seek revenge it really feels like the mkx writers were actually spiteful about kenji's popularity despite being a 3d era character and wanted to sabotage him by making him a pushover who never wins fights and making him the worst dad ever meanwhile subzero raids a red dragon temple to obtain an old knife for raiden kano attacks him from behind and cuts his face with a knife leaving him with his iconic scar and infecting him with the curse of the kamidogu i'll come back to this later we then returned to the shade temple years ago which suggests that sub-zero scene which didn't specify a time at all is not taking place at the same time the later implication is that sub-zero's been running around with this dagger for a few years and raiden just never bothered to try and find him which is stupid given how important these daggers are revealed to be maybe that's why they removed this caption box in the trade release takada spas with a fellow recruit named fox he loses but with the transition to a few years later i estimate around seven years before the game takeda has greatly improved though still not enough to beat fox fox starts hearing ominous red voices in his head as hanzo reveals he was recently visited by raiden raiden was checking on the dagger he'd entrusted to hanzo claiming that something had entered earth around while its dimensional barriers were weakened by the invasion hanzo clearly doesn't like raid and seemingly holding against him that so many heroes died but it's not like hanzo works alongside those people so why does he care also i'd have thought he might be a bit more amicable given that raiden restored his humanity later that night fox is compelled by the voice to steal the dagger and cut his own face off butchering the other recruits before trying to kill takada fox already poisoned and captured hanzo who is reliving the past in his mind we see hanzo defending his village from a linguay attack before finding his wife and son frozen in a cartoonish block of ice let's get into this there's a lot wrong here first off bihan has qui liang's costume but i can forgive that since 2011 did the same thing when it depicted the fake death of scorpion's family can't blame the contractors when the full-time staff gets it wrong first second they look like they got hit with a freezy in a game of smash third what the [ __ ] is up with the lengths of hanzo's fingers and why does it remind me of that one panel where batman looked like he'd transformed into an after effects filter and then we have the big one kana and jube scorpion's family despite being established back in 1992 did not have names until 2011 discounting their korean counterparts in the jeff rovin novel and key legacy named them khanna and jubei mkx then gave them the canonical names harami and satoshi the comic uses the names from the web series instead of the games i'm going to be giving writer sean kittleson a lot of [ __ ] over the course of this video for his mistakes but know that when i do i'm also criticizing netherrealm the game came out three months after the comic started the same day as chapter 15 which is the end of issue 5. as such i'm willing to let him off for continuity issues with mkx up to the end of issue 6 which had probably already been written by then as an outsider to netherrealm at the time there was no way sean could have known about the canon names without someone at netherrealm telling him all he had to work with was that the web series had used these names whether he thought those were the canonical names or just thought he may as well use them since there was nothing official yet someone at netherrealm should have checked his script pointed out the mistake and made a correction without being shown to cut scenes or receiving notes from netherrealm there's no way he could have known what was going on in mkx prior to release so this rather large flub is 100 not sean's fault unless corrections were made and he ignored them i doubt he'd have been hired by netherrealm if that had been the case we could probably hold him accountable for his awful excuse for the error though he claimed kana and jube were pet names for harami and satoshi no sean no hanzo can tell this isn't real but it suggested that this really did happen aside from sub-zero taunting him which isn't true quan chi did this after hanzo was already dead even if shawn thought quantri's lie in 2011 was true scorpion wasn't there i let shaun off with inconsistencies with mkx but for inconsistencies with any prior game that's on him as well as netherrealm he should have known better hanzo reawakens his health spawn powers which i was under the impression he didn't have anymore given how he blatantly reverted to human alongside sub-zero and jacks then again netherrealm thinks he's irreverent so they probably think he was born with his hellspawn powers and no him using them in mk11 doesn't invalidate what i'm saying here also we don't see him remove or put his face back on the latter of which has never been seen to my knowledge so i think his head just transforms like ghost rider now after burning fox scorpion stabs him with the dagger because this is post reboot mk where you have to kill a person in three different ways for its account this only makes him stronger and he alludes to raiden knowing more about the dagger's power and its connection to quan chi the latter of which is never brought up again takada splits fox in two and after burning the bodies the two survivors depart to get answers from raiden reading is with fujin at the sky temple he cuts himself with the kamidoku of order to improve his senses so he can get a preview of later issue i mean find the demon he receives visions of various events but only a few even matter to the story and the rest are either filler or not part of the comic like is this hinting that kano would use the kamidogu on some shokan to make them stronger even though he doesn't and i guess we should address that right the kamidogu were introduced in deception as the artifacts hujinko's quest revolved around in conquest mode there were mystical emblems that represented the six realms and were the keys of fusing them here though they are bafflingly turned into a set of daggers used for blood magic why they were referred to as kamidogi when they're very clearly not i've got no idea is this implying that these are the same artifacts from deception or is kamidoku now a broader term for a type of artifact it's such a bizarre alteration and nothing would change in the story if they were given different names pretty typical of netherrealm retcons honestly issue 2 opens with raiden healing fujin's wounded gut which i guess was caused by raiden when he used the dagger raiden's arm is also wounded which he claims is the price he paid for invoking the elder gods with blood magic and why he needed to use blood magic when he's always been able to just teleport to the elder gods domain i have no idea we cut to johnny cage's condo where cassie and jackie are sparring in the living room jackie is apparently using kickboxing as her style even though that wasn't part of her repertoire until mk11 jackie gets cassio with a gut punch only to