An Underrated Gem: The Life Is Strange Comic

Imagine this: It’s the 20th of October, 2015. The last episode of Life is Strange was just released and after a couple hours of a thrilling conclusion, you’re left with Chloe and Max at the top of a cliff, ready for you to make the final decision. No matter what ending you chose, you probably ended up crawling to your bed, sobbing, before searching up whatever fan content that could possibly fill the void in your heart.

So now imagine, after spending years theorising and reading about everyone’s interpretations on how the story could have progressed from that point on, that near the end of 2018 a comic series that was described to be just that gets released. You would have expected there to be a celebration within the community but there wasn’t. Quite the opposite actually. People weren’t happy because it wasn’t an announcement of a new game. Well, that’s not entirely true, a new game did come out about a month or two earlier but they weren’t happy about that either because it followed a new protagonist, completely removed from the story of Max and Chloe.

Bringing it back to the comics, this series was simultaneously everything I expected from a narrative following the aftermath of the storm yet also manages to blow my expectations out of the water.

Much of the comic focuses on the idea of survivors' guilt. As the comic takes place in a timeline where Max chooses to sacrifice Arcadia Bay over Chloe, it gives a lot of room for the author to explore how these characters react to the tragedy. It takes us through a point that most players would have expected if this were the outcome of the original game. When Chloe and Max drive off, they’re definitely going to be left with a lot of heavy emotions and getting to see them process this through the comic is definitely an interesting read. It really highlights how different the two girls are.

Chloe’s survivor's guilt is based on the fact that so many of those around her had been hurt and broken before the storm happened, something completely out of their control. But the storm killing her parents, something she could have prevented, is what hurts her the most. And although she generally sees herself as a closed off person who doesn’t open up emotionally, when it comes to Max and processing this loss, between the two of them she is the first to verbalise her grief.

Max’s guilt although based on the deaths of those close to her but more so focused on how it impacts her relationship with Chloe. This is the main catalyst of the comic with Max’s thoughts on whether she chose what Chloe wanted leading to her completely jumping ship into a universe where Chloe and Rachel are happy together. It’s the combination of Max’s low self esteem and some mystical time bending force that makes her pull away from her Chloe and creating the main complication of the series.

As the comic takes place over years, we get to watch Max make the realisation that even if she doesn’t think she deserves Chloe, she is still someone that Chloe wants. It’s a powerful message how Max’s own selflessness becomes her undoing. She is always thinking about others and is yet extremely closed off to those around her. She seems to be this happy go-lucky character but underneath is a lot of pent up emotion and anguish. The series makes a point to encourage Max to communicate and open up because it is only then that she is able to grow past her mistakes and see herself for what she is worth. It is all based on this idea that we are made up of our choices so what does that make a character who is constantly causing hurt for those around her? Now with the promise of not abusing her powers anymore, Max has to accept the consequences of her actions and this means coming to terms with what happened on that day when Chloe’s dad walked out, and what happened on that day atop the cliff. The series really drives home a story of redemption. It understands that each and every one of our protagonists are flawed and gives them that time that they need to grow and change. It doesn’t let the past die, instead, it uses it as a way to encourage the characters to think before they act, something that the trio (Max, Chloe and Rachel) probably haven’t been all that used to.

This comic so cleverly utilises its visual medium. Alongside the text and dialogue, there are small subtle visual details in the background that create interest and add to the world building of the series. For example in the main timeline of the comic, Chloe survives the storm. However, Max occasionally “flickers” between timelines, at one point existing in one where Chloe does not survive. To illustrate this point, the logo that Chloe designs for the band, The High Seas, is replaced with a considerably more basic one.

As the comic progresses, you can see the development in ideas in how they represent and tip the reader off as to what reality they’re being shown. This is done through changes in colour, line art, or even just by changing the clothing a character appears in for a specific scene. Not only are these techniques visually intriguing, they allow for the comics to be re-read over and over, with new details being noticed with every reading experience.

The amount of thought put into the visuals of this comic is insane. Even the covers of each issue has something new to say. It would take almost a full post to go through every single cover so I’ll go over my personal favourite, that being the image on the first volume. It depicts Max and Chloe holding hands in the midst of the Arcadia Bay wreckage. There is a reflection of Max in the puddle behind them but not one of Chloe. This is extremely obvious symbolism for the two endings but it goes further than that. If you turn the cover upside down, you’ll notice that the puddle is also the storm.

