In the second issue of Cyberpunk 2077‘s tie-in comic, Trauma Team #2, we find that our heroine Nadia is suffering from Heroic Blue Screen of Death syndrome. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into a Red Ring of Death for her.
Warning: major spoilers for Trauma Team #2. Stop reading here if you have any plans to read this comic.
To recap the previous issue of Trauma Team, Nadia is the sole survivor of her entire team of special forces operators/medics for hire. After some period of heroic BSoD-ing, she decides to go back to work. Unfortunately, her new team’s next client was the guy who’d slaughtered her old team. Coincidence? Or a sick prank? We’ll just have to see in this second issue of Trauma Team.
Trauma Team #2: PTSD Boogaloo (Spoiler Alert)
Yeah, Nadia is so not getting a break here. I’m very much reminded of the breaking of Kaladin Stormblessed here. For those of you who’ve read The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson, yeah, it’s about that bad.
But to get back on track for Trauma Team #2, this issue actually makes very good use of posthumous character arcs to show just how much the deaths of Nadia’s team members affected her. Well, one team member in particular, since Nadia was apparently lovers with him. Yeah, office romances never go well when the office in question is a battlefield.
You can see then why seeing her team’s murderer would make her go into Blue Screen of Death mode. My only issue with the story is that only Nadia’s lover is in the flashbacks. It would’ve been nice to see how Nadia interacted with her non-lover teammates, and to see how their deaths affected Nadia as well. The way the writers did this issue, it makes it appear as though Nadia only cares about her lover’s death, and not the rest of her team.
Granted, Trauma Team #2 is fairly short, so there might not have been any room to put their stories in there. Still, it would’ve been nice to see a panel dedicated to how Nadia interacted with each member of her deceased team, at least. It would’ve at least given them a minimal backstory.
There may be hope in the next issue to see what the rest of Nadia’s teammates were like. We’ll just have to hope that the writers at Dark Horse correct this problem.
Conclusion
All in all, Trauma Team #2 is a pretty continuation of the story, if not as strong as the previous issue. It’s all still a fascinating look into the world of Cyberpunk 2077 through the eyes of someone working for a key feature of that game‘s world: Trauma Team International. Let’s hope Nadia has something good happen to her in the next issue. Or at the very least, she gets some revenge for her teammates.
Source: Dark Horse Comics