receive a shadow kick in return which seems to send cassie flying back more than jackie somehow we learn that johnny is very forgiving of cassie while sonja is more of a hard ass sonya meets with kotal khan who claims to have been at war with molina for 10 years by the time of the game it's apparently been five but i can't hold mkx's inability to keep the timeline straight against sean cotel explains that molina is working with the red dragon and very awkwardly introduces devorah and aaron black sonia refuses to help and devorah unironically uses the word says she attacks sonia who rips off her pincer and kicks her in the jaw shown in x-ray which is an effect that will pop up every now and then for the rest of the comic they left out a standoff and we cut back to cassie and jackie who aren't 21 yet according to jackie jackie's worried about getting caught and kicked out of training saying jax doesn't take bad news well i was under the impression he didn't want her in the sf to begin with i don't have any right he knew what i wanted jackie volunteered she came to me when i joined sf mr cage insisted on being the one to tell my dad my dad came home with a broken jaw cassie uses her name to get inside and we see that it's an all female fight club it's kind of like that one episode of justice league unlimited only with a less interesting roster and people die here such an extremely illegal event being held in a club accessible from the street and not a secret underground hideout reminded me of how the mk cast are all psychotic murderous [ __ ] in dcu yeah the games prioritize ultra violence and violent finishing moves but the good guys are more traditionally heroic and earthrealm isn't lacking in real world morals cassie tries to back out but is forced to fight frost who seems to be about cassie's age here even though she was this age or older in the old timeline at the time cassie would have been about seven also she quotes mk2 shao khan go home sean back to sonia they're still fighting so raiden shows up and maybe references the movie but in context it's fine raiden refers to sonia by her first name which isn't something he does he uses full names at all times but the comic doesn't do that back with the fights frost is dominating and doing the typical [ __ ] you rich girl your life is perfect crap and cassie immediately turns it around and wins cassie refuses to finish frost until jackie is threatened at which point she relents but she's saved by the black dragon showing up and murdering people at random i wonder if it's down to the digital first format but this whole thing goes by really quick i think the scene would have been more effective if it had more room to breathe it never would have been as powerful as saijima refusing to kill an opponent in yakuza 4 given the lack of build up but it would still feel more like a real moment than a scene from the 90s spider-man cartoon jackie gets free with little effort after the guard tries to call her a [ __ ] and she helps cassie get frost into the alley where they dump her jarek and tasia catch up to them and cassie takes a selfie to leave a trail which sonia finds when she picks up cassie's phone and sees a picture of aaron black the timing of this is kind of weird now to think about it i didn't even script this i just realized this while recording aaron was just with sonia at the same time cassie was in the club so i guess he left with cotel and devorah and then immediately went to meet up with the black dragon to help capture cassie that doesn't make sense sonia wants to call in johnny who she's calling by his first name when mkx uses her willingness to call him that rather than cage to symbolize the states of their relationship which is currently in the very rocky cage territory then we smash cut to an unrelated flashback to explain the history of the osh tech who were apparently conquered while khan was going after earth realm since goro was fighting alongside him and he signed up less than five centuries ago i don't think he's ever been stated that he can't engage in mortal kombat with more than one realm at a time but we can probably assume that's the case coastal khan's father coastal kettes appears here suggesting that kotel is the family name so we have no idea what the sun's given name actually is everyone just calls him kotel maybe kent is the oshtech equivalent of a khan throughout all this kotal and his father are blue even when in private suggesting that the colorist may not have known it was body paint after being conquered coastal is sent by his father to earth realm as a rite of passage by chance kotel arrives to find a mined settlement which is also attacked by the spanish that same day setting this around 1517 or so meaning goro shouldn't have been with khan here kotal teaches the maya to fight off the spanish and he becomes their god brew look shabtan an interesting idea that i'd love to see expanded into a full issue instead of the closing third of an unrelated issue maybe then coastal returning to outworld being chastised by his father and going straight back to find the maya dead from smallpox might have come off a tad less comedic elsewhere reiko reports to molina that the red dragon have agreed to their terms and goro agrees to kill kotal for her issue three opens with coastal sending his father armed with shao khan's hammer to deal with goro and molina ketz calls his son coastal which makes the name thing even more confusing the best i can figure is that ket is a title used by the osh tech kotel is the last of the quetzies and his son kotel jr is the khan of outworld i'd love to hear what lame explanation sean has for this one we get confirmation that reiko and molina are [ __ ] and reiko has reign control the weather to block the sun and weaken cats kets hits goro who quotes classic khan the red dragon attacks the osh tech freeing goro to crush ket his head with the hammer the enraged culture invokes the gods before gods and the blood code to power himself up in his pursuit of revenge i'm fairly certain the blood code is a reference to the blood code from the mega drive version of mk1 and that's cute and all but the term blood code isn't really explained in the comic what is the code part of the blood code i don't follow molina uses the word carnum in a way that suggests it's the throne or domain of the car as kets did a little earlier in the game it's the female equivalent of a card i've covered this on misconceptions reiko claims goro is plotting against molina with no evidence and melina believes him enough to take off her mask and say she'll eat goro's face only to have the mask back on in the next panel yeah she's obviously supposed to put the mask back on between panels but without at least having her hand on her mask as if she's putting it back in place it feels weird it feels like something is missing goro and rain try the same tactic with the weather but coastal's blood magic supersedes his sunlight powers allowing him to horrifically burn rain with sunlight as the two square off goro claims shokan tradition for bid subservience which is why the show can't have always served others outside of forming alliances with