So, OK, guys. Let's talk serious. There are rants for the sake of rant, and there are critical remarks. I'll try to stay in critical territory for as long as possible. Also sorry for possible grammar/phrase building mistakes.
Tales of Honor #1 is out, so I ran to Comixology and bought a digital copy. Aaand what I was afraid of has completely happened.
Now, there is such a sweet thing as pacing. And this story is paced horribly. Now, I'm a fan of Honorverse, and I read pretty much everything I could get, but let's suppose I'm a newcommer. And I'm instantly overflooded with long intro text, some strange torture scenes performed by some strange women, then broken by memories of the tortured one, who is a starship captain, right?.. - and she shoots someone with some strange triangular thing and brought a tiger to a starship with herself.
So, what is my point? This concept does not work! At all! Pages spent on Ransom's evilness should be spent on Honor's establishment. A scene with Nimitz and Honor flying to Haephestus would be much more useful then a hundred of captions. More scenes with the crew, with ship examining, these would build the future story so much better. In it's current state the comic is a mess. I would just stop reading it from here on, if I didn't know what's coming (both on Tepes and on Basilisk Station).
There are a couple of fine moments, where I see there is a potentially great moments. Crew reacting on Honor - great! Scenes with Young - a bit too simplified, but still great! Operation planning sequence - wonderful (again, I have to rant about tactical map design - it's plain useless)! But all Tepes scenes are just not needed. They are simply ruining all the pacing of the story, waking it look rushed. There are zero characters established in the first issue. Zero! Even Honor herself, being "on screen" all the time!
I may be wrong, of course. But I do think that current course with comics can end up being a crash course. The story has to be less rushed, it must flow, not ram into reader.
and, Mangy Fur the Smart Alick Spacecat.