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| Front cover of Assassin's Creed Mirage: A Soar of Eagles |
Score (out of 5 Capes)
1.5 out of 5 Capes for a dark, dismal, confusing tie-in to the 2023 release of Assassin's Creed Mirage, the latest installment of the better-known video game.
My Review
Since 2026 marks the 40th anniversary of Dark Horse Comics, I am doing a short series of reviews that look at some Dark Horse graphic novels and trade paperbacks. And a hard cover, in this case.
The catalog for this remarkably successful late-80s upstart publisher has includes quite a range over the years. There were some early critical successes that got the company off to a great start, things like Paul Chadwick's beautiful and profound Concrete series. They published several limited series spin-offs from popular movie franchises like Aliens and Predator.
More recently, their tie-ins have been in the gaming universe with titles like Assassin's Creed and Halo. And always they have made room for innovative graphical storytelling and early-wave Manga.
Speaking of video game tie-ins, this week's review is of the hard cover book Assassin's Creed: Mirage - a Soar of Eagles. It collects the three-issue limited series by the same title, a prequel story to the release of the 2023 release of the Assassin's Creed Mirage video game, the 13th in the Assassin's Creed universe.
Gathering into one place only three comic issues, then adding just a handful of special features like the artist's sketchbook, this is a surprisingly thin volume. It is unlikely to persuade many new players for the video game, for many of the reasons that led me to score this just one and a half capes out of five.
The video game itself is set in 9th-century Baghdad and centres on the one playable character, Basim Ibn Ishaq. He leaves behind his street-thieving ways to join the Hidden Ones in their battle against the Order of the Ancients.
The tale told in this comic series, published nearly two years after the game, predates the game by several years. A young Fuladh has a dream vision of a messenger eagle with the image of a snake encircling Saint Abuna.
Fuladh returns to his homeland with Roshan, hoping to uncover a possible secret fortress of the Order of the Ancients. They seek his old friend Nibiris, eventually rescuing him from an Aksumite general.
Nibiris briefs them on what to expect when they reach the fortress, drawing on his own knowledge and memories from his time raising and training eagles there. When the invaders arrived, Nibiris escaped with his best eagle, Memnon, while his apprentice Kaleb remained behind to try and protect or free the remaining eagles. It was a bad decision.
Fuladh must then fulfill his quest and do battle with the general, a cult leader and the wanna-be snake god.
Writer Michael Avon Oeming's plot has a lot of pieces but even as the body count grows, the details remain frustratingly hard to follow. He crams a lot into the growing tension, and everyone collides in the violent climax, but any clarity in his own mind fails to come through on the pages.
The confusing narrative is not helped by Mirko Colak's brooding and moody art. So much ink was spilled on these pages, with solid blacks dominating every page and panel. A lighter touch might improve the visual storytelling, as much is lost in the shadows here. But perhaps the creative team felt that so much of the story was dark and foreboding that the heavy inks supported that tone.
Colak and Oeming also too often revert to silent panels to convey the action and drama, but the muddy, chunky images are short on detail and ultimately fail to carry the narrative without accompanying text.
Overall, this is a brief and unpleasant read. An odd choice, given the established nature of the Assassin's Creed franchise. Was this a story that needed to be told? Maybe to fill in seams and gaps in the video game and its mythology? Maybe it all made sense in a new and exciting way upon playing the Assassin's Creed Mirage game (full disclosure, this reviewer has not played the game)?
For its many flaws as a story and as a hard cover collection, I give this 1.5 capes out of 5.
What I loved
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| Occasional bursts of stunning colour |
In the midst of this brutal and visually unpleasant book, filled with deep black inks and confusing images, come moments of true beauty.
This is most apparent in the colour work of Lauren Affe. The gradations and colour-work produces things like these stunning sunset panels. Even better, the colours turn the blackness of Mirko Colak's over-inked images into silhouettes, a definite upgrade.
What I didn't love
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| Confusing flow of images and excessive ink |
Artist Mirko Colak's visuals are excessively inked, to the point of losing detail. Spilling so much ink on page after page ultimately sacrifices the potential for powerful contrasts between the dark and the light.
The two slim bonus pages from Colak's sketchbook only serve to prove that his heavy inking hand is deliberate. Sadly, the sea of ink does nothing to save from drowning an already confusing plot, but rather adds to the confusion.
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Henchgirl by Dark Horse Comics
Starblazers space manga volume 1
Quick Reference Details
Writers: Michael Avon Oeming
Artists: Mirko Colak
Published By: Dark Horse Books
Published When: Nov 18, 2025
Parental Rating: Teen
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| Back cover of Assassin's Creed Mirage: A Soar of Eagles |
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