katana and even then she's clearly top dog in those instances coastal takes all of goro's arms great way to promote the pre-order character guys and denies him the dignity of death if you're wondering how goros husk still has all four of his arms in mk11 that's because it was supposed to be addressed in the second season of the comic that never happened sonya shoots kotel and demands to know where her daughter is the next page then repeats this indicating the start of a new chapter in that format it works fine but in the collected issues it feels awkward like watching a moment be repeated after the ad break when watching an episode on dvd johnny is with sonia and he's able to get koto to cooperate kotol even shows a rare bit of genuine nobility by sympathising with their plights having just lost his own family streams that he normally comes off much more disingenuously of course the moment is hampered by the picture cassie took of eren being totally different from the one seen in issue 2. johnny's glove is missing in this panel but if story continuity is unreasonable to expect from mk why should the art have consistency kazzy and jackie try to escape but kano puts a stop to it and explains that his cyber eye is new having replaced this a few years ago the old one which looks exactly like this one got destroyed by sub-zero my guess is that the intent was for it to be the one from 2011 that was destroyed but that detail wasn't included in the script or not even conceived until later so the artist had no idea and just drew mkx kano as is the flashback does reveal that the kamidogu daggers possess whoever they cut which is set up for plot down the line for now the red dragon attack and we cut to hanzo and takada outside the sky temple getting attacked by raiden the next issue promising to depict scorpion unleashed because the comic has no idea what scorpion even is issue 4 opens with hanzo getting stumped by the possessed raiden we flash back a few weeks to the two ninja trekking through the himalayas with takada comparing being possessed by the blood code to hanzo and scorpion hanzo causes hellfire a curse and we flash back even further to his death according to the comic behan holds hanzo's severed head up to the frozen form of his wife and son harumi's expression is serene hair despite the fact that she was attacked and frozen to death so she should have a look of pain terror or at least recognition on her face she shouldn't look like she's stirring lovingly into her husband's eyes and of course she didn't have that expression in issue one panzo explains that quanchi didn't control him he simply stokes the flames of his vengeance and scorpion was born i can forgive how goofy and unfitting behan's final words are here i can forgive the endurance match from luke hanks chapter been depicted in the wrong stage i cannot however forgive that this comic has a woefully inaccurate concept of the character of scorpion the comic is under the impression that scorpion is the fighting game staple the super powered dark side character like evil view or devil gin hanzo claims he has to relive the moment he lost his family to fuel his health fire but risks going evil when he does the specter scorpion is just a stage of hanzo's life or rather on life he died and returned for vengeance then continued to serve his evil benefactor because he had nothing else his mind wasn't altered in any way by quan chi nor is there a secret other person locks deep within his mind where sean got this idea from i've no idea because the games have never approached the character this way and i feel it both makes him more generic as a fighting game character and weakens his arc by insinuating perhaps unintentionally that hanzo isn't really accountable for his actions the character's arc in the netherround timeline is him learning to let go of his hate to let go of the past and look towards the future instead of obsessing over avenging his dead clan he forms a new one to fight the dark forces he once served that desire for revenge is still there of course and he does have a lapse in judgment when he indulges in it dooming the remaining revenants forever but that's just a simple human mistake that anyone could relate to not some mystical alternate persona he has to resist letting take over scorpion isn't the devil gene scorpion is a phase of hanzo's life that he's ashamed of and is trying to redeem himself for and in the end as co-written by sean himself in mk 11 he does exactly that while i prefer the original timeline take netherrealm scorpion while rocky at first was one of the few characters with a solid arc throughout and it's abundantly clear that sean did not understand the character when he wrote this comic fortunately he educated himself before he worked on mk11 and the results when isolated from the rest of that dumpster fire show his willingness and ability to learn and improve but as is often the case it's going to get worse before it gets better back in the present hanzo teleports himself and taking it away from raiden and the flashback resumes with hanzo explaining that kenji helped him deal with his rage an interesting idea that parallels kenji helping irma in the original timeline but we sadly never get to see this hanzo returns to take the dagger from raiden with the line give me that that line doesn't fit hanzo characters in mk are written in a certain way that i don't think sean fully grasped yet ninjas monks and other realms speak in a very formal manner especially the wiser characters like grandmaster hasashi he should not be saying gimme it sounds silly coming from him raiden asks how much fire hanzo has left from all his teleporting as if he has a limited amount that needs to be recharged i think the idea is supposed to be that the more he dips into scorpion's power the more whole scorpion has over him but the wording makes it sound like the hellfire is keeping scorpion at bay until he runs out hanzo beats down raiden and says he hopes it hurts because he's edge lord devil hanzo now he somehow thinks reigns electricity killed takada earlier despite the fact that he teleported takada out of there so surely he should know that it didn't raydon regains his senses and they take takara to the jinsei chamber to heal he's apparently basically dead but resisting his soul being taken to the nether realm raiden explains that the elder gods shield shinnok's amulet which currently contains the fallen god himself in a dark dimension which was locked by the kamidogu which again are daggers in this comic these daggers supposedly tasted the blood of the one being which is probably the most accurate thing said regarding the one being since the netherrealm era started the daggers were given raiden's blood to power them and raiden had them separated it's worth noting that the kamidogu representing the six main realms never comes up beyond giving them names so there was no reason to call them kamidogu as such i will not be doing so from this point on we cut to indonesia were subzeros being pursued by linkway cyborgs using the dagger he was cut with to augment his power and dispatch them easily raiden claims whoever corrupted the daggers