Halo: Helljumper

Product Description

Comics legend Peter David and up-and-coming artist Eric Nguyen bring a whole new HALO story to life! When the colony planet Ariel sends out a mysterious distress signal, it's up to the UNSC's elite, highly skilled special-ops Marines, the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers from the 105th, to find out what's happening. Also known as ODSTs or "Helljumpers", these soldiers are some of the toughest in the galaxy... and some of the roughest as well. When the distress signal comes, two Helljumpers will find themselves at the center of the mystery on Ariel, and before it's solved, they'll have to put their friendship - and their lives - on the line... Collects Halo: Helljumper #1-5.

Customer Reviews

Nguyen's artwork is great, and exceptionally detailed
Full disclosure: I've never played Halo. The closest I've ever come is the hours upon hours of GoldenEye that my friends and I played on the N64 back in college, but I know the basic mechanics of the first-person shooter genre of video games. However, this allows me a unique position to comment on this graphic novel as a comic, rather than an accessory to a huge property that has already spawned action figures, miniature strategy games, and alien fightin' underpants.

I've been reading Peter David (no relation) since his days writing Star Trek paperbacks, and I've always enjoyed his ability to leap into almost any given property, understand how it works, and give it some humanity and humor. David delivers a deeply bromantic war story that works without knowing anything about Halo's gameplay. There's some talk of different classes of soldiers and supersuits that are used within the game itself, so while this surely enhances the mythology that surrounds the game if you're a serious player, it's still a pretty okay read if you just like things about shooting aliens, or war stories, or exquisitely drawn explosions with an absurd amount of shrapnel.

Nguyen's artwork is great, and exceptionally detailed, though something seems to be lost in the coloring. While the hues are appropriate for the setting, it's not easy to immediately distinguish camouflaged human forms in the hurricane of explosions and landscapes that fill the pages. It's also fairly difficult to tell one character from another, as they're generally masked, or similarly attired and coifed as a unit of soldiers--but the dialogue can go either way anyhow. It actually isn't too important to tell who was saying what anyhow. I don't know if this is a discredit to the story itself, but I didn't feel like I wasn't picking up on anything. Hint: One guy's chestplate is a very subtle blue, and the other guy has a very subtle orange.

The artwork is consistent, which is tremendously hard to do when you're creating a realistic world.


There's a lot of gunfire, gory exploding aliens, mild profanity, and general themes of death and violence--but nothing too expressly offensive or unnecessary. When you're battling an alien invasion, you're going to say a few things that aren't appropriate for the kids and maybe spray a little more blood than Nick Jr. would appreciate. If this can serve as a gateway into reading for a reluctant teenager, I would suggest taking advantage of it. There's a growing world of Halo comics and paperbacks out there that can, in their own unique way, be used as learning tools.
-- Collin David

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Not Really Good
I bought this because I really like the Halo books in general, and will pretty much buy anything canonical :). I recommend this graphic novel _only_ if you feel the same way, as it has more vices than virtues, particularly at the high price for which it is being offered.

Neither the story nor the art is memorable. The art is indistinct, and as often as not the ODSTs look like Transformers. The story is a confused Super-soldiers-can-do-anything cum male-bonding-buddy-movie only peripherally meaningful in the Halo universe. The ODSTs themselves are portrayed as brutish, stupid, undisciplined thugs.

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Great addition to the franchise
After being thoroughly disappointed with Halo's previous comic foray, Halo: Uprising, I didn't have the highest expectations for ODST. To me, Uprising really fell apart in focusing more on the lame central lovestory rather than... anything else. Helljumper proves to be Uprising's opposite in terms of making you care about the central characters, and I highly recommend Helljumper.

For the story, frankly do I need to give a story? The comics follow the characters that show up in the Halo: ODST game (with a few really awesome cameos sprinkled in), and do a really good job of going into their backstory and motivations. As for this specific mission, however, it's fair to say they're going to shoot a lot of stuff and that's about all there is to it. That's actually a good thing in this case, as the beautiful art and frequent action serve only as a backdrop to really put the internal motivations of the ODSTs front and center. Where Uprising tried to focus on two bratty teens that you couldn't care less about, ODST brings a real human element to the killing machines you have have already met in the ODST game. Sure, the basic premise is still putting bullets into enemies, but now you really dig into why they're doing what they're doing, and what's going on in their heads.

Helljumper is a perfect tie-in comic. It compliments the ODST game perfectly, yet it stands on its own as a fine addition to any Halo fan's collection regardless of whether or not you've played that specific game. I'd say it's really not a good place for someone new to the series to get a start (that's accomplished much better by the first Xbox game or the Fall of Reach novel), but otherwise, it's a must-have.

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Illustraions are a bit vague
Great comic book to add to a collection for us Halo fans but I found the illustrations a bit confusing due to the clarity of the drawings.In comparison the Gears of War 1 hard back comic book is better illustrated. Obviously relates to the technique of the individual graphic artist otherwise I would give 5 points.

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Lets jump into hell
Being the avid Halo fan that I am, I expect a lot out of every single production based on this wonderful franchise. Helljumper is no exception.
First off "Helljumper" is NOT abot Master Chief, though he does make an appearance though.
This story is centrally focused on the ODSTs of the universe. What they have to go through and the impossible missions presented to them like the ones presented to Spartans.
Some of the Characters from the latest edition of the Halo video game ODST makes an appearance in the comic, it helps because it brings life to the characters, where in ODST very little is known about each character other than what they present on the outside.
I really enjoyed reading through the comic, it helped me understand more about the characters, if you are a fan of the ODSTs then you will also enjoy this comic. It's not about people in super badass armor armor kicking ass and taking names. It's about Marines kicking ass and taking names.

In conclusion if you were a fan of the ODST game and wanted to know more about some of the characters this comic will help with that.
If you are a fan of Halo and wanted to know more about the ODSTs and how they function, like what type of missions they go on, on a regular basis then this will be a good read.


If you don't fit either of those 2 categories then you will be more or less disappointed in the comic.

The reason it got a 4 out of 5 stars was because:
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During the whole comic, I felt the ODSTs were more badass then they were suppose to be. They are suppose to operate in small tactical insertion groups; instead the author decided that they would all be split up and then have them take out a whole covenant ground batallion. I would understand if they were spartans but they aren't. The situations presented to them would seem like a challenge even to spartans but they take it on no problem.

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