Apex Legends: Overtime

by Jesse Stern, Neil Edwards (Illustrator), Keith Champagne (Illustrator)

The Legends from the Battle Royale video game, Apex Legends, find themselves pulled together to rescue the city from Mad Scientists, brutal assassins, and the sudden and sinister grip of The Syndicate , a corrupt cabal attempting to “fix” arena outcomes in their favor. Will the legends hold up to their celebrity status and be the heroes Solace needs?

Players are familiar with the fierce gladiators of King’s Canyon Arena in Apex Legends . Now they can see what life is like for their favorite Legends outside the arena, in the wild and vibrant dystopian city of Solace. Some of the victorious celebrate together while the others go about their night, blowing off steam or investigating the strange and often nefarious events happening in the neon-lit depths of the city.

Each contestant came to the arena for different glory, fame, wealth, revenge, redemption, and more. This book gives fans a look at their humanity, the good, the bad, and even… the robotic?

With pencils by Neil Edwards ( Assassin’s Creed , Dark Avengers ), inks from Keith Champagne ( Stranger Things , Green Lantern ), and script by film and videogame writer Jesse Stern ( Call of Duty 2 , NCIS ).

Collects Apex Overtime issues #1–#4.

96 pages, Paperback

Published August 30, 2022

Reviews

[Noah · Rating 2 out of 5]

She don't allow herself / To miss nobody else / I've had days where I was dolo / But I never caught a bad case of FOMO (Hopeless Romantic – Wiz Khalifa).

I’ve never enjoyed anything with Timothy Olyphant in it. Scream 2? Not the worst sequel out there, but I thought he was mid in it. Him playing Dave Filoni’s self-insert cowboy OC in The Mandalorian didn’t do anything for me because I couldn't find it in me to watch a thousand episodes of a kid’s show to get the full backstory. I watched exactly one episode of the critically acclaimed show Justified and didn't like it! “Raylan, you’re the angriest man I know,” yeah well, that’s just nothing dialogue, sorry. And I definitely don't like his “sincere” but actually fake friendship with Conan O'Brien, which is saying something because I find anything Conan does funny and entertaining. Don't even get me started on his stale and boring attempt to seem like a character actor in Alien: Earth. In my opinion, he's just been coasting on good hair and a false "nice guy" Ryan Reynolds dude bro charm. Well, there you go, now that I’ve told you my most egregious of unpopular opinions, I’m thinking that when I let you know that I hate Battle Royal video games with a burning passion, I won’t come across as complete hater. A hater always, sure, but hopefully not that guy who just hates everything. You feel me? Because hey… I fucking hate Battle Royal video games! For those who aren’t in the know, Battle Royal games are a type of video game where you and a couple other people get dropped into a big area with a bunch of other players in a free-for-all while the arena slowly gets smaller as time goes on. I remember my friend dragging me through every one of them as they came out! I couldn’t get into Fortnite because the art style looks like the back of a cereal box and I hated the boring building mechanic, as every time you’d try to take out another player, they’d build a big ass skyscraper and scurry up it like King Kong! Let's not forget that one Call of Duty Battle Royal game that was bad because… well, Call of Duty just sucks as a general rule. And now we've arrived at Apex Legends, the best of them all! Which is to say that it was okay.

Maybe I'm just salty because every time I'd play, it would always go one of two ways, I’d get into a fight right after getting off of the Battle Bus, get killed, and then come in 100th place... or I’d find a nice little alcove to hide out in and spend the whole game chilling until some rando sneaks up on me and takes me out immediately "from the Beretta, puttin' all the holes in my sweater." Woohoo 35th place! How fun. I also don’t like how you have to scrounge around for weapons rather than just having a set load-out from the outset because it always spikes my anxiety to have to find stuff while also looking over my shoulder for enemies. Even Katniss had care packages sent to her every now and then, where's my outside help!? Besides, it always gives me a bad case of FOMO whenever I see other people with all that shit on while I'm over here dressed Ed Sheeran style. I'm afraid I'll forever be delegated to being the scuffed looking guy in the group. It's like how Ryan Gosling has that cool jacket in Blade Runner 2049 while Harrison Ford is just walking around in a Hanes t-shirt. Otherwise, the game has a serious Marvel Rivals problem, as in a similar fashion that game has me always running around like a bot wearing the default outfits for every character because I can't be bothered to spend a dime on any of the aesthetic cosmetics. But if you just so happen to be playing the game and see a busted ass Moon Knight on your team walking around all confused with four elims and twenty deaths, you might have encountered me! I mean, I'm sure that hardly narrows it down and I rarely play that game anymore because I got tired of the over designed nature to the hero costumes, but that's a rant for another review, let's back to Apex Legends. One of the reasons why I even picked this comic up years after this game reached its peak popularity and nobody cares anymore is the fact that I finally feel safe enough to get all this off of my chest to where I won't get swarmed by a hoard of angry gamers, which is still a possibility, given the Timothy Olyphant slander (they love him for some reason) but I think for now I'm in the safe zone hidden over here on this Apex Legends: Overtime review page! Man, this takes me back to my favorite strategies when I used to play Apex Legends! Okay look, I have actually always found the colorful cast from the game to be really fun, and I always appreciated the inclusion of LGBT+ characters because it's not really something you see too much in video games.