is aiming for chinook's amulets without any real evidence to back this up maybe they just want the power of the blood god that the mysterious dagger voice claims is coming reiko speaks with a mysterious partner and we learn he's only using molina as most do to get the daggers and become the blood god after an awkward comedy bit with the sf and culturals group they find aaron strung up we flash back to the black and red dragon standoff the black looking to deliver the girls to kotel and the red to reiko movado uses hook swords with no hooks which kind of removes one of the weapons main advantages cassie even calls him captain hooks as if the weapon does have them kano flees after saying eren could never be black dragon oops also let's not forget that aaron and the girls show no signs of knowing each other in mkx oops movado cuts aaron down and then the girls start killing everyone even violently cutting nevado open with his own weapon i remind you they're about 17 to 19 and no one bats an eye at this then the girls are captured off panel and eren is left to tell the others to go to shangsung's island then we finally learn the one pulling the strings is havoc from deception although you could guess this earlier in the issue if you noted reiko calling him a cleric thus ends the blood ties arc and the blood god's arc begins in issue 5 where court will ponder how to make up for this offence against earthrealm sure is a shame he doesn't consider the same after mkx also ferret is here with green tall strange johnny now wearing his prologue outfit from mkx instead of the default tries to comfort sonia but she tells him to [ __ ] off because sonia has to be a prick at almost all times in the nether elm era coastal claims to be the last of the osh tech suggesting the osh tech and the game are just dressed in tribute or another continuity error kotol offers a ship to the island but says the sf will have to help fight off the shokan retaliatory attack which includes kantaro and shiva over in japan hanzo claims his loss to sub-zero in outworlds was a technical loss since they were interrupted this feels less like a legitimate interpretation of that scene and more an excuse to wipe a loss from a counter's record like nightwolf claiming he let scorpion win in the tournament and put earthrealm at risk the entire city has been frozen by sub-zero's amplified powers hanzo and taka find him at a hilltop shrine where sub-zero claims hanzo's used a lot of hellfire which means scorpion is getting stronger i'll try not to harp on this too much havoc is revealed as the one controlling the possess doing something in the flash pits on shangsung's island he wants hanzo's soul and makes as big a deal of scorpion and sub-zero's rematch as lex did of clark and bruce meeting in bvs and like the latter scene this won't only hold significance for the audience not for the characters in universe scorpion and qualiang met one time while the latter had free will and then spent two years together as allies under quan chi they barely know each other the two rivals fight and we get the unintentionally hilarious two panels where subzero tells scorpion to get over here and scorpion appears behind him looking annoyed that this guy stole his bit or annoyed that we're getting more cringy overuse of iconic phrases subzero call scorpion a wraith when he's a specter or a revenant if you foolishly trust mkx you know maybe it's intended to be used as a general term for a dead person but wraiths are a thing that exists in mk so you can't just use the word like that same with demigod subzero seems surprised that he's not holding the dagger after he intentionally dropped it to pull scorpion's chains out of his chest because he's a [ __ ] idiot sub-zero freezes the whole area and comes to his senses just in time for scorpion to break free backing out world the show kind of joined by oni but we don't get much variety in their designs just big and troll-like johnny's changed back to his other outfit just in time for quintaro to dismiss devorah on grounds of gender when she parlays with him because that's not a forced and overdone angle for a villain and it's not even set up for later on when he serves under and is saved by a woman so what was the point sonia shows some real character by worrying when johnny's position is attacked by an oni subzero calls the linkway cyber bastards and scorpion summons undead sheer idea i guess yeah he kinda did this in armageddon but they were already revived by the elder gods in that state scorpion himself doesn't have any powers like that scorpion runs him through and starts to burn him but takada talks him down from finishing him off the leaf subzero to bleed out in a dragon logo shaped pool of blood which is more than a bit silly issue six opens with sub-zero flashing back to 2011. dialogue is added to his victory over scorpion and it reinforces that hanzo was lying about it being a technical loss since khan is telling sub-zero to finish him meaning the fight is over also despite this being set in sub-zero's chapter he's on the player two side of the stage which has never happened in another realm game come on guys get it together it skims over his cyborization and death with unnecessary dialogue editions like the classic die from sindel quonchi has smoke and jacks holding sub-zero as he rebuilds him in flesh subzero is resisting suggesting the scene in raiden's chapter where he appears with the others under quan ji's control hasn't happened yet despite him still being a cyborg in that scene also jax is in his mkx revenant form not the one from 2011 but then again it's possible that the revenant forms were just completely retconned by mkx so who knows quan chi says you can't trust technology making one wonder why jax is allowed to keep the cyber arms and this contradicts sub-zero's claiming mkx that he chose his human form as a revenant i chose my revenant then we see the flashback from sonia's chapter and everything's wrong subzero sonia and raiden are all in the wrong costumes raiden uses his magic to liberate their evidence while sonia is still fighting quan chi instead of while sony's stomping on quan chi's dick and jackson scorpion are still fighting and killing soldiers instead of sub-zero freezing them all at the start and then the three getting knocked out i guess i can accept the costumes being wrong here you know maybe the artist wasn't shown the actual scene or the costumes in question so he had to just use the defaults but surely if sean knew about this specific scene before release he must have been shown a preview of it or being given a copy of its script we learned that raiden took sub-zero to the sky temple to recover then sent him to get the dagger a few days later god this guy's existence is just one long nightmarish chain of mind control you think original timeline smoke had it bad going from cyberization under linkway control to being reprogrammed under noobs control or netherrealm sindel going from quan chi's control to quan chi's control but subzero was cyberized under linkway control freed for less than a day before being killed and turned into a revenant for two years then being freed and