Even the character designs are ingenious. They’ve made changes to show the passing of time but just like the game series, the symbolism packed into clothing is heavily present. The character of Tristan who has the power to turn invisible or “disengage” has various optical illusions such as a Penrose triangle on his shirt. This is to suggest both the impossibility of his power and the way that people may find it hard to perceive or understand him correctly.

On the cover of the second volume, Max wears a shirt with three origami cranes on it. In Japanese culture, cranes represent success and good fortune and when folded in origami, it is believed to make your heart’s desire come true. With Max’s arc based on her desire to return to her Chloe, it makes a lot of sense. Max’s many outfits often are accessorised with a dreamcatcher necklace. It’s pretty common knowledge that dream catchers are used to catch bad dreams and let good dreams through. It’s a weird inclusion. Max does have a dream in the series but I wouldn’t call it good or bad. It acts more of a vision than anything else although there are negative implications of the dream. It could potentially just serve as a sign of her ambition.

On the same volume two cover, Chloe is seen wearing a shirt with a skull covered in vegetation and trees, a symbol of life after death. The implication of it being a reference to Chloe’s arc in the main series, dying only to be revived again over and over again. It’s weird because this shirt is seen on the alternate Chloe, one that we presume would not have died.

The comic does a great job of tying the narrative back to the original source material. One such way it does this is through the use of established motifs. Spanning across each reality or timeline is a presence of deers, blue butterflies, polaroids, or most notably the storm. These motifs are important because with a visual medium, the silence or lack of dialogue is just as important as the words a character says. There are panels and scenes that speak louder than any preachy talk could do. The panels that just focus on small details like whenever Max contemplates her powers or what the consequences of her actions really mean, the comic directs our attention to the butterfly tattoo that she has on her wrist. It’s a detail that is never verbally mentioned by any character instead it’s left as a silent conversation between Max and the reader. The various other motifs are important because even though we as an audience understand that these bizarre connections between realities are a conscious choice made by the author and artists, to these characters it acts as reminders of their past and how they can’t really run away from their mistakes.

As previously mentioned, the comic introduces us to a cast of new characters that aid in the trio’s journey, this includes the band The High Seas. As of the third volume there are two songs that appear throughout the series. Both of which I am fairly certain don’t actually exist in the real world, trust me, my disappointment was immeasurable.

The song that appears in the beginning of the first volume hits close to home for the pair. It becomes a recurring motif throughout the series and is the one thing that binds the pair no matter what timeline or universe they may be in. This song is the most intriguing of the two because it’s not immediately obvious what it’s about. Without breaking down every lyric of the song, it is evidently about Max and Chloe and more so than the two realise at the time. The song seems to foreshadow the events of the series, notably how “You’re here with me, but you’re years away” could be interpreted as Max’s conflict in volumes two and three. She goes to a world where Chloe is happy at the expense of her own. In this world she’s constantly haunted by the presence of her lover who in this world isn’t hers.

At one point near the end of volume three, Chloe is trying to process the fact that this version of Max will one day leave her again. She compares the subject of the song to Max. It is when she gets up to the lyric “I wish you’d cross the veil and stay” that she stops reciting the song, cutting off before she says stay. The symbolism of this seems obvious when you realise there’s a panel of silence before Chloe changes the subject. This lyric means different things to each version of Chloe. For the alternate universe version, it’s a symbol of her internal struggles of wanting the best for Max and her desire to have her friend back permanently. For the original Chloe, it’s about wanting her Max back. This line is all the more fascinating when you learn that veil is oftentimes used as a spiritual term. It is the border between the physical world and the spiritual one. In this context, we can say that the world Max enters every time she flickers or attempts to leap through realities as this universe’s veil.

The song also introduces an interesting take on the idea of déjà vu. It presents it as a memory of a past timeline. This doesn’t necessarily deepen the plot at all but it does tie it back to the “science” and continuity the series runs on.

The second song appears later in the same volume and is very clearly about their relationship (in fact one of the characters does my job for me and outright states that). It doesn’t really need an analysis because it's simply an expression of wanting something but having so many barriers set between them. On the topic of their relationship, it’s one of the many things the comic handles really well. When it came to Max and Chloe in the game and how the player is supposed to view their relationship, it was largely debated. The comic both confirms what we suspected and also addresses the concerns that people that even Ashly Burch, the voice of Chloe Price, had. That being the fact that the timing was all wrong. The game didn’t give them the time they needed for their relationship to develop or flourish. So despite the form of a comic limiting the pace of the narrative, it manages to give the time - in the form of a skip - for their relationship to truly have some ground to stand on.

