With my current hyper focus being on Atari, I dug out my old collection of Atari Force comics from the 80s.

Not that I had them back then of course; I have the entire run (just 20 issues, plus 1 Special), which I acquired mostly from a local comic shop when they were closing down, for a ridiculously cheap price.

And of course, when better to check them out than now, when Atari seem to have finally awoken after years of mismanagement and ridiculous cheapening of their own brand?

Atari Force (or perhaps that should be A.T.A.R.I. Force, given that the first word is an acronym) is a very odd comic that was launched a few years too late, given that it arrived just before the mostly Atari-led video game crash, which decimated the industry for a few years in America.

The story initially started in smaller sized comics that were packed in with certain Atari games; as Warner Communications owned both DC and Atari, it was seen as a no brainer for them to cross promote the games using comics.

This first issue picks up 25 years after the story in the original mini comics ended, and it’s a bit of a whirlwind tour of different characters and planets in a very colourful, yet undoubtedly dangerous universe.

It kicks off with a very Guardians of the Galaxy-esque scene of two mercenaries taking on the minions of a Yoda-influenced gangster (seriously, he’s green and he speaks exactly like the ancient Jedi Master), before we’re whisked off somewhere else.

We then spend a few pages with some space pirates, who kidnap a potentially valuable baby rock, um, thing; it’s only after this that the A.T.A.R.I. (Advanced Technology And Research Institute) Headquarters makes an appearance.

Here we’re introduced to Christopher Champion, aka Tempest, the super-powered, estranged son of the original Atari Force hero, who’s being put through his paces in a very video game-esque maze.

Finally, we join a chubby, bipedal rodent creature who’s undertaking some kind of heist, before we go back to the two characters from the opening scene, Dart and Blackjak.

If you’re struggling to work out what’s going on from that summary, I promise you that I haven’t just awkwardly laid out the scenes one after another in an attempt to obfuscate; it’s genuinely just really difficult to get a grip on exactly why we’re meeting everyone the way we do, or even how any of it is connected.

None of it seems to really gel; no doubt it’ll come together over the next issue or two, but this is a really confusing and somewhat incoherent opening issue.

It’s very well illustrated and the unusual settings are really nicely brought to life, as well as there being some excellent, very diverse character designs, but it’s easy to see why readers may have picked this up and been immediately dissuaded from checking out more issues.

It doesn’t even end on a particularly compelling cliffhanger either.

Another thing that struck me is just how little the setting and many characters have to do with Atari at all; there’s a few references in names (Tempest, obviously) but there’s not much of an attempt to actually tie this in to specific games or even reference them very much at all.

I suppose that does help the series stand on its own, but it’s still odd, in my opinion.

Anyway, that’s Atari Force #1. It takes 12 pages for the first mention of Atari, doesn’t go out of its way to court obsessive video gamers (who would have been attracted to buy the comic on its name alone), and would likely have struggled with more casual comic book fans too.

Do things improve as the series continues? No doubt I’ll be finding out very soon, but this baffling first issue doesn’t bode well.