winding up possessed by the dagger just a few days later and that lasts from around the time catty cage was conceived up until after she's finished high school yes netherrealm hates sub-zero can confirm if he survives his wounds thanks to borrowed show quite randomly raiden claims hanzo spurred sub-zero by running him through and burning him then leaving him to bleed out god of useless he sends hanzo to the kang shaolin temple for the chaos realm dagger while he meets with jax to get the earth round one why he can't just teleport all three of them to each location i don't know maybe the dagger messed with his head to make him split them up reiko confronts jax in a one-to-one recreation of his armageddon render pose they already know each other by name for some reason in the outworld battle sony's entire squad dies aside from her and johnny while coastal fights goro's father king gorbach this is i think the first appearance or even mention of the character since 1995. tor also got his colours fixed hooray gorbach tells kotal to test his might and coastal's disgust empowers him to crush gorbach's skull and i think drink his blood the show can retreat and devorah express his concern about cortel's dabbling in blood magic this doesn't go anywhere and he doesn't stop doing it by the time of the game johnny and sonia get a moment while she tends to his wounds and it's handled all right courtel uses the phrase finish him and we cut to goro losing his claim to the shokan throne the contest will be held to crown a new ruler while goro leaves to set up the second season of the comic that never happened scarlet steals coastal's dagger during the battle for havoc who agrees to teach her blood magic in time another thing mk11 couldn't get right it's why shah khan taught me blood magic scarlet is one of the few characters to be given a new outfit for the comic this being a black bodysuit that was later added to mk11 as dlc where it looks a lot better than in the comic why this was done i don't know as this was at a time when netherrealm weren't embarrassed by the skimpier costumes of the female cast let's put aside the fact that it makes more sense for her to keep her skin exposed based on how her powers work this thing is just ugly they could have at least made it half red even jade's ugly brown costume in 11 has more green on it than this has read in the comic havoc reveals that he plans to extract the kk genkai of the caged clan from cassie which doesn't go anywhere at all despite being the notes they end the issue on havoc just seems to want all sources of power at once issue 7 gives reptile a flashback to the tournament he's in his mkx form johnny's in the wrong costume and the courtyard has a roof despite being an iconic stage without one since 1992 so after his constant failures reptile was supposed to be assassinated by kotel on khan's orders but he refused and asked for reptile to serve under him which can't allow despite coastal actively disobeying a direct order i guess reptile was serving under coastal in the invasion then and yes mk11 bungled this as well then we learned coastal saved ferro and tore from tarkatans and they ate them then devorah reminisces about khan's invasion of the arneak islands home of the kaitin goro is with khan setting this during the current tournament cycle it's not clear if the anyak islands are a realm or just a part of our world not yet conquered with goro being present the latter would seem to be a continuity error but i don't accept this as a retcon of goro working for shao khan before the earth rum tournament cycle because shang tsung recruiting goro was a game changer for that tournament cycle if the shokong were already under khan's employ why would they not have already been taking part by the time kung lao entered and i know 2011 retcon shiva being sindel's bodyguard from just during mk3 to back when she was married to khan but i still refuse this is the recurring problem with the retcons of the nether arm era they don't think at all about the implications of the things they're changing at least the artist gained some redemption by putting khan in his classic look instead of the inferior modern ones then the scene where coastal rebelled is depicted with everyone in their default outfits aside from reptile and taking place in a street not a building also reptile and devorah are depicted throughout with red blood the game was out by now so there are no excuses for errors like this anymore despite these trips down memory lane though kotl is still insistent on meeting the next attack alone and dying with honor but kano and the black dragon arrive to help now including tremor since he was being planned as dlc for the game raiden finds a hole in jax's home and jack's injured vera shows up marking her single canonical appearance in the franchise and the only one outside of jax's mk11 ending she explains that they gave the dagger to reiko so he wouldn't kill vera and jackie raiden continues to use everyone's first name and it's weird meanwhile scarlett is beating up jackie but now in her 2011 outfit with a weird black bit added to her midsection habit claims that raiden is unwittingly helping them by gathering the daggers kintaro looking way more cat-like than in any game denies coastal's challenge of single combat saying there will only be fatalities tremor gets to show off his power briefly to make people want to buy him then we move to johnny and sonja again we get a nice little moment where sonja worries about what leaving things decaying will cause and johnny convinces her they can't save everyone so they should save what matters most then kano nukes the shokan and coastal orders his army to finish them are you starting to see how tiring the constant stream of classic words and phrases from the series gets we then cut to molina at rain's bedside where ermak enters to report on coastal's victory first problem reign's concern over reiko's betrayal seems too genuine given how reign is just using molina in the game could just be my interpretation so i'll let it slide second problem melina now sports her mkx mouth when it was clearly the classic mouth in her earlier appearance was the new mouth just not shown off pre-release is that how that happened no explanation is offered third problem irmak shouldn't be here since he defected when coastal's reign began once again there is no excuse for this since the game was out already even if netherrealm didn't provide any assistance sean should have done research by at least watching the cutscenes on youtube even irmak seems disgusted by this coastal manages to turn the show canon to allies against molina and reiko and turns on kano when he tries to bargain with a portal stone tremor is then shot in the back by sonia and since he never appears again i guess he dies kotol then sends the black dragon to the dungeon making one wonder why he'd agree to work with them again in the game keno makes it clear cassie isn't legal age so i guess she's under 18 so again i don't know why no one bats an eye at her brutality against movado at the kang temple hanzo tries not to admit liu kang beat him in the tournament and shujinko arrives he says