The comic also addresses one of the problems I had with one of its characters, that being the infamous Rachel Amber. I’ve said before that she’s this manipulative and toxic character, so to see a series focus on this healthy relationship between her and Chloe was interesting to say the least. It was weird to read because it went against my impression of her from the games. All is well however, as the comic explains that the Rachel we see is significantly different to that of the games canon. This Rachel has made a series of choices that has made her a better person, and an alive one at that. Through Rachel’s character arc, the story turns a well known idiom/idea on its head. It takes the concept of “You never know what you have until it’s gone” and completely throws it out of the window. When Rachel learns that Max is actually from a reality where Rachel ends up dead, she, like any sane person, goes into a full existential crisis. This with the combined weight of Shakespeare’s Hamlet makes her realise that she should be cherishing the time she has with her loved ones. It makes a point to remind the reader that someone should matter when they’re still alive instead of only when they’re gone. You shouldn’t need someone’s death to make you realise how much they mean to you and if you become honest with yourself about this, a person’s presence will mean just as much as when they leave. It’s quite an important sentiment and one that is so well conveyed at that.

Life is Strange is a series that really likes drawing connections to Shakespeare to give the reader an almost meta understanding of the characters and their feelings. Through the use of Hamlet, the comics address the concept of death, in particular, the parallels between the death of Ophelia and that of Rachel’s. The characters around her interpret the play as tragic and that Ophelia’s death mattered more than her life. This is an obvious jab at how the first game uses Rachel as a character. Her death, like Ophelia’s, is used as a catalyst and a growing point for others around her. Rachel in this scene remarks that we only view her death as a tragedy because we knew it was going to happen, ignoring the fact that she didn’t know that and instead imagined that she had a whole life ahead of her. This of course is a nod to the ending of Before the Storm, the prequel game. We get to see the world through Chloe’s eyes with Rachel in it and at the end we have to make the choice between letting Rachel know the dark truths about her family or to let her live with blissfully ignorant. Although it was a prequel game and that meant this choice doesn’t directly impact the events of the main game, the choice held weight. It took the consideration of the in universe impacts and that of our world to make. Telling her meant she would have to deal with knowing something that would mean the life she was living wasn’t a lie. Yet if we took the fact that she would die soon after, we could argue that maybe it wouldn’t hurt to let her go with a semblance of positivity in her life before she inevitably passes.

This is what makes the comic so engaging. It creates a commentary not only on our world as any good narrative would but also provides that meta commentary on the series it’s based on. We as a reader or player can understand the tragedy of Rachel’s arc but that understanding isn’t as important as leaving with the sense that because death is sudden and inevitable, we should make every day of our lives count.

This series was largely overlooked by the Life is Strange fan base despite the fact that it is everything we’ve been asking for and more. It is frankly quite unfortunate how little attention this series has garnered when it is so incredibly detailed, beautifully illustrated, and well-written. I understand that many fans were hoping that when we finally did get a continuation of Max and Chloe’s journey that it would come in the form of a sequel game and in that way the comic seems to be poor compromise. When you remember the actual source material and realise it was a game entirely based on the idea of choice, you can see how a comic where the reader is unable to influence the direction of the story may seem appealing. In my opinion, however, the complicated narrative that the comic team has produced fits way better as, well, a comic. And honestly, what the comic provides very much makes up for the lack of choice.

In other words, you should check out this series. It is worth the read even if you aren’t familiar with the original series (although an understanding of the games would increase your enjoyment for the subtleties and references scattered throughout the books). Despite having gone through every tiny detail of this series, I have left out a lot, primarily the larger plot points! So there’s much more for you to explore on your own. It’s probably also important to mention that the representation in this comic is really refreshing to see. They not only include people of colour, lgbt+ people, and people of various religions in the comic, but integrated them to become a larger part of the plot. These characters are never defined by these traits, instead they are treated as people.

I am very excited to see what the next instalments of the series will hold, even though I do have a pretty good guess on what’s going to happen next. Will Max and Chloe ever reunite? Will they continue to live with the scarring knowledge that they led to the deaths of thousands? Will the series stop giving me existential crises? Find out next century when the fourth volume gets released!