Also... I remember thinking one of the newer heroes, Crypto, (who is a main character in this comic, but the artist did not do him justice. No offense) was really hot when they put him in the game, so you know how it is. But again, you have to remember that this was all before I learned what Crypto currency was, and even though the character has nothing to do with that whole two year scam, it did put a bit of a damper on any interest from my end. Still, no matter how wonderful a cast of characters is, it doesn’t change the fact that I... just couldn't get into Battle Royal games. I mean, I love all the Street Fighter characters (Vega's my guy), but it’s not like my love will suddenly will me to do anything other than button mash against my opponents. Anyway, before reading this comic, I didn’t even realize the game had lore, so it was a bit odd for me to see that this Overtime comic portrays these characters as, like, super chummy with each other? And it’s weird because the battle royal aspect from the game is interwoven into this comic’s narrative, so I’m confused as to how the logistics work in universe with these characters trying to murk each other in the arena but then somehow surviving and then hanging out afterwards. I mean, nothing’s worse than how Overwatch handles its story, where they have a healer named Kiriko who they wanted to make the childhood friend of the other Japanese characters (because that's a manga trope or whatever), but because Blizzard went to the Leonardo DiCaprio school of women's ages and Hanzo and Genji are both in their late thirties, they still wrote her so she’s in her in her early twenties. How does that work!? Was she stuck in a time-loop or went on a Jaunt to Mars!?!? Because that doesn't make sense Overwatch! Anyway, getting back to the topic at hand, this Apex Legend comic was an whole heaping helping of nothing. You could even say it's similar to how I feel about Timothy Olyphant! The art was mid, the story nonexistent, and it's all taken from source material that's just okay. With all that in mind, I guess it's not too much of a surprise that my interest was and is waning.

[Callum Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cool little story arc that helps to add to the lore behind the game, and I love to see it. I feel like this was a little hurried overall, and perhaps could have been a longer run, but I guess they have to gauge demand with the first attempt.

[Online Eccentric Librarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/

This ended up being a disappointment to many; not because of the story but because the illustration work just didn't work for Apex Legends. All the Legends were posed/drawn like a Marvel superhero rather than an Apex Legends character. Some were horribly misdrawn (Bang has a Frankenstein head and Loba has braids growing out of the top of hers ) and others looked nothing like their game counterpart (Rampart especially looked off). But the story was a decent one that had a Kurosawa type of plot that showed the same timeline from several different angles. What was inexplicable in one story suddenly became known from a different characters' perspective. I did like the plot but had such a hard time with the art - several panels were laugh out loud funny at how silly or poorly illustrated they ended up being.

Story: Mirage and Crypto team up to help Crypto retrieve a mysterious computer. Cue Revenant there to murder the delivery man (and perhaps Mirage and Crypto as well). Octane and Lifeline head to a rave but get more than they encountered when Pathfinder shows up and ends up getting his consciousness swapped into Lifeline's Doc at the same time she is shot. Bangalore is at a victory party with Gibraltar and Loba when she spots someone wearing her brother Jackson's jacket. Rampart and Wattson see Caustic holding a suspicious bag and follow him only to uncover a secret lab where he is conducting cruel experiments on prowlers. Wraith, meanwhile, stumbles upon Revenant and Crypto/Mirage battling and decides to help Mirage. Cue rampaging loose prowlers, explosions, fights among Legends and thugs, and transport ship crashes.

So, as noted, this is very similar to the storytelling in the Japanese movie Roshoman in which there are several perspectives to the same sequence of events. E.g., there are rampaging prowlers in the city as seen by Lifeline and Octane - but we don't learn until many chapters later how that came about (with Rampart, Caustic, Wattson). Similarly, a crashing ship on Loba/Bang/Gibby seems incredibly random until explained a few chapters later with the perspective of Mirage/Crypto/Revenant storyline. All storylines converge in the end. It does make for some confusing but good storytelling that is rewarding upon rereads.

There were a lot of memes made about the illustration work (Bangalore especially as she was drawn) in the Apex community after the first issue. Sadly, the work just didn't improve. The most insightful reviews noted that it felt like it was drawn solely from character models and without a lot of understanding of the characters and how they move. Crypto ended up looking too much like Gambit from Xmen, Bangalore like the Bride of Frankenstein, Wraith like a younger and prettier superhero. All the posing and fights were comic cliches. Honestly, it was just a mess. I didn't even like the shading, which turned faces into distorted features rather than adding depth. Fights and battle were very confusing, with more posing than actual battling.

As for what this adds to the lore: honestly not much. We get a bit of Mila for Crypto and Bangalore still hunting for Jackson. Jackson is now in game and likely this is a preview of Mila coming into the game in the near future as well. Pathfinder, Mirage, and Wraith are lonely and feel like they don't have friends. Lifeline and Octane still have a complicated, if dumb, relationship. Gibraltar just wants to save everyone and Wattson is still mad at Caustic. Rampart has connections in the City. That's about it.

In all, I'll read any comic from the Respawn team because I know the lore writer does an excellent job. I do wish the artwork was better and showed the characters as they look in game. And I don't think the Marvel/DC superhero look was a good one for this game. So keep those expectations in mind when deciding if you want to read this.

Note: Collects all four in the series in the story arc OVERTIME. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

[TomintheSnow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Erratic storytelling with a stale plot, familiar to Pathfinder's Quest and the Season 5 Quest.