they can't trust raiden but he does trust havoc who has a human face now scorpion recognizes him immediately issue 8 begins with shujinko taking takada away and telling him about kenshi and daegon while hanzo denies havoc's claims of raiden's treachery havok rips off the fake face i guess and uses the who's next tagline from the game then shujinko is revealed to be possessed and attacks takada despite this he's still treated with more respect than any other 3d era character included in this damn comic at the sky temple fujin reports that shangsung's island has a barrier similar to raiden's around it raiden is rejected by the jinsei even though it doesn't reject chinook's corruption in the game another little moment between johnny and sonia is ruined when sonya discovers coastal bringing kano's wmd onto the ship reiko powers himself up with two daggers johnny and sonia reminisce about their relationship johnny asked her out the night they beat shinnok and she agreed that was it until months later sonya showed up on johnny's doorstep in an apartment complex where the netherrealm devs live i'll put aside how off the positions of johnny's nipples look to say that the repeated dialogue between this and the previous scene but with entirely different intent and context is a nice touch however sonja told johnny she was pregnant suggesting they only got married for that reason again research failed because the game was quite clear that sonja was in love with him johnny cage is mine no he's mine if that line had been in the comic it would have been something like johnny cage is mine and i've addressed before that i struggle to accept johnny and sonia again together over the pregnancy before this scene as that suggests sonja is pregnant when she whops the asses of kwon shi and two of his toughest revenants are that there's a year gap between cassie and jackie who was conceived sometime after jax's restoration here we jump forward a few years to sonia having to leave home and miss cassie's birthday to extract kenshi from his undercover mission since she's the one who sent him this shows the cracks in the marriage as johnny failed to convince her to send someone else this is a part i've seen criticized on twitter i don't know if there's anything genuine to that or if it's just the usual crowd overreacting as they always do and no it's not because kenshi's in his post-time skip form here when he was in his younger form when the events surrounding this were depicted back in issue 1 unless he had another undercover mission in the red dragon after he was already exposed during the extraction a woman with an rpg showed up and sonia had to shoot her in front of her daughter to save the evac chopper the point of the scene is self-reflection from sonia seeing herself in the woman prioritizing heavy artillery over her own daughter my issue is the child's presence seeming contrived rather than the perceived insensitivity of depicting a muslim terrorist in pakistan i guess or maybe it's how it doesn't look like northern pakistan according to one of my pakistani friends we get the whole i never knew you never asked exchange even though johnny couldn't have known to ask sonia still she has serious regrets about not being there for cassie for prioritizing work over her and if you're familiar with mkx's story you'll recognize that this is the same lesson sonja had to learn there too granted this version is probably handled better due to spending more time on it and being more introspective than the game maybe they just had more time here since sony's a lead character not a supporting one like in the game jackie is then revealed to have been taken over by the blood code and red bodysuit scarlett infects cassie too hanzo pummels havoc but he's highly resilient as we know from deception havoc says he wants friendship and his goal is to kill the gods to liberate the realms from order he claims that even if hanzo wants to die scorpion won't let him like he was talking to eddie brock despite holding hanzo like he's about to break his neck havoc instead runs his hand through his guts maybe this is just emulating modern fatalities with three different killing blows being redundantly performed hanzo dies and taken is allowed to leave the issue ends with the alliance arriving on the island where reiko and scarlet stick the possessed cassie and jackie on them this brings us into the final arc blood island sonja easily dispatches cassie while johnny gets beat severely by jackie while coastal fights reiko scarlet fixes devorah's blood colour though it weirdly looks closer to the mk11 shade than the mkx one also weird is devorah acknowledging scarlet absorbing blood through her skin while scarlet is wearing the black bodysuit is this some anime power limiter [ __ ] you can't just acknowledge how ill-fitting the new costume is for the character without offering up some kind of explanation for it rachel rips devorah in half and then melina's forces arrive scarlett seems to think reiko won't betray her even though she's working more with havoc than raikou is it just an act even though reiko's not paying attention to her right now so she doesn't need to she then declares herself shao khan's daughter and we all know how that turned out then with help from irma molina rolls through scarlet's legs and destroys them and yes it looks just as silly as you'd imagine i mean i know this is a thing she can do in the games but i don't know making it a canonical thing that happens just seems weird you know there are things you can accept in gameplay that you can't in cut scenes it's like that scarlett then acknowledges it as a brutality which is also silly and that's the last we see of her despite molina opting not to kill her she apparently dies off screen sometime between this and mk 11. katana morocco scarlet all outworld champions long since gone coastal uses the hell hath no fury phrase and reiko turns it into like the blood god cringe molina then starts using daddy's hammer in battle cringe the show can then arrive led by queen shiva yeah this is where that started fortunately she isn't the feminist parody she became an mk11 yet she opts to wait to see the outcome before intervening takura arrives at the sky temple where fujin's been impaled by raiden who took the daggers reiko then flashes back to his history a goddess statue claimed he would rule he claimed shao khan adopted him and made him his ur which is why no one proposed he take over after the outworld tournament and why he left the outworld throne to be contested by molina and kotel when he apparently had the most legitimate claim to it this is another fine example of mk writers just introducing things that aren't thought out at all and just raised so many questions with regards to the story that's already been told because this and that don't line up at all and this is why i complain about the continuity all the goddamn time after khan died havoc approached reiko and gave him a taste of the blood code i'm not sure if this is implying havoc's been controlling him since or just manipulating him either way it's clear havoc is the true mastermind behind everything raiden then arrives and wins the battle for havoc to close out the issue issue 10 opens with the alliance being captured as dvorah secretly reforms on the beach havoc says there are seven kamidogu despite there only being six realms represented they could have been a little clever here and made the seventh be the kamidogu of vaeturnus realm of the vampires but the seventh goes completely unexplained of course sonia johnny coastal molina and irmak are being drained of their blood while havoc monologues and taunts sonia like a bond villain i'm not entirely sure this personality fits him riko drinks the blood and half of it goes down his front like a toddler back at the sky temple fujin says he can't go with takada since he needs to protect the jinsei which raises the question of during mkx when raiden went off to find out what was going on with the amulet was boricho the one left in charge where was fujin why is he not a single intro in mk11 where fujin explains what he was fujin you [ __ ] up where were you oh i was doing this all right fair enough or that's not good enough [ __ ] you i kill you now come on guys it's not difficult instead he gives taka to his proper shade idu gear which i guess was just lying around in the sky temple and he sends him on his way and then fujin is gone from the story and we have no idea where he was between this and chinook's return now as reiko transforms into his full god form i have to comment on a subjective thing to me it just seems wrong that a god even a letter god could be controlled like raiden is i can't really explain it so i won't dwell on it but you'd think it wouldn't be possible and i feel it weakens the character somewhat still i can't stay mad at that face having stopped reiko from killing any of the so-called champions a term that isn't really explained citing his desire to study johnny and sonia and the benefit of publicly executing the leaders he instead gained sustenance from 100 tarkatans and then he melts the real purpose of all of this was to obtain chinook's amulets somehow it's just inside reiko's brain because of the ritual i think havoc synced shiva's ship and we're subjected to a comedy bit where havok says it would be exciting if the ship had explosives on board and then it explodes in the possessed cassie and jackie high five presumably being psychically commanded to do so by havoc kintaro nearly drowns but shiva manages to save him havoc has to possess infect the champions while he attempts to use irmak's souls to charge the amulet his plan being to destroy the netherrealm because death is order and order is death i don't really get it taking it interrupts him to set up issue 11. honestly this whole scheme doesn't really suit a cleric of chaos or at least the methodology the whole direct mind control thing is way too orderly and would probably suit hotaru's faction more i think genuinely that if you took quan chi's schemes from defenders of the realm and conquest where he infects the heroes with magic that makes him their worst self so they fight and turn on each other it would be more fitting for him shiva washes up on the island and now has blank yellow eyes because arts consistency isn't a thing in this comic dvorah kills some red dragon members as one cries and even devorah now has blank yellow eyes takada fights his future teammates and comments how they're cute it's a shame we never had a bit where he and jackie reminisce that their first meeting had her trying to kill him for some reason we get a moment where havoc panics when he realizes molina's not there but then she teleport kicks takada in the face and nothing comes from it i don't think he's just toying with takada since he looks too genuinely surprised as the veterans beat on him havoc tries to turn takada then we enter cringe city as hanzo is confronted by scorpion inside his own mind and their exchange is [ __ ] atrocious get over yourself vengeance is mine hanzo's line is bad enough but what the [ __ ] is scorpion on about vengeance against hanzo i think is a reference to his intro from 2011 vengeance will be mine but it doesn't work sean stop it he then references variations to mark hanzo's use of the spear havoc tells takada to choose his destiny only for shiva's group to arrive with eren reptile and ferrator yes the b-listers are here to take on the a-listers eren says it's less of a rescue mission and more of a suicide squad because we can't go one [ __ ] page without some awful dialogue or pointless references devorah incorrectly refers to herself as eye prompting culture to punch red blood out of her mouth why is blood colour such a god damn issue for this series now taking a manages to steal the amulet from havoc's hand but then trips and falls over nothing like a bumbling buffoon hanzo accepts the hellfire for justice and does his fatality from the game on scorpion it's impressive how quickly this whole comic just completely fell apart and stopped making sense in the final third hanzo rips off havoc's head which has been looking increasingly like a mars attacks alien and teleports away with him reptile also has red blood not surprised anymore and kintaro's head is ripped off by sonia at the last possible second the blood code releases its grip on everyone and takara blames raiden for keeping secrets even though him being honest about the daggers really wouldn't have changed much it's really where that taken and scorpion played such key roles in stopping this threat to all the realms and yet they're not even major players after this takada gets probably the least spotlight of all the combat kids in mkx and hanzo is treated as no more important than sub-zero in mkx sonia and cassie make up again going through the same arc they do in the game and irmak finally turned against molina but his accusations of her being impetuous and outworld needing proven leadership like kotel really have no connection to the events of the comic since both molina and kotel's actions got them captured and possessed raid and sonia and kotel established the reiko accords mentioned in the game and coastal turns over the nukes to her probably not the best idea in hindsight two words [ __ ] nuclear weapons sonia you can't just nuke out world raiden says he won't keep hold of the amulet or it might corrupt him again despite the amulets not having such a power prior to mk11 and it being the blood code that corrupted him not the amulet sony says the sf can hide it where no one will find it but i don't think we ever learned where she put it before it fell into molina's hands maybe this was set up for the second season that never happened hanzo arrives at the gates of the nether realm never mentioned before when morlock and drama are hanging out drama tells him to get over here and i'm just glad this damn thing is almost over issue 12 is the aftermath issue shut the [ __ ] up jackie returns home where jax hands her a gun despite the crazed look in her eyes jax apparently said she'd only hold a gun if she joined the special forces even though again jax broke johnny's jaw when jackie joined because he was so against it ugh try saying that one five times fast and jackie says jax came back from hell for his family despite him not meeting his wife until he was recovering after coming back from hell also vera's skin is way darker here than earlier she almost looked to be of native american descent earlier meanwhile cassio will be spending some time with her mother until sonia starts prioritizing work over family again while takeda buries the shared i do hanzo returns escaping his fight with moloch because scorpion has proven to be weaker than the two oni this scene highlights how bad you have to feel for hanzo his entire clan is annihilated due to his failure he rebuilds it with people he specifically relates to as a survivor they are all slaughtered by one of their own leaving only himself and one apprentice alive he then rebuilds again and they help him make the biggest mistake of his life then they're all just gone again in mk11 so they probably got wiped out a third time and of course this second annihilation is never mentioned anywhere else in the series i get that the loss of the clan frees hanzo and takada up to journey alone without having to excuse the clan from taking part or have them constantly be around but having them all die a second time was not the way to go it should have been set in the early days when there aren't that many members a lot of them survive but are too injured to go with hanzo and takada they leave them in the care of another character let's say serena who wants to make up for helping to destroy the original shield eye to you and then it's just a setback for the second clan not the end of it that prompts a third incarnation back in hell quantity stomps havoc's head and makes absurd claims about havoc promising to turn over the amulet in return for nitara's blood magic what the [ __ ] did sean think natara was he then has katana kill moloch while he kills drama kind of funny that quan chi's intro animation suggests he's the one who killed moloch seeing how he's holding a sword and moloch's neck is still bleeding that animation is debatably canon so it can be forgiven but i think it's still worth bringing up kwon shi welcomes the two monks back but we've no idea from were the actual consequences of the comic turn out to be this incident inspiring dvorah to affect the quan chi side for some reason boricho meets with kung jin and calls lao his uncle which is where that [ __ ] stupid [ __ ] started why did no one correct sean back then we could have avoided that inaccuracy making its way into the games if they had jin hands mr raicho a usb stick with a skull and crossbones on it because subtlety has no place in modern mk bo gives it to sub-zero they journey to the cyberlink wave facility in which sub-zero infiltrates in an extended side-scrolling sequence with some poses coming straight from mk3 he uploads a virus from the usb and learns sektor is cloning link way which is never mentioned anywhere else he's captured and brought before sector and cyrax sub-zero says you can never delete someone's humanity which explains why he mercilessly kills so many forcefully converted link way on his way down here oops cyrax turns against sektor and it's implied he and sub-zero are the only ones in the entire clan who weren't on board with the cyberization which i find very hard to believe unless these are all the clones but then were the original linkway this probably should have gotten a full issue to fill in these gaps instead of just two thirds sector has the upper hand sub-zero says he was holding back and just wins immediately ah here's that anime limiter [ __ ] cyrax is designated as the new grand master and decides instead of getting restored like in the old timeline he'll just die to give the linkway a fresh slate ignoring that if he'd disqualify it from a fresh slate so would sub-zero since he was a linkway too oh i'm a guy thank you whoever what the sub-zero survives the explosion with an ice field or bubble or something freezes bose arm shatters ice that appears around his head between panels and then says he's frozen him because of the heat this really is not conveyed well at all a few weeks later frost and a bunch of others arrive at raiden's behest to join the new link way it's all played like a comedy bit and it doesn't work goro is then seen meeting with dagon and suggests that there's a connection between the red dragon and oh naga even though there isn't goro offers kenshi for daegon's aid suggesting he tracked him down and beat him without arms this was supposed to lead to the next season where goro would become the vessel for onaga and be killed which is acknowledged by some mk11 intros meaning even though it was never created it's still canon did goro become onaga's vessel yes and he nearly scorched outworld however the comic was never continued beyond this point the comic itself presumably only existed at all because the comic tie into injustice did far better than anticipated the difference is that injustice had some intrigue to lure people in what happened in those five years were everyone was fighting mkx offered far less to get people to pick up the comic and its story was not very interesting it ended here and i can't say i'm sorry to see it end beyond the myriad errors in the story both with the games and within itself the comic was just not that well written it's full of terrible dialogue cringe-worthy repeated use of classic phrases that would make malibu smoke blush it repeats story beats from the game brings in classic characters just to kill them off instead of trying something new with them in this new timeline and overall really offers very little of interest for fans and has no value as a standalone piece the latter proven to be a major strength of the injustice comic even the art was hugely inconsistent going from artist to artist and feeling like they didn't even look over the previous guy's work before they took over giving the book little consistency in its look of course the art itself was fine regardless of artists and i'm quite fond of dexter's story stylization particularly with takada i just wish the book was more consistent in this aspect but then that's probably the price you pay when the artist has to draw the equivalent of around 10 pages per week if you like the comic that's fine i don't care i just don't think it really has anything to offer to make it worth reading and i'm certainly not planning to reread it ever again if you want to know more about where the book story was intended to go history behind the warrior managed to get the details from sean so go check out his video if you liked this video why not subscribe and support me on patreon like these fine people here if not then make sure to share with your enemies so they can suffer along with you today i'm going to recommend a video from each person who watched this video's first draft and gave me feedback to make sure i wasn't making any horrible mistakes history behind the warrior brusque poet drake vagabond and yanny from the realmcast thank you guys for stopping me for making a complete fool of myself

Channel: The4thSnake

Views: 196,063

Keywords: mortal kombat, mortal kombat x, mkx, comic

Id: HCRxvFIUnHk

Length: 54min 5sec (3245 